Watch enough screwball comedies and you might notice a pattern: the same people turn up over and over again. I don’t just mean actors—though Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Melvyn Douglas were ubiquitous—but characters. Blame it on endless plot recycling or the assembly-line nature of the studio system, but in the thirties and forties, screwball comedies happily reshuffled the same types of characters in near identical plots. Not that audiences seemed to mind.
Here’s a spotter’s guide to the six people you’re likely to meet in a screwball comedy.
Irene Bullock, ditziest of all Headstrong Heiresses
The Headstrong Heiress: Often ditzy, always determined, the Headstrong Heiress is everywhere. Ellen Andrews (Claudette Colbert) kicks off the plot of It Happened One Night (1934) by diving off her father’s yacht and embarking on a cross-country trip to be reunited with her fiancé. Naturally she needs to be rescued, just like Carol Van Dyke (Joan Bennett), who gets herself kidnapped by gangsters in She Couldn’t Take It (1935). Far wilier is Dorothy Hunter (Miriam Hopkins), who dodges fortune hunters by pretending to be her own secretary in The Richest Girl in the World (1934). The oft-married Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor) chases after her next conquest for most of The Palm Beach Story (1942), while bride-to-be Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn) has two suitors too many in The Philadelphia Story (1940). Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) is already married when The Thin Man (1934) opens and insists on going sleuthing with her detective husband. Dizzy Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) unintentionally introduces a dash of sanity to the Bullock household in My Man Godfrey (1936), when she installs a bum as the family butler. And Susan Vance (Hepburn again) struts through chaos largely of her own making in Bringing Up Baby (1938).
Stuffy Man with Money Anthony Kirby
The Man with Money: Almost as popular as the Heiress. Sometimes he’s grounded, like Irene’s father, Alexander Bullock (Eugene Pallette) in My Man Godfrey, who despairs of getting the rest of his family to see sense, or Georges Flammarion (John Barrymore), who has similar problems with his wife in Midnight (1939). Wealthy banker J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) is so exasperated by his wife’s spendthrift ways in Easy Living (1937) that he tosses a fur coat out of a penthouse window. Sometimes the Man with Money is a little unhinged: The Palm Beach Story’s John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallée) painstakingly records all his expenses in a little notebook, but never bothers to add them up. Naive Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) is taken for a fool in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and multi-millionaire and philanderer Michael Brandon (also Cooper) is driven half mad by his new wife in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938). Men with Money also overlap with Kill-Joy Authority Figures: stuffy bankers Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) and Anthony P. Kirby (Arnold again) are taught to loosen up by fun-loving ghosts and prospective in-laws respectively in Topper (1937) and You Can’t Take It With You (1938).
Peter Warne, Tough Reporter and Knight in Shining Armour
The Tough Reporter: Practical and pragmatic; invariably a print journalist and often paired with a Headstrong Heiress. Peter Warne (Clark Gable) rescues Ellie in It Happened One Night, teaching her to hitchhike, dunk donuts and live within her means. Bill Spencer (Fredric March) discovers a rich girl working undercover at a department store and tries to keep her secret in There Goes My Heart (1938), while Macaulay ‘Mike’ Connor (James Stewart) is the surprisingly chivalrous tabloid journalist sent to cover The Philadelphia Story. Some Reporters’ ethics are more ‘flexible’. Editor Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) enlists former reporter Bill Chandler (William Powell) to entrap an heiress after she sues Haggerty’s paper in Libeled Lady (1936). Wallace Cook (March again) sees a woman dying of radium poisoning as his ticket to success in Nothing Sacred (1937), and motor-mouth editor Walter Burns (Cary Grant) will do anything for a scoop in His Girl Friday (1940).
Joseph and Maria Tura (centre right) and Warsaw’s finest acting company
The Hammy Actor: Thrives on footlights, grease paint and the adoration of others. Twentieth Century (1934) chronicles the titanic struggle between maniacal actor-cum-impresario Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) and his egotistical ex-protégé Lily Garland (Carole Lombard), as he tries to get her to star in his next show. Basil Underwood (Leslie Howard) and Joyce Arden (Bette Davis) are a fiery, temperamental acting team who can’t stop squabbling long enough to marry in It’s Love I’m After (1937). And Joseph Tura (Jack Benny)—that great, great Polish actor—and his actress wife Maria (Carole Lombard) must navigate their way through Nazi-occupied Poland in To Be or Not To Be (1942).
David Huxley, timid academic
The Absent-minded Academic: Timid, passive, woman-shy. Palaeontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) gets shaken out of his rut when Susan wreaks havoc on his life in Bringing Up Baby. Bashful snake expert Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) falls straight into the clutches of a lady con artist in The Lady Eve (1941), while cloistered grammarian Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) goes in search of modern slang and finds it in the form of a slinky nightclub singer in Ball of Fire (1941).
Mary Smith (and fur coat)
The Plucky Girl: Headstrong heroines who aren’t Heiresses. Polly Parrish (Ginger Rogers) is an unmarried salesgirl mistaken for a foundling’s mother in Bachelor Mother (1939), while fellow shop girl Mary Jones (Jean Arthur) doesn’t realise the gruff old clerk she’s taken a liking to is really the boss she hates in The Devil and Miss Jones (1941). Mary Smith (