Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on April 27, 2024
TRANSCRIPT
(MOLLY HASKELL:) It’s one of the sexiest Screwball Comedies.
There’s something about Joel McCrea.
Even though he’s kind of lumpy and grumpy. And a bit stiff. He doesn’t know how to have fun.
There’s something so sexy about it.
There’s something so interestingly complex in the scene where Rudy Vallee–a famous crooner in his time.
He had a radio hour.
He didn’t act in movies.
When he did, he plays a buffoonish character.
But it’s a wonderfully precise gallant character.
When he sings “Goodnight, Sweetheart”, there’s something so powerful and complex. You feel for him. And yet the pull between those two people.
I think you just feel it incredibly.
And you have to go with it.
You just have to go with it. Then, all of a sudden, it’s still very cynical about marriage. Because at the end, they’re interchangeable.
>> (ALIECE PICKETT:) What’s interesting about the “Hackensacker” character is that unlike the love triangle in other Screwball Comedies–Ralph Bellamy–“Hackensacker” is attractive.
He has fine qualities.
>> MH: They’re all different kind of men here.
You’ve got the “Ale and Quail Club”, which is macho- unlimited.
Totally aggressive, testosterone-male.
Then you have Rudy Vallee. Sort of prissy, but gallant and generous in his own way.
You see the hierarchy.
The rich are so selfish. And condescending. And you’ve got this whole layer of people sustaining them.
>> AP: They’re frivolous.
We’re spoofing the rich in this film.
>> MH: Oh yeah.
The thing is here, a couple of things.
She, in that early scene with the “Wienie King”, you get this layer of mortality.
In fact, it’s true of most of Screwball.
One of the things about the hectic pace of it, it’s like they’re trying to outrun time.
You feel “time” there.
That’s why it’s not just escapist froth.
There’s this grave note underneath.
There’s a scene where he’s having, “Winnie King” has this rhetoric about death and mortality. Very eloquent soliloquies.
He looks at her. He doesn’t say “You’re not getting any younger.” But he says something and she suddenly looks at him.
That expression.
That’s what I meant about in “It Happened One Night”. She has to play younger than she is. She has short hair.
She’s very youthful.
She’s always showing her youthful side.
Here, she’s elegant, she’s a woman.
And she knows she’s running out of time.
The thing about a woman using her sex.
It’s so wonderfully done.
She talks about the thing with “The look.” How you get it. And he doesn’t have any idea what she’s talking about.
You get it from the day you’re 16.
From everybody, you get this “look”.
You don’t want it. But you get it.
Maybe you wouldn’t like it if you didn’t ever get it. But you really don’t want it.
Why can’t she now use this thing she’s got, to help him?
And he’s too much of a–.
I guess he’s too macho to ever let her do that.
But that’s what she’s saying.
Also, another Screwball trait is that the women are never “domestic”.
This is the thing.
If you do see them in the kitchen, it’s a disaster with her pot roast.
He can’t get over that horrible pot roast she made.
But this is what is so attractive about these women.
We respond to that.
To that something else, besides being a “little woman”.
>> AP: They are unconventional.
Self-determined.
To your point regarding the “Weenie King” and the beautiful, elegant speech with the truism. And a lot of heft behind it.
Sturges does that.
He gives small characters beautiful lines.
I’m thinking of “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941).
The “butler”, Robert Greig, talks about poverty when his employer’s about to dress up as a hobo.
And he said, “Don’t make light of this.
This is serious.
He gives such an eloquent speech about poverty to this dilettante director who’s going to be a hobo and ride the rails for a short time, followed by the “land-yacht”.
>> MH: Exactly.
This is it with the “minor” characters.
They have these “major” moments.
And they’re brilliantly and beautifully written, as you say. And they come out of nowhere. And they’re so distinctive. And they flesh out the character.
He commands the stage.
The hierarchy is overturned.
It’s never going to change completely.
But they have these moments where they rise, and go against their stereotype, or the conventional view of them. And it’s beautiful.
>> AP: As a writer, I’m sure you appreciate Preston Sturges.
The man had a gift with words.
And he has such fun. Playing on the names.
“Hackensacker”, playing on John D. Rockefeller.
You have the “Princess”.
All these titled princesses, Americans marrying European noblemen.
“Toto”.
>> MH: Two things – one is that you have people playing stereotypic butts-of-jokes. Stereotypical, like the blacks play the porters.
But they have distinctive personalities.
One of them points out what a cheapskate he-they are.
Mary Astor apparently wasn’t happy with this.
She didn’t like having to play that character, that chatterbox, shrill character.
But I think she’s so funny.
She’s fantastic.
>> AP: She’s an exceptional actress.
If you compare (“Princess”) to her character in “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), what a difference.
>> MH: I know. It’s not like anything else she did.
Maybe that’s why she couldn’t.
>> AP: Think of “Dodsworth” (1936).
She played the “Edith” character. She is just–.
>> MH: She’s one of these “womanly” characters.
There weren’t many of them.
Hollywood didn’t know quite what to do with them.
Either you were an “ingenue”, a more or less conventional glamour heroine, or something else.
There was always something.
>> AP: She can play “screwball”, she can play “femme fatale”.
She can move through genres very well.
Speaking of moving thru genres and moods, how about the score of this film (Victor Young)?
You start with “William Tell Overture”.
And love songs.
Victor Young does an exceptional job.
>> MH: When I hear “Goodnight, Sweetheart”.
Something about it makes me quiet.
>> AP: Rudy Vallee’s voice.
>> MH: It’s beautiful.
And it’s poignant.
You feel torn.
>> That darn stuck zipper…
plus the love song….
>> The original scene of the zipper, it’s just sexy. And you’re not expecting it, because you really are annoyed with him.
