Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA (May 28, 2023)

Edited by Aliece Pickett

 

(ALIECE PICKETT:) This is Ed Schroeder.

My name is Aliece Pickett.

We are the founders of the Film Society of Screwball Comedy.

We’re former law partners.

And, we are married.

Let the questions begin.

(EDWARD SCHROEDER:) Let’s start with the poster art.

When they advertised this film, the poster art shows “Amanda” and “Adam” tugging on a pair of pants, with the caption “Who Wears the Pants”.

It’s a great visual.

But underlying the laughs, like many Screwball Comedies, it tackles tough social issues.

It’s easier to address social issues with laughter than a lecture.

>> That’s what makes Screwball so effective.

It’s fun, but there is a message underneath.

The pants are a metaphor for a gender-stereotype.

The problem of gender-stereotyping is that you attribute certain factors based on gender that may not be the case.

The film’s poster brought to mind an incident that happened to me as a trial attorney in the 1990s.

There was a rule in some courtrooms in the Orange County Superior Court, where women were not allowed to appear in court in pants.

One day I was attending a status conference.

On the docket, there were many cases.

A case was called and a woman approached, wearing pants. The judge refused to hear her case.

He ordered her to go home and change her clothes.

She was–I looked at her face–embarrassed and humiliated.

I thought to myself, the judge is making her identify that she’s a woman, with the dress.

But what does being a “woman” have to do with lawyering?

Nothing.

It took an order from the California Supreme Court to stop that. >> We’d like to think we’re so progressive in California.

That’s outrageous.

That a judge could have his little fiefdom.

What a bloviating jerk.

Outrageous.

Back to Screwball.

By definition, there are usually improbable plots.

This one is really crazy.

But isn’t this based on a true story?

>> Yes. This script is brilliant.

The screenplay did receive an Academy Award nomination, and is based on a true story.

Here’s what happened.

The actor Raymond Massey and his wife Adrian Allen were divorcing.

Married-attorneys represented opposing-sides in the Massey divorce.

Then the married lawyers divorced, and married their clients from the Raymond Massey case!

>> Truth is better than fiction.

You can’t make this stuff up.

>> Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon were so intrigued by this they said, “We have to do something with this”.

That was the origin of the screenplay.

>> They won the Oscar for it.

>> They were nominated.

>> Let’s talk about the screenplay.

They were a married couple.

>>Yes.

We’ve had several married couples in this Film Series represented.

The plots in Screwball Comedy are so improbable.

To ground it, you need the relationship to be authentic and true.

And I think the writing partners who are romantic couples bring an authenticity to the characters and to the screenplays that makes them grounded and more authentic feeling.

We had in this Series “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), and the writing couple, Hager Wilde and Dudley Nichols, wrote that.

We also had “The Thin Man” (1934), written by Dashiell Hammett. He was with longtime partner, Lillian Hellman, a famous writer.

She did not contribute to the screenplay of “The Thin Man”. However, she was the inspiration for the character “Nora Charles”.

>> We love “Nora”.

>> It was interesting.

Here, you’ve got the writing couple (Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin) were good friends with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

They wrote the screenplay “Adam’s Rib” specifically for them, incorporating their personalities and their romantic relationship, and the challenges they had.

Katharine Hepburn was famously independent. And she had a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

And you have Spencer Tracy. He’s a mug.

He’s a regular guy. He’s very relatable.

They were a Screwball Couple in real life.

>> They played it well.

>> Another thing I wanted to mention was that undergirding the laughs of Screwball Comedy, it does tackle important social issues like gender stereotyping and domestic violence.

For decades, spousal rape was not recognized as a crime.

Likewise, domestic violence was not prosecuted. It took the spotlight on O.J. Simpson and his history of unprosecuted domestic violence to affect change.

>> It can take something extreme to come back to common sense.

But, a little more about the couple, individually.

I think of Ruth Gordon more as an actress, but she was quite a writer.

>>She is amazing.

She had a huge writing career.

She wrote books, plays, screenplays.

She wrote six screenplays for our director of this picture, George Cukor.

And she received three Oscar nominations for writing.

Her memoirs were funny and insightful.

Each week before the film, we display research materials we have on the table in the lobby.

I have her memoirs there.

They were outstanding.

But, she was also a very accomplished actress.

She acted for decades, from the silents when she appeared in Fort Lee, New Jersey, all the way through to the 1980s before her death in 1985.

She received an acting Academy Award as Best Actress for “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), and “Harold and Maude” (1971).

>> Garson Kanin was no slouch either.

>> He was a director and writer of plays and films.

He directed the original Broadway production of “Funny Girl” starring Barbra Streisand.

He directed two great Screwball Comedies, “My Favorite Wife” (1940), with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne; and the funny Screwball Comedy, “Tom, Dick and Harry” (1941), with Ginger Rogers.

He also wrote two great stories for Judy Holliday, who plays the “Doris Attinger” character in this film.

“Born Yesterday” (1950), and then “It Should Happen To You” (1954).

>> I Love her.

And particularly in “Born Yesterday”.

But today’s movie was like a screen test for her for in a lot of ways.

What makes today’s movie a “Screwball Comedy”?

It is a little outside the normal Screwball Comedy.

>> Besides the satire on (legal) institutions, you have the “battle of the sexes”, which is a core component of every Screwball Comedy.

The “battle of the sexes” exposes the couple’s vices and stupidity.

Here in “Adam’s Rib”, “Amanda” is anti-heroic in that she seeks out to oppose her husband in a case that was involuntarily assigned to him.

>> He tried to get out of it. He couldn’t.

>> He doesn’t want to do it.

She seeks it.

She puts her cause above her marriage. >> That’s a tough one.

>> Likewise, Adam.

Here he is, this highly educated and experienced Assistant District Attorney.

