Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on May 5, 2024
TRANSCRIPT
(ALIECE PICKETT:) I’d like to follow up on a few points you made.
They were illuminating.
You talked that you’ve gotten pushback regarding “Holiday” (1938) being a Screwball Comedy versus a Romantic Comedy.
At the Film Society, we spend a lot of time thinking about that concept.
You had talked about elements that distinguish the Screwball Comedy.
In addition to the ones you mentioned, the hilarity of the Screwball Comedy.
Also you have beautiful leads who are doing funny things.
They’re made to look foolish and with the Romantic Comedy, you don’t see that.
The unconventional courtships and the cross-class conflicts you mentioned, and the witty, fast dialogue.
Also that the women are self-directed.
They are unconventional and often drive the plot.
And, underlying the Screwball Comedy, underneath the laughs, there are spoofs on the rich and on traditional institutions.
You have that social commentary that undergirds the laughs.
I think that’s what gives it depth, texture, meaning, and why these films are timeless.
Even decades later, the “anti”-hero is different from the Romantic hero.
Here you have “Johnny Case”, who delights in learning of “Julie” and his fiancée’s family wealth and says he’d married her, proposed to her a lot sooner had he known about that wealth.
Even more important, he’s an “anti”-hero because he is questioning how long he wants to work.
As the father says, “that’s un-American” to think about that.
In America we have strong capitalism.
There’s such a drive for productivity.
It’s timeless, this issue.
Just last week on CBS Sunday Morning there was a segment on the maniacal American work ethic and how it harms our health, well-being, and relationships.
This movie couldn’t be more timely.
(KIMBERLY TRUHLER:) We’ve talked about often in Film Noir, my friend Eddie Muller has a “Noir or not”.
I think there should be a “Screwball Comedy or not”.
I think Screwball Comedy has evolved as a genre.
It doesn’t have finite edges, like westerns.
In that way, it is similar to Film Noir.
I think this happens to be a rich example of Screwball Comedy because it has the layers you’re talking about.
He’s looking for more meaning in his life than just making a fast buck.
Wealth was going to be made easy for him and he took the looking for what meant something to him even more important to than making money.
I think sometimes that’s the pushback on why people don’t quickly think of it as Screwball Comedy.
But it just adds another layer to the Screwball Comedy.
>> AP: As we look at our Screwball heroine, the “Linda Seton” character, she’s wonderful.
We can say it’s her journey as much as “Johnny’s”, to be freed of family expectations.
“Johnny” acts as a facilitator to get her moving.
The film is a study in contrasts.
First and foremost, the relationship between the two sisters.
They couldn’t be more different in their value systems and life philosophies.
The sets help support that, like the costumes.
You did a brilliant job of pointing that out to the audience in advance so that we could focus, during the film, on the contrast between the sisters.
Likewise, the sets are a study in contrast.
You mentioned an Academy Award nomination for the sets. They were outstanding.
Two points I’d like to make about the sets, and the contrast. Number one is the Potter’s Simple Apartment, contrasted with the city block sized length of the “Seton” Manhattan mansion. You can’t get more different than that.
And second, the playroom, which you mentioned in your presentation. The playroom, it’s warm, welcoming, intimate. The furnishings are floral patterns, and you just want to sit down and get comfortable on the couch.
Contrast that with the rest of the mansion. It is cavernously large, austere, formal, intimidating. Not welcoming.
The sets, like the costumes, like the musical aspects of the film, they are giving us cues.
They’re shortcuts for us to understand characters.
That’s the beauty of these Screwball Comedies and films of that era.
80 to 90 minutes, very efficient filmmaking all the way through.
>> KT: The costume designers not only work closely with the director and the actors, but the production designers.
A great example is at MGM, Cedric Gibbons (set design) and Adrian (costume design) worked hand in glove to create that MGM style.
They were not working independently of one another.
They were coordinating everything.
That is true on this production as well.
>> AP: I wanted to point out one role, one character and part that was, I thought, very powerful and moving and a quiet performance, and that is Lew Ayres in the role of “Ned Seton”, the brother.
As I was watching today, it’s sad.
It’s poignant and heartbreaking.
He’s a musician and composer, yet he’s abandoned that.
He’s abandoned his passions for acceding to dad’s demands.
Father wants him to be a banker, and he’s buckled under.
He’s going to be subservient to his father.
And what does he do?
He uses alcohol as a coping mechanism.
The conversation that he and his sister have as they’re up against the couch in the playroom is touching and sad.
I think it helps her on her journey also.
But as he’s explaining how he gets through the night, it’s heartbreaking.
Let’s talk about the incredible Cary Grant, and his evolution.
Your life’s work is studying the history of film and the costumes, and the evolution of Cary Grant.
He is our greatest movie star and our leading Screwball man of all time.
Would you share with us his evolution in his costumes and development as an actor.
He’s very physical.
Screwball Comedy has that physical element that fits him like a glove.
>> KT: I think a lot of people don’t understand that in old Hollywood, men often wore their own clothes on screen.
That’s not to say the costume designers didn’t work with them to say “We’d like you to wear this suit from your wardrobe”.
It wasn’t like they just showed up in anything and were put on screen.
The studios also had someone named Eddie Schmidt, who was a tailor to many of the big men stars.
He had an office at each of the major studios.
Clark Gable was his best creation.
If you look at early pictures of Clark Gable, he does not look like the god he became, and a lot of that is because of Eddie Schmidt.
Cary really took that fact of old Hollywood, which was done largely for budget.