Joel McCrea does play a lot of these “not-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is”.
And funny.
>> He’s the Anti-hero.
He loses his dignity, but not his virility.
>> Well, this is another thing.
I’ll talk about this a little tomorrow.
We can see Gary Cooper (“Design For Living”, 1933).
You have these matinee-idol good looking men.
But doing clown- stuff.
>> That’s Screwball Comedy. When you have these beautiful leads.
They’re willing to just, you know, they keep fun of themselves and having us laugh at them.
It takes a really confident person.
>> It really does.
And to still be somehow romantic through it all.
I think it’s just marvelous.
>> That’s part of what distinguishes Screwball Comedy from Romantic Comedy.
You don’t have the earnestness. You have silly, not sentimental.
That ending.
It is in no way sentimental.
It’s very silly.
>> It’s sort of brutal.
Because you really do have such feeling for these people. Then, all of a sudden, they’re de-individualizing.
I think the film skates on thin ice.
Even though it’s not called “Is Marriage Necessary?”, it’s “Well, why can’t you marry him, then give her money for her lover?” That’s the ideal setup.
>> Wasn’t Preston Sturges writing from experience?
He had married two heiresses. And he did not have enough money, equal to them.
And he felt insecure about that.
And isn’t he writing about the pressure of not having enough money in a marriage?
>> Then, why shouldn’t a woman use her sex this way?
It’s a very practical idea.
He writes excellent characters. Strong women characters.
>> But they’re never emasculating.
They’re strong without ever being emasculating, I think.
He had a close relationship with his mother. As you mentioned, he traveled all over Europe with her.
He understood women, and appreciated them.
>> I think he had complex emotions. Because he also admired his inventor-father who must have been an oddball because of what he put up with.
But he didn’t see him as ridiculous, I don’t think.
He admired success. It was important.
It wasn’t just something that he wanted. It is a serious thing that Joel McCrea needs to succeed. And wants to succeed.
>> And again, writing from experience.
Preston Sturges was a part-time inventor.
He had a lipstick, he invented for his mother’s cosmetics company, Desti (Beauty Products), a kiss-proof lipstick.
And he was constantly tinkering with inventions.
I believe that was the most successful.
The idea of the floating suspended airport.
>> It’s a good idea when you think about it.
This film that has so many wonderful plot elements you find in Screwball Comedies.
You mentioned the Comedy of Remarriage (by Stanley Cavell), which allows for more sophisticated, adult-plots and situations because the characters are more mature. They’ve been married.
>> That’s right.
In this era, it’s also challenging the Hollywood mythology of the “happy ever after” ending.
And monogamy forever.
People were getting divorced more.
It was taboo.
Then gradually, it more-and-more became acceptable.
So, it was happening.
There was a sense that you think this is the “one and only” person. But it isn’t the “one and only” person.
But for that moment, that doesn’t mean you’re not going to feel and follow this incredibly powerful sexual attraction.
She says “Sex is in everything.” And it is.
>> With Screwball Comedy, writers spoof traditional institutions.
Marriage. Medicine.
They take on everything.
There are no sacred cows.
>>And always there’s that underlying sense of a bit of desperation.
>>And you have the “cross-class conflict”.
In this case, the male character “Tom” is bottom-status. He has no status because he’s poor and struggling.
He’s not successful.
She has high status, because of her beauty.
Let’s face it, that’s strong currency.
>> She’s precarious though.
She’s also…
Because of age…The tick of the time clock.
>> Also, she’s penniless.
This is what it is to be poor.
Even though she’s glamorous. And she’s got all this.
You know she’s going to wind up alright.
Still, she is experiencing what it is to have no money.
At a time, I mean, and that thing with the “Ale and Quail Club”, she gets more than she bargains for.
>> That’s for sure.
And Preston Sturges has his comic “stock company” characters. And they come out en masse at the “Ale and Quail Club”.
It’s almost problematic.
It goes on so long, to the point where it’s almost scary.
There’s something frightening about it.
You put men with copious amounts of alcohol and guns.
It is a scary proposition.
Tell me what you thought of the Art Deco sets.
Paramount Studios. High production values.
They pulled out the stops.
They gave Preston Sturges a huge budget.
Those sets are…
>> That’s your specialty. You tell me.
The Art Deco of the period, gives you immediately visual identification of luxury.
Elegance.
There’s so much conveyed without saying a word.
>> And somehow she has to maintain this.
She’s been there for five years. Now they can’t pay the bills.
Yet, the “poor little rich girl” out there.
That apartment was gorgeous.
Then the spread in Palm Beach, Florida, their mansion–wow.
What about the “Cinderfella” “Cinderella” element you see interwoven through?
They’re going to be rescued by the rich person.
Maybe. Maybe not.
You do see that interwoven in Screwball and of course the love triangle and role play.
You’ve got “Captain McGlue”. You’ve got a lot of role-playing that furthers plots. And it’s escapism.
It’s not reality. We don’t want reality in this movie.
It’s playful fun.
>> But it is about identity, too.
That’s why that name (“McGlue”) is so strange.
They’re getting mixed up about who they are at a certain point.
That’s when you begin to see the kind of interchangeability of it.
We’re maybe not as unique as we’d like to think we are.
>>You mentioned in the introduction, the opening sequence. How madcap and zany it is. And how it’s somewhat explained at the end. But then the mystery.
>> The maid and the closet.
>> She’s hanging by the shadowy figure. And you’ve got the “Gerry” character tied up. And there is no explanation for that, as many times as I’ve seen it.
>> I know. I keep waiting for it to clear. Maybe somebody…
Do we open this to people?
Perhaps at the Reception we’ll get some comments. Maybe someone will solve the mystery for us of that crazy, madcap opening.