What Screwball Comedies Say About Love

Do not fear, gentle readers – I have not forgotten about The Rom-Com Project. I have decided, however, to save my posts about romantic comedies for the end of each month, and I will be writing about the romantic comedies in one monthly post instead of writing about each individual movie. If a particular film inspires a lot of thought, I’ll write an individual post, but otherwise, I’ll be writing monthly wrap-ups. I mean, face it, there was no reason to devote entire posts to Love Actually, He’s Just Not That Into You, and Valentine’s Day.

Anyway, March was Screwball Comedy Month for The Rom-Com Project. The screwball comedy is a specific subgenre of the romantic comedy genre, in which two characters are swept up into a series of increasingly improbable events and the movie gets wackier and wackier. These comedies were popular during the Great Depression and World War II. In March, I watched It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, and His Girl Friday. All of these movies would have us believe that the ideal romance occurs when two people are thrown together in extreme comic circumstances, where the situation gets zanier and wackier with time. Are they successful? Well, let’s see.

As you can see, there’s a lot of overlapping in these movies. Two of them star Katharine Hepburn and three of them star Cary Grant. In two of these movies, Cary Grant’s character is wooing or involved with his former wife (The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday). In three of these movies, the female lead is set to marry a man that is not such a bad guy, but clearly all wrong for her (It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday). In three movies, the female lead is a wealthy socialite and/or heiress when the male lead is a working man in a white-collar profession (It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story). In three movies, one or more of the lead characters is a journalist (It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday).

(Clearly, audiences in the 1930s and 1940s liked their overlapping casts and similar plot points, but if you were to give me four romantic comedies from the 1990s and 2000s, I’m sure I could find the same leading man or leading lady in two or three of them, and similar plot structure and character archetypes in three or four of them. For example, I think at least half of all women in modern romantic comedies work in the publishing industry.)

Anyway, in these four movies, I notice a little more variety among the female character archetypes than among the male character archetypes. Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story, and Cary Grant in His Girl Friday are all  reporters who are trying to catch the next scoop, and their sense of morals is a little off-kilter – they care about the scoop more than anything else. Grant’s character in Bringing Up Baby is different, the mild-mannered professor who gets caught up in Hepburn’s wacky scheme, and his character in The Philadelphia Story is a little more serious, though he doesn’t have as much to do. The actresses, however, get a little more variety to play. Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night is a little naive and sheltered but can gamely play along when she and Clark Gable have to pretend to be other people during their wacky misadventures. Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday is a snappy, intelligent, respected journalist torn between what she thinks she wants and what she actually wants. Katharine Hepburn plays two very different characters in her movies – she’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Bringing Up Baby, and a more levelheaded woman trying to find herself in The Philadelphia Story. In fact, in some ways, The Philadelphia Story is more of a character study of one woman than a typical romantic comedy.

Two of these movies were considerably less wacky than I expected them to be. The Philadelphia Story isn’t that wacky to begin with; two reporters covering the wedding of a wealthy socialite, with the socialite developing a flirtation with one of the reporters, isn’t on the same scale of a Bringing Up Baby that has a plot of mistaken identity between two leopards. In It Happened One Night, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert are not simply falling into silly mishaps – she has one incident of misfortune, he agrees to help her if she gives him something in return, and then they travel together and get to know each other.

Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday were considerably wackier than the other two films, but not entirely as a result of “silly circumstances.” Almost all of the wackiness in Bringing Up Baby is instigated by Katharine Hepburn’s character as she comes up with zanier and zanier schemes to keep Cary Grant around, because she’s already fallen in love with him. In His Girl Friday, Cary Grant is the one trying to keep Rosalind Russell around by getting her fiance thrown in jail over and over again. There’s a key difference, though – Grant in Bringing Up Baby seems to believe that Hepburn is instigating silly schemes because she’s impulsive and not very bright, not recognizing that she is very deliberately sabotaging his attempts to leave. Russell, on the other hand, knows damn well what Grant is doing in His Girl Friday. Is this a reflection of gender expectations and stereotypes? I would say yes, but it’s important to know that Bringing Up Baby concerns two characters who have only just met each other, and His Girl Friday concerns two characters who have previously been married. Grant has good reason to think that Hepburn is simply out of her mind, as she tries to steal his car while believing it’s her own, and Russell can see what Grant is doing because she has years of experience on her side.

I also looked at the lead female characters from a feminist perspective, analyzing their actions and the way other characters viewed them. Of the four leading women, Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday is by far the most overtly feminist  – she’s unafraid to share her opinion, she’s unapologetic in her actions, she’s intelligent and a good writer, and she has the respect and admiration of her male colleagues. (In fact, in a refreshing role reversal, her male colleagues are extremely skeptical of her plan to give up the newspaper business and settle down and have children, and they all discourage her from quitting her job.) Still, the other female leads have their moments. Claudette Colbert’s naive character knows how to catch a ride by showing off her legs – fulfilling a stereotypical gender role, yes, but still getting the job done. Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, meanwhile, is flighty and impulsive and ditzy, but still manages to throw a rope around the neck of a wild leopard and drag it all the way to a police station, so she obviously has something going on upstairs.

As for The Philadelphia Story, I needed to take a moment and devote one short paragraph to some of the anti-feminist garbage present in that movie. In this film, Hepburn’s character has to deal with the reconciliation of her parents after they’ve divorced. Her father tells her, in short, “I cheated on your mother because you divorced your husband, and fathers are inspired by/live through their daughters, so it’s your fault I ran around on your mum.” He doesn’t say it in those exact words, but he comes close to it. And worst of all, we’re meant to agree with her dad. What kind of nonsense is that? What fathers take their cues about marriage from their daughters’ marriages? It was so unpleasant and jarring, especially because, aside from that RIDICULOUS subplot, The Philadelphia Story is the most realistic and low-key of the four screwball comedies. Not only that, but it was the only Love Triangle in my viewing history where I couldn’t predict the ending five minutes into the movie. For a long time, I couldn’t tell whether Hepburn would end up with Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart. I have to give the movie credit for keeping me guessing until the end.

And now we come to the main point – what do screwball comedies say about love? They say that love happens when two characters are thrown together in unusual circumstances and get to know each other, and that these two people will have a happily ever after when the credits roll. When I look at the couples at the end of all four films, I have mixed reactions about the “happily ever after” front.

It Happened One Night – Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert had a connection during their wacky adventure, sure. Is that a foundation for a lasting relationship? They certainly seem happy by the end of the film where her previous marriage is annulled and they can finally have sex! I’m still not sure it’s a love to last forever.

The Philadelphia Story – I mentioned that one of the film’s strengths is the unpredictable nature of the love triangle plot, and I stand by that. It’s refreshing not to immediately know which man the leading woman will pick. Unfortunately, this is also one of the film’s weak points – by the end of the film, I’m not entirely certain that the leading lady has made the right choice.

Bringing Up Baby – When Cary Grant finally declares to Katharine Hepburn that he loves her right, I think, “Really? You do?” I can buy that he finds her entertaining and a pleasant diversion from his regular life, but I don’t believe for a second that these two will last. She would annoy the crap out of him.

His Girl Friday – These two will be together forever. They might remarry and divorce and remarry again five or six times, they may drive each other out of their minds and get into screaming fights, but they’ll soon miss each other and get back together until the cycle repeats itself again, because they may fight, they might make each other angry, but they will never, ever get bored with each other.

I don’t suppose it’s any surprise, then, that His Girl Friday was, by far, my favorite of the four films. I loved the moment where Russell realizes that she loves Grant because he’s a scoundrel who constantly sabotages her other relationship. If she were a sweeter, more naive character, I’d find their relationship a little disturbing, but since she’s just as cutthroat and morally grey as he is, I find his sabotage and her reaction to his sabotage oddly sweet, and very funny. The film also manages to be surprisingly dark for a romantic comedy, including a very important main plot about the two newspeople writing a scoop about a man on death row who might be innocent. The writing is also whip-smart and quick to the point where I can barely keep track of every hilarious line.

Still, I wouldn’t recommend His Girl Friday in lieu of the three other movies. I suggest watching all of them and saving His Girl Friday for last. They all have a sense of old-school class and wit that’s sorely missing from a lot of modern romantic comedies.