Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on March 17, 2024
TRANSCRIPT
(EDWARD SCHROEDER:) Today’s show is “The Awful Truth” (1937).
This is a great Screwball Comedy, one of my favorite all-time Screwball Comedies.
It mixes Slapstick and rapid-fire dialogue with hilarious relationship issues.
In the movie, Cary Grant’s “persona” was perfected, in large part due to the director, Leo McCarey.
McCarey was a veteran director. He learned comedy at the Hal Roach Studios, writing gags for the “Our Gang” series. He was responsible for pairing Laurel and Hardy.
In the “talkies” he worked with the biggest stars, Gloria Swanson, W.C. Fields, Mae West.
He directed the Marx Brothers in “Duck Soup” (1933), a feat onto itself.
And it was their best comic performance, “Duck Soup”.
For today’s film, McCarey turns his attention to an old 1922 Broadway play.
He dusted off this moldy play called “The Awful Truth”.
It had been filmed twice before.
He wasn’t Columbia’s first choice as director.
They had offered it to Tay Garnett, who declined.
He must have been disappointed because McCarey won his first Oscar for this.
The superb screenplay was written by Vina Delmar, a playwright and novelist who had had a big hit with her bestselling novel, “Bad Girl”.
She was perfect for giving the framework for a Screwball Comedy.
She had, with her husband, just written a screenplay for McCarey’s “Make Way For Tomorrow” (1937).
Delmar received an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing Adaption for today’s film.
In “The Awful Truth”, no spoiler, you’ll learn this in the first few minutes about a wealthy Manhattan couple who each believe the other has been unfaithful.
On their journey, they learn the truth about their feelings toward each other.
It stars Cary Grant.
Cary Grant was a contract player at Paramount.
He was looking good, performing well, but he lacked the persona of a superstar.
It wasn’t until “The Awful Truth” where McCarey brought out the best in Cary Grant and we got to know him as the superstar he had become.
He was, I think, the greatest comedic actor of all time.
McCarey worked with Cary Grant to develop physical and verbal mannerisms that Cary Grant adopted as his signature style from that point forward.
Many people don’t know that a lot of those mannerisms were McCarey’s own mannerisms.
McCarey and Grant shared a physical resemblance.
They were both tall. Handsome. Thick, lustrous hair. Large expressive eyes.
Grant mimicked McCarey’s intonations and expressions, to great effect.
This first movie where Cary Grant was asked to improvise did not start well.
McCarey had a reputation for throwing out a script, starting over, and asking actors to improvise. Cary Grant loved a structured setting.
He wanted to get out of the movie.
He wanted to quit.
He was willing to pay back his advance.
He wanted to get out of the movie, but the studio would not have that.
Cary Grant learned that he was really good at improvising.
So much so, that in his next film, “Bringing Up Baby (1938), which we showed last year, Grant suggested one of cinema’s most iconic scenes.
If you remember, he stepped on the back of Katharine Hepburn’s gown.
And he had to stand behind her and walk with her to hide her behind.
That turned out to be an iconic scene, and he improvised that based on something that happened to him.
For this film, Grant was paid $50,000.
But we also need to talk about his co-star, Irene Dunne.
This was the first of three films co-starring her and Cary Grant.
She had just starred in the Screwball Comedy masterpiece “Theodore Goes Wild” (1937) the year before. She received an Academy Award nomination for that as Best Actress.
But she still had misgivings about comedy, as not as prestigious as musicals and dramas.
Director McCarey picked her because he saw the possibilities of the comic effect of seeing this refined, beautiful, elegant person in “screwball” situations.
Dunne, also, was an independent non-contract player.
She had it written into her contract that for every comedy film that she did, she’d also sing.
You’ll note that there are seven musical episodes, all for comic effect, and to advance the plot.
We’ll talk more about that after the movie.
The Art Director was Stephen Goosson.
“The Awful Truth” is considered probably his most important film.
He also received the Academy Award in Art Direction the same year for “Lost Horizon” (1937), another great film.
The sumptuous Art Deco sets that you’re going to see were created by Lionel Banks, the Production Designer.
The details are showcased on the big screen in a way that you don’t get to see even on the big home screen, movie screen.
Speaking of details, if you saw the EZ Turn toaster on our display table in the lobby, it’s on the breakfast table with Irene Dunne as “Lucy” and her “Aunt Patsy”.
So watch for that.
Columbia’s costume designer, Robert Kalloch, created Irene Dunne’s magnificent wardrobe.
The clothes you’re going to see were the most elegant and most expensive worn by her to date in a film.
This film was a big hit.
Audiences and critics loved it. And they still do.
It was nominated for six Academy Awards, one for Best Director.
Although Grant didn’t get a nomination, his “persona” as a charming, physically confident, slightly ironic sophisticate, was set.
(ALIECE PICKETT:) The film critic Andrew Sarris has defined the moment Cary Grant’s screen “persona” was perfected.
It’s at the beginning of the film, where Cary Grant sits on the back edge of a sofa.
His feet are set on the arm of the sofa.
Imagine the balance that takes.
He’s very quiet, yet you can see all these emotions across his face.
This goes on throughout the film.
The physicality, the physical confidence in him.
He is compared later with Burt Lancaster, another acrobat, who also had supreme physical confidence that is interwoven through his performances.
Here you see it when, as “Jerry Warriner”, Cary Grant is playing with the dog.
You see it when the piano lid falls on his hand, and he goes to the floor.
When he is doing the jujitsu.
He’s going to get in and find Lucy with the piano teacher, so he has to do jujitsu and he’s thrown on the ground.
The guy is a comic master.
