Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Welcome!

In this blog, I hope to review and grant exposure to the screwball comedies which are near and dear to my heart. The Screwball Comedy is one which arose from the Production Code--in fact, many lovers and critics of the movie genre characterize the screwball comedy to be a sex movie without the sex, as many of the situations are born out of sexual frustration between the male and female leads. This is most particularly true in Bluebeard's Eighth Wife *g*.

According to my favorite book on the genre, Romantic comedy in Hollywood: from Lubitsch to Sturges by James Harvey, the screwball comedy was preeminent from about 1934 to 1948, though its roots are to be found in Lubitsch's Pre-Code musicals featuring Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald. Proto-typical screwball comedies feature rapid-fire dialogue, crazy situations, and pretty often, divorced couples fighting their attraction to one another. Screwball comedies also made the careers of a lot of struggling actresses--Claudette Colbert (won her Oscar for the first screwball, It Happened One Night), Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard, et al--, gave men like William Powell, Clark Gable, Melvyn Douglas, and Robert Montgomery a chance to be romantic leads, and also made Cary Grant "Cary Grant" (in the hilarious The Awful Truth).

As you can tell, I can on and on about this beloved movie genre. So join me for more!

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Author of romantic historical fiction -- Edwardian, WWI, 1920s, Harlem Renaissance, 1960s, and Civil War/Restoration England.