Yet, he runs away from conflict, and his marriage, like a petulant child.

That’s the thing about Screwball Comedy.

We’re laughing, but you do see this couple on a journey.

They have to earn each other.

They’re changed people, by the end.

>> They’re different.

They have war wounds, for sure.

A lot of Screwball Comedy is the sexual tension and the desirability of a woman.

How does the portrayal of a “desirable” woman change in the movies during this era?

>>It changes quite a bit.

Hollywood and films are a reflection of society, and what’s going on.

There were two factors that Hollywood was very sensitive to the federal government, and wanted to stay out of the federal government’s crosshairs for regulation purposes and scrutiny.

So Hollywood studio executives wanted to push forward the government’s messaging.

During World War II, with so many men overseas, the federal government needed women to get in the workforce.

Cover those jobs.

Keep the economy going.

>> “Rosie the Riveter”.

>> To help with the war effort.

Films reflected that.

Women who were working were very desirable, beautiful women, and shown in a very positive light.

That was all well and good.

But when World War II ends, we have 15 million American men coming back.

The federal government has a strong interest in getting those men employed.

The government wants women to stop working, and give their jobs, their careers, to the men.

You see a pivot in Hollywood films.

Now women who are working in films are portrayed as unfeminine losers.

The desirable women in films now are married.

They have children and stay at home.

No career.

You see this in film after film. And it percolates down to television.

You’ve got 1952, “Ozzie and Harriet”.

>> And “Leave It To Beaver”.

That became the new ideal.

How does Screwball Comedy defy that message?

>>It’s untraditional.

And it’s a satire, and silly.

Like the switching- gender roles, which is common.

It puts men and women on equal footing.

And from a financial standpoint, you see female characters in Screwball Comedies, financially on equal footing.

They’re from a wealthy family, they’re heirs, or they have a career.

Many women in Screwball Comedy are, you see a doctor-character (“You Belong To Me”, 1941), reporter, executive, novelist.

>> Otherwise, they had to suck-it-up and take it, because they had no options.

>> The “professions” (medicine, architecture, law), were generally not open to women in the 1930s.

Socially in Screwball Comedy, you see women are given allowances generally reserved for men.

It’s funny, but also sends a message.

In “Adam’s Rib”, “Amanda” is an attorney.

She’s getting fame.

She’s getting adulation for a job well done.

She’s getting publicity for her accomplishments.

We know women don’t get adulation for supporting their husband, raising children, or housekeeping.

So right there, it’s funny.

And it’s telling.

Likewise, “Doris” is in a role reversal.

It’s usually men who are defending the “sanctity” of the family.

They’re shooting the interloper in the affair.

Here, she is.

And, she’s vindicated.

She gets off.

This is what generally happened to men.

That was the point of the attorney saying, “Generally, men get a free-pass and women are prosecuted for this.” >> Showing the switch of the genders as Hepburn is doing here in closing argument exposes that double-standard.

We have to talk about George Cukor, today’s director.

He was known as a “woman’s” director.

Talk about that.

>> MGM, his studio, coined that phrase as a compliment to him, because he directed everyone from Greta Garbo to Marilyn Monroe, to great performances.

He was so highly acclaimed he directed Jean Harlow, Claudette Cobert, John Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Garland, Sophia Loren.

I could go on and on.

He directed Katharine Hepburn in 10 films.

The moniker, which was originally a compliment, became a backhanded-insult.

The implication was he could direct women, but doesn’t have the right stuff to direct men.

The irony is that George Cukor directed more men to Academy Award-winning performances than any other director.

>> To this day, correct?

>> Yes, a record that still stands.

What about his other movies and career in general?

He had a huge career.

He was a top director for MGM, which was the largest at this time, during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

The largest and most prestigious studio.

He was the highest paid director at one point at that studio.

He made over 50 films, masterpieces.

“Camille” (1936), “The Women” (1939), “Gaslight” (1944), “A Star is Born (1954), “My Fair Lady” (1964).

There was one fly in the ointment to his stellar career, that he was fired from the biggest movie ever made, “Gone With The Wind” (1939).

That was a bitter pill to swallow for him.

The scuttlebutt was that Clark Gable got him fired. But that doesn’t jive with the producer David O.

Selznick’s voluminous memos during the making of “Gone With the Wind”.

There were two years of pre-production.

About halfway through pre-production, David O. Selznick was concerned that perhaps George Cukor wasn’t the right director, wasn’t a good fit for this war epic.

>> And Cukor wasn’t happy with his own work either, was he?

>> Right.

He recounted later he wasn’t pleased with his work. And shortly after principal shooting started, he was replaced with director Victor Fleming.

>> It was a bitter pill to swallow, because it was so successful.

This is our third Hepburn film in the Series.

Juxtapose her characters in the three films.

How are they different?

>>Each fits the Screwball Heroine characteristics.

The women are unconventional, self-determined, and they upturn normal relationship and courtship-rules.

But the three characters are quite different.

In “Bringing Up Baby (1938), Katharine Hepburn played “Susan Vance”, the zany, madcap heiress.

She did an outstanding job.

It was hilarious.

She never played a role like that again, the rest of her career.

The second film we showed with Katharine Hepburn was “The Philadelphia Story” (1940).

She plays “Tracy Lord”, haughty and aloof.

She’s an ice queen.

Untouchable.

And she did a great job with that.

The third, was “Amanda Bonner” in “Adam’s Rib” (1949).

She is so competent.

A working woman, smart, well-educated, out there fighting for her cause.

She played each role so well.

She’s an accomplished actress.

She is regarded as a Screwball icon.

>> She had a Palm Springs-connection?

>> Yes, she and Spencer Tracy had a home in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood in Palm Springs, where they could discreetly be together.

A little hideaway.