Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on May 19, 2024
TRANSCRIPT
(ALIECE PICKETT:) Thank you for being here from Florida to join us and share your insights.
You’ve spent years of study on Screwball Comedy, and Carole Lombard, our star.
I know the audience appreciates it too.
(OLYMPIA KIRIAKOU:) Thank you for having me.
>> AP: I first learned of you from an essay you’d written, beautifully written, about the art of Screwball Comedy and why it still resonates today.
From there I learned of your podcast and website, which is fantastic.
That led me to your book, “Becoming Carole Lombard”.
The book is a revelation.
It was well researched.
There are many things I appreciated about it, most importantly, that you did not just regurgitate previous film books and research.
You checked everything and blew up myths.
It was fantastic.
It’s heavily footnoted for film scholars and people in the industry.
It’s so well written, and very readable.
Film lovers and film buffs can dig and enjoy it.
I want to point out to the audience about the book, and you and your background.
Through your research, you’re resetting the narrative about Screwball Comedy.
One thing of note for me is you are redefining “Screwball heroine” and “Screwball man”.
Previously in film books, almost universally, “Screwball heroine” is negatively portrayed.
And men come off even worse.
The implication is that if a woman has agency, if she’s self-directed, if she’s unconventional, then the man must be weak to be with her.
Some have gone so far as to say the man, just being with her, is emasculated.
One term I’ve seen bandied about is being “castrated”, “male eunuchs”, disparaging terms.
Your writings celebrate Screwball Comedy, its men and women, and their relationships.
>> OK: I think it’s important to know it’s a reflection of who Carole Lombard was.
She was a strong woman.
She had her contract with Paramount from 1930 to 1937.
After the contract expired,
she was one of the first actresses in Hollywood to go freelance in the late 1930s.
It was an unusual thing to do at the time, very risky.
There were negatives to being under contract to a studio.
But freelancing gave actors greater opportunity to choose the roles they wanted.
They could work when they wanted, for how long they wanted.
Carole forged that path.
She was a great businesswoman as well.
A lot of the attributes she had as a person, that’s reflected in the types of roles that she played on screen.
>> AP: Tell us about how this film figures in her overall chronology of films and how it was transformative to her career, and to ushering in the genre of Screwball Comedy.
>> OK: Carole began working with Mack Sennett.
She did slapstick comedy, then transitioned when she got to Paramount into glamour girl roles.
“Twentieth Century” (1934), recalibrated her career.
She became known as a comedienne largely thanks to this role.
Subsequently, she began to receive roles that were tailor-made to her particular skill set.
For example, a film that was released shortly after this, one of my favorite films of hers, is “Hands Across the Table” (1935), her first pairing with Fred MacMurray.
They made three other films after this.
It was written specifically for her and her particular skills as a comedienne.
She followed that with “My Man Godfrey” (1936), and “Nothing Sacred” (1937).
Her final role, released after she died in 1942, was “To Be or Not to Be”.
This movie set her on the path to be known as the “Queen” of Screwball Comedy.
The first-ever use of the word “Screwball” in a cinematic context was in a 1936 review of “My Man Godfrey”.
It was used to describe Carole’s performance.
I’m paraphrasing, the reviewer, “Carole Lombard has played screwball dames before, but none so screwy as this one.”, referring to her character “Irene Bullock”.
There are other actresses who performed in Screwball Comedy, but Carole Lombard was most closely associated with the genre.
>> AP: In the film, we see Carole Lombard so physical.
In your book, you take a deep dive into that.
You talk (write) that Carole Lombard embodies both male physical comedy and uber-femininity, for this dynamic combination.
Can you expand on that?
>> OK: I’ve found in academic writing on physical comedy, writers tend to associate physical comedy with male comedians like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
Some even go so far as to say that actresses who perform physical comedy were unladylike or unfeminine.
I think Carole Lombard does both.
She is ultra glamorous, she’s beautiful and yet she’s able to perform these very physical scenes with ease and she keeps up with her male costars.
I don’t think there has to be a compromise between one or the other.
She does both effortlessly.
>> AP: In your book you write about Carole Lombard’s off-screen persona, how it was developed and mirrored what was going on in her film career.
Tell us about her marriages, and how they affected the way the public perceived her; and how, with her Screwball Comedy success and her self-direction professionally, that changed how the public perceived her personally.
>> OK: Carole was married twice, first to William Powell from 1931 to 1933.
And second to Clark Gable from 1939 to 1942 when she died.
I don’t know if you noticed in this movie, the ring she wears throughout the film is the ring William Powell bought her when they got engaged.
It’s a blue star sapphire.
She wore that throughout their marriage, and even after they divorced.
They remained very good friends.
She kept that long after the marriage ended.
At the time this film was released, she was coming out of her first marriage.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with William Powell, who most famously played “Nick Charles” in “The Thin Man” (1934).
He had a sophisticated, suave star persona.
Around that time, by virtue of being married to William Powell, Carole took on those attributes in terms of her star persona.
So they represented this very chic, sophisticated star couple.
Conversely, when she became associated with Clark Gable, he was more rugged, an outdoorsman.
He loved to hunt, fish.
Carole rehabilitated her life to accommodate him.
She became a proficient skeet shooter.
She loved to go hunting and fishing with him.
She became a lot more down to earth, with a casual persona.
You see this evolution in her image over this short period of time, less than a decade.
>> AP: The ending of this movie, it’s circular.
We start with them on stage and “Oscar” charting out the chalk marks on the floor.
We end the same way.
It seems ambiguous to me, which I love about Screwball Comedy.
Unlike Romantic Comedy, which is idealized, and nice and pat, you have satire-spoofs here.
You have people and they’re real.
The antagonism and the conflict is real.
How do you interpret the ending?
>> OK: I think it is ambiguous.
Unlike the first scene where she’s “Mildred Plotka” and unsure of herself.
She’s finding her footing.
Here, she is “Lily Garland”.
She’s become a mini-“Oscar Jaffe”.
She has the ego to match.
She’s much more confident.
She’s pushing back on him more.
She’s not happy with the chalk mark.
She says, “I’m an actress, I know what I’m doing.” You don’t know where their relationship is going to go.
She’s tied to him in a contract, but I think he might get more pushback this time around.
>> AP: You see that she gives as good as she gets.
She’s on equal footing with him.
And that’s what makes her a Screwball heroine.
We’ve talked about Carole Lombard’s role in ushering in the Screwball Comedy.
But we must include Howard Hawks, the great director.
He excelled in many genres of film, but is probably best known today for his Screwball Comedies.
Share with us about his background, and what attributes of filmmaking he brought that aided the development of Screwball Comedy.
>> OK: Hawks ushered in what is now called the “Hawksian Woman”.
It’s similar to the Screwball heroine.
It’s a female character who’s strong-willed.
She can hang with men in her life.
Yet, she’s still feminine.
I think that describes the Screwball woman we see.
Hawks himself, you see it in this film and more so in his later Screwball Comedies like “His Girl Friday” (1940), and one of my favorites, “Ball of Fire” (1941).
He emphasized the natural approach to acting.
It’s different from theatrical acting.
One of the things he developed is overlapping dialogue, where characters will interrupt another actor.
They’ll interject.
It mirrors how we talk in real life.
You’ll see that in “His Girl Friday”.
I encourage you, if you haven’t watched that movie yet, please seek it out.
It’s probably the crowning achievement in his career.
>> AP: In addition to overlapping dialogue, the pacing is very fast.
The witty dialogue.
And the energy.
And the conflict between the men and women.
He seemed to be fascinated by women, a supporter of women. In his films, women are strong and independent, yet they still “ying and the yang”.
We have to have partners in life.
I’d like to end today talking about John Barrymore.
He is outstanding in this role.
You mentioned in your introduction another great role he acted in with Carole Lombard.
Share with us your impressions of John Barrymore.
>> OK: As I said in my introduction, I think this film is John Barrymore’s film.
He’s so audacious.
He gives everything to this performance.
Carole’s great too, of course, but it’s a John Barrymore film.
He’s most well-known for his dramatic roles and for his Shakespearean performances.
But he was a great comedian.
“True Confession” (1937), is a great example.
He’s kooky.
His character is very off the wall.
He embodies that so well.
Aliece and I were talking a few weeks ago about another great comedy performance of his, “Midnight” (1939), the Mitchell Leisen film written by Billy Wilder (and Charles Brackett), in the style of Ernst Lubitsch.
It’s a Leisen film doing Lubitsch.
And he’s great.
He’s a versatile actor.
Not phony in any sense.
His character is a ham, but you don’t feel like it’s an inauthentic performance.
That’s such a great quality he brings to his comedic performances.
>> AP: Looking at him, the way he lets the hair go wild, the physical movements.
That’s the thing, beautiful people in Screwball Comedy, unlike other genres, getting the laughs.
They’re the butt of the jokes, and they’re made to look foolish.
And we love them for it.🎥
Film Society of Screwball Comedy®
Edited by Aliece Pickett
Copyright 2025