They were pouring so much money into the women’s costumes they thought it was an easy way to save money, on the men’s costumes.
Cary saw that as an opportunity.
He was very invested in his style.
It evolved from the double-breasted boxier suits of the 1930s into the single-breasted suits of the 1940s.
He customized many things about his suits.
One of them was having a higher collar line on his shirts because he was sensitive about what he considered a thick neck he got from being acrobatic in his youth.
He was strong across the chest.
He was always looking for ways to lengthen his neck, make it look a little narrower, and make him look lean.
One of the things he added when the 1940s came along is, it became a signature of his, to put his hands in his pockets.
So, he started to wear jackets that had double vents so the jackets would not ride up when he put his hands in his pockets.
He could just slide them in between the vents.
He was playing with the armholes, how high they were, how big they were, or small they were.
He was playing with every detail.
He worked with tailors around the world and was constantly tweaking his look so that it worked best for him.
He was setting the styles as he did, and continues to do.
>> AP: You’ve brought up a good point about Cary Grant’s physicality and his upper torso strength from being an acrobat.
I wanted to remind the audience that Cary Grant was born in Bristol, England, and at 14 joined the Bob Pender acrobatic and vaudevillian Troupe where he learned all these fabulous acrobatic moves we saw today.
What physicality, what confidence that comes across in his roles.
There would naturally need to be accommodations for his upper torso strength and the muscles, his musculature.
>> KT: My husband and I watched “To Catch A Thief” (1955) last night.
It’s interesting to see, he gets slimmer as he gets older.
Here he’s still very muscular in the 1930s.
I like him both ways, when it comes to Cary Grant.
It’s just interesting to watch his evolution.
>> AP: While I’ve got you here, I want to talk about Katharine Hepburn.
You did a beautiful job of summarizing where she was in her career at the time of this movie in 1938.
She had come off Broadway into three great hits, “Bill of Divorcement” (1932), “Little Women”(1933), and then “Morning Glory” (1933), for which she received her first of four Academy Awards.
She is considered AFI’s greatest female star, and she got 12 Academy Award nominations total.
But at the time of this film, as you mentioned, “Box Office Poison”.
She’d had a few stumbles in her career.
She was struggling.
What was flourishing was her personal life at that time.
I’m going to connect up and talk about parallels in Katharine Hepburn’s personal life that reflect themes in the film.
At the time, in the mid-30s, Cary Grant had introduced Katharine Hepburn to a gentleman who was one of the most well-known men in the country, if not the world.
He was an aviator, a movie producer, and heir to a large fortune.
I’m referring to Howard Hughes.
By 1938, the year of this film, they were engaged.
Howard Hughes was brilliant.
People were fascinated by him not only did he have movie star good looks and this fortune from his family oil drill bit business.
But besides the movie production, he had a technical engineering mind.
He had his aviation company, combining science, technology, and aviation.
He had set a speed record going from coast to coast, and then his goal for 1938 was to set a speed record going around the world.
And his other goal for ’38 was to make Katharine Hepburn his wife.
He did achieve his around the world speed record goal.
However, he was having problems getting Katharine Hepburn down the aisle.
He made it a transaction almost, where he gave her an ultimatum that they needed to set a date because she was not on board.
The controller “withdrawal of love” ultimate power play.
Like “Johnny”, who was also faced with an ultimatum with the bank job, the house, the servants, and taking on all the debt, Johnny walked.
So too did Katharine Hepburn, in true Screwball heroine style.
She is self-directed, she agency, and wasn’t going to be controlled, or accede to that power play.
As we wrap up I hope you’ll share more details about costumes with Katharine Hepburn and her career, observations and research that you’ve done regarding her development, like Cary Grant.
>> KT: I’ve talked about the connection between the movie “Holiday” and “The Philadelphia Story” (1940).
And the connection between Kalloch and Adrian.
In fact, Kalloch would jump over to MGM after Adrian retired not long after “The Philadelphia Story”.
They were still close.
One of the things Adrian did, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this had encouragement from Kalloch, is he allowed her to wear pants in “The Philadelphia Story”, which was shocking, unheard of.
And it wasn’t one outfit with pants.
In fact, she opens the movie in pants, outside the scene where he pushes her down.
She wears three outfits of pants.
This got tremendous pushback from Louie B. Mayer and other executives at the studio, and Adrian stood firm.
Again, he was mentored by Kalloch.
So he empowered Katharine Hepburn to be herself on screen.
We have this strong connection between this movie and “The Philadelphia Story”.
>> AP: You see that push to become self-actualized and be her own person.
>> KT: One more thing.
I think Kalloch recognized more of the true style of Katharine Hepburn.
In the early 30s, everything was more over the top, and that wasn’t her natural style.
You see more minimalism for Katharine Hepburn in “Holiday”, which clearly is not in “Bringing Up Baby” (1938).
That is like a way over the top, or joke for her.
This is more in her comfort zone and more along the lines of her natural style, which I think is important.
>> AP: As the movies progress through the decades and you see more of her authentic-self on screen.
With Depression era, audiences were drawn to theaters for escapism, for the beautiful, to see the wealthy, how they lived and dressed, and what their homes were like.
As we wrap up, I want to remind the audience that you will be signing your book out in the lobby.
>> KT: There’s a lot on Cary Grant’s style evolution in the book, so if you’re interested.
>> I have my copy!🎥
Film Society of Screwball Comedy®
Edited by Aliece Pickett
Copyright 2025