The Golden Age of Hollywood coincided with one of it's most enduring movie genres, the classic screwball comedy. They were designed, along with the lavish Busby Berkeley musicals of the 1930's, to make moviegoers forget about their cares during the dark heart of the Great Depression. They are distinguished by their witty repartee, staccato pacing and dialogue, and convoluted plots. The genre is called screwball because often class and sex roles are overturned. Legends such as Carole Lombard, Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Rosalind Russell, and William Powell pratfall and wisecrack their way through these movies. Next time you are at the video store, check out some of the following classics.

The Awful Truth

A vocal coach, a California orange, and a fake tan all add up to divorce for Irene Dunne and Cary Grant in Leo McCarey's 1937 look at marriage and trust. Legal wrangling over custody of their dog, Mr. Smith, provides many of the laughs in the film, as well as their attempts at rebound relationships. She takes up with a Oklahoma oilman-cum-country bumpkin for whom "Home on the Range" is the last word in musical genius and he finds love in the arms of a daffy singer and a wild debutante respectively. However, true love trimuphs in the end. After being picked up by the cops for disturbing the peace, Grant and Dunne decide to put their marriage back together.

Bringing Up Baby

Released in 1938, this is the movie credited with putting the nail in the coffin of Katharine Hepburn's screen career. This was one of a string of flops causing her to be known as "box office poison". However, modern audiences have embraced this film. She plays a ditzy heiress in charge of her brother's pet leopard, Baby, who can only be controlled when someone sings "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby". Cary Grant co-stars as the stereotypical absent-minded professor, a noted paleontologist who reluctantly helps her in and out of various scrapes, including a car heist at a golf course, a night in jail, and an incidence of indecent exposure.

His Girl Friday

This originally was stage play, The Front Page, and had two male lead actors. When it was adapted for the screen the second time in 1940 the relationship between a newspaper editor and his star reporter was given a new angle when Rosalind Russell was cast as the reporter. Sparks fly when Cary Grant, her editor and ex-boyfriend, begs her to cover a controversial execution and attempts to revive their romance. It's noteworthy because it is one the first films with overlapping dialogue between the actors. The screenwriters kept the fast pace of the stage play, rather than having pauses between each of the characters' lines.

My Man Godfrey

An upper-class twit (Carole Lombard) takes pity on and eventually falls in love with a hobo played by William Powell. In order to keep him by her side at all times, she hires him as the family butler. This could only happen in a screwball comedy. They try to make her forget about him by sending her to Europe. Of course this ploy does not work. Eventually Powell's Godfrey succumbs to her charms and they live happily ever after. This film was the first, in 1936, to garner Oscar nominations in all four acting categories. Interestingly enough the chemistry between Lombard and Powell is natural; they were married from 1931-1933.

The Philadelphia Story

The 1940 movie adaptation of the play by the same name stars Katharine Hepburn as a jaded socialite torn between two men on the eve of her marriage to a third. Hepburn had starred in the role on the stage and actually bought the rights to the movie in order to insure both her role and the intregrity of the storyline. The trouble begins when tabloid reporters (Jimmy Stewart and Ruth Massey) show up on her doorstep to get the behind-the-scenes scoop on the upcoming wedding for their readers. A little blackmail leads them to Cary Grant, Hepburn's alcoholic ex-husband.

It Happened One Night

One of Frank Capra's best films, Night swept the 1934 Oscars. Claudette Colbert is an heiress on the run from her fiance and father when she runs into an unscrupulous reporter played by Clark Gable. He threatens to tip off the authorities as to her whereabouts unless he can accompany her on the trip. The film is noted for the sexual chemistry between its stars as well as the infamous moment where Gable removes his shirt to display a bare chest. Until that time, undershirts were standard attire, and this scene caused the undergarment to decline in popularity.

The End of an Era

For decades fans were only able to see these gems on television late on Friday night or on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Now with VCRs and DVDs new generations can enjoy these zany yet sophisticated comedies. This is by no means a complete list. There are many other great films, such as The Thin Man, Nothing Sacred, The Lady Eve, and Libeled Lady. Their content matter reflected their time. Moviegoers during the Great Depression gravitated towards tales of the rich and famous coming down to the level of mere mortals, being blackmailed, marrying the butler, getting arrested, or acting like idiots. Screwball's golden era only lasted a decade at most. They largely died out by World War II because Hollywood focused on winning the war--at least on celluloid. Movies and popular culture veered away from what was considered "fluff". After the war, film noir, westerns, and extravagant MGM musicals became the preferred genres. Today, with modern emphasis on bodily functions, casual sex, and obsenity in comedy, screwballs are undergoing a renewed popularity. Many of the silver screen's greatest legends display a flair for comedy in these lighthearted, yet satirical, classics that turn America's traditional notions of love, class, and sex on it's collective ear.