Screwball Comedy
Madcap Romance and Howard
Hawks’ His Girl Friday
Screwball: Etymology
• Screwball - American colloquialism appeared in
the mid-1930s signifying ‘eccentric person)
• Derives from expressions such as ‘screw loose’
(being crazy) and ‘screwy’ (drunk)
• At about the same time, ‘screwball’ became to
be used - pitched ball moving in an unusual or
unexpected way’
Screwball: Etymology
• ‘Gas House Gang’ - St. Louis Cardinals, the
eccentric and scruffy world champions of 1934
• Jay Hanna ‘Dizzy’ Dean and Jerone Herman
‘Daffy’ Dean - two eccentric pitchers
Screwball Comedy: a Definition
• The dominance of an eccentric female partner
over her male less assertive and more frustrated
partner
• The eccentric courtship of a screwball couple
in the present and the environment of the rich.
• Tenuous plot which centres on slapstick
romantic encounters and battles of sex
Screwball Comedy: A History
• Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934) - a
prototype though its male lead (Clark Gable) is as
strong as its female lead (Claudette Colbert)
• Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century (1934) with
John Barrymore and Carol Lombard is a more
typical screwball comedy.
Screwball Comedy: A History
• W.S. Van Dyke’s The Thin Man - the male lead (William
Powell) is a detective, capable enough but more
vulnerable and frustrated than the classic detective and his
wife (Myrna Loy)
• John Ford’s The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) - a comedy
gangster film, in which the accountant (Edward Robinson)
has a striking resemblance to a killer. Jean Arthur is his
love interest.
Screwball Comedy: A History
• Gregory LaCava’s My Man Godfrey (1935) - the most
typical screwball comedy with a socialite (Carol
Lombard) hiring a derelict (Powell) as a butler and
eventually falling love with him.
• The genre came to maturity in 1937 with five classics
appeared Easy Living, Topper, The Awful Truth, Nothing
Sacred and True Confession
Screwball Comedy: A History
• Cary Grant emerged as a
male screwball star after
his success in Topper
(1937) and The Awful
Truth (1937) and even
eclipsed female
screwball stars with his
appearance in Bringing
up Baby (1938) and
Holiday (1938)
Screwball Comedy: A History
• Preston Sturges was a film
director who kept the
tradition of the screwball
alive after the initial
power of the genre was
lost.
• Comination of slapstick
humour and high-class
sofistication
Screwball Comedy: A History
• Screwball comedies continue to be made: Blake
Edwards’ 10 (1979) and Steven Gordon’s Arthur
(1981)
• Reason for decline: anti-heroics and the image of
courtship and marriage new to the 1930s and 40s
became a norm for more contemporary Americans
Back to definition
• Comic anti-hero - essential ingredient for the
screwball comedy
(1) abundant leisure time
(2) childlike naïveté
(3) life in the city
(4) apolitical nature
(5) frustration
• Transition of comic type from cracker-barrel
philosopher to cracker-barrel anti-hero
His Girl Friday
• Produced and directed by
Howard Hawks
• Scripted by Charles Lederer,
Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur based on the play,
The Front Page
• Starring Cary Grant and
Rosalind Russell
His Girl Friday
• Gender swap - satire and social comment on the
operation of newspaper and the change taken
place in the 1930s
• Overlapping dialogue, simultaneous
conversations, rapid-talk, break-neck speed,
sexual innuendo, word gag,
His Girl Friday
• What does this film tell about the screwball
comedy?
• What makes the film a screwball comedy?
• Sophisticated battles of sex