Screwball: Hollywood's Madcap Romantic Comedies
"Irreverent, elegant, sublime, and ridiculous, the screwball films of the 1930s and 1940s are a timeless collison of high wit and low slapstick, in which the players used street-smart repartee to turn good taste into bad manners. For one breathtaking moment Hollywood produced a succession of these unforgettable classics: His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, The Lady Eve, The Thin Man, and Twentieth Century. They featured wacky heiresses, boss ladies, and Cinderellas played by stars like Claudette Colbert, Rosalind Russell, and Jean Arthur. They hated and mated Gary Cooper, John Barrymore and William Powell: absent-minded professors, mad impressarios, and tuxedo-clad detectives."
This list is a selected filmography of Screwball comedies, and a few earlier influences (ie: Design For Living) that exemplified the genre and are discussed thoroughly in Ed Sikov’s book "Screwball: Hollwood’s Madcap Romantic Comedies."
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