>> ES: This movie was such a pivot for him to where he “owned the screen”.
>> AP: He was a master of dialogue.
With his physicality, the timing, the acrobatic timing, was so well-applied towards the comedy.
They talk about Cary Grant’s “persona”. What does that mean?
You hear that phrase bandied about. To me, it means a charm, a lightness, a devil-may-care attitude.
But underlying that is deep emotion and strong intelligence.
He also is, a gorgeous, handsome leading-man who asks us, invites us, to laugh at him.
>> ES: And you’ve got to laugh at him.
He’s so uninhibited.
Leo McCarey was able to draw that out, to get him to feel confident to do improvisation.
And it shows throughout the film here.
>> AP: And his co-star, Irene Dunne, amazing.
>> ES: She’s a triple threat.
She’s comedic. She can play musicals. She can play tragedy.
And she, for this movie, received a (Academy Award) nomination.
She was nominated for “Theodora Goes Wild” (1936), and this.
>> AP: I love that Screwball Comedy, “Theodora Goes Wild”.
>> ES: Leo McCarey picked her because he knew she was this sophisticated, beautiful, elegant woman, who could play comedy.
Putting her in these screwball moments was amazing.
And the music, she actually started her career trying to be an opera singer for the Metropolitan Opera. But as good as her voice was, she was a little bit light in the voice and was not able to sing in the opera at the Met, but she was able to pivot to the musicals and we’re the better for it.
>> AP: She is fantastic.
And she’s so well dressed, she’s so refined, she’s so calm until she lets loose.
>> ES: And when she puts her unfaithful husband through the ringer.
He suspects her, but we know he was the one supposedly in Florida, someone bringing back the California oranges.
We know he’s guilty as can be, but he’s the one with suspicion.
>> AP: And she got an Academy Award nomination, as did co-star Ralph Bellamy.
Ralph Bellamy plays such a pivotal role in this film because he is a comic foil to Cary Grant.
He is the high contrast, so we can appreciate “Jerry Warriner’s” characteristics, and how wrong the other guy is for her.
>> ES: You mean every girl doesn’t want her fiancé to have his “Maw” as his best friend? (laughter).
>> AP: Ralph Bellamy reprises that role when he performs the same love-triangle, third-leg in “His Girl Friday” (1940).
>> ES: With his “Maw” along again.
>> AP: A Howard Hawks film.
He (Bellamy) is a master at playing dull and boring.
And even though he is a handsome guy himself, he has that perfected.
He has this vulgarity and crassness of the nouveau riche.
He’s gotten his money with the oil drilling.
That’s another element common in Screwball Comedy, the spoof, the satire on the wealthy.
>> ES: Though here, everybody’s rich.
>> AP: That’s what is different.
You usually have a cross-class conflict.
Not here.
They’re all rich.
However, there are different aspects of “rich”.
You have the “Leesons”, “Dan” and his “Maw”, and they are nouveau riche.
They’re crass, vulgar.
They’re rubes from the country, and unattractive.
You have the “Vances”, who are old-money rich. They’re snobby, stuffy, and they’re no fun.
Then you have the “Warriners”, “Lucy” and “Jerry”, our stars.
They seem foolish and idle.
Here she’s going to allow this car, in the middle of the Great Depression, to roll off the road.
That is how frivolous she is.
>> ES: They all come off looking bad.
>> AP: I think Depression audiences loved that, because they needed the respite.
Like today’s audiences, they were fascinated with how the rich live, what they wear, where they go.
At the same time, there’s a repulsion.
We feel good when the rich get knocked down a peg or two.
Here, you see it.
>> ES: The whole element of the Screwball “comedy of remarriage”.
This is the perfect setup for that.
>> AP: That’s a common element in Screwball Comedy.
It’s clever of the writers of Screwball Comedy to develop that plot-device.
It allows the movies to involve more mature characters, and more adult issues.
When you have teenagers falling in love, there’s only so much that can be done.
It (divorce-remarriage) allows for more depth.
Divorce is a weighty, heavy issue.
It’s a counterbalance to the frivolity of the “screwball” comedy.
>> ES: Speaking of frivolity, the music is used in a unique way for a Screwball Comedy.
The music, I think seven episodes, are specifically for comic effect.
You talk about the “Leesons” not fitting in.
When he’s on the dance floor, he is tone-deaf to anything going on around him.
And Cary Grant is reveling in it, and tells the conductor, “Let’s have an encore”.
>> AP: That dancing.
He’s doing a quasi-square dance in a nightclub in Manhattan.
He’s making a spectacle of himself.
He’s stepping on her feet. They literally clear the dance floor.
>> ES: Then he continues, singing (off key), “Home on the Range”.
That’s another Leo McCarey improvisation.
Ralph Bellamy said, I understand, “I can’t sing a note.” What does Leo McCarey do?
Has him sing with the beautiful voice of Irene Dunne next to him.
>> AP: And what it does is further supports–we know that “Dan”, he’s all wrong for “Lucy”.
We know “Jerry’s” the right man.
The dancing, the singing, you can see (and hear) the dissonance, the conflict.
The musical numbers help support that.
Usually music is used for courtship, leading up to things.
Here, it’s up to the climax of the chaos, with the radio.
We know as they’re coming up the mountain until the chaos stops.
They need to be together.
It all comes to a nice resolution from a musical standpoint.
>> ES: That’s the genius of Leo McCarey.
His musicianship, his all-around background to add those layers to the Screwball Comedy.
>> AP: And that’s what makes this film a masterpiece.🎥
Film Society of Screwball Comedy®
Edited by Aliece Pickett
Copyright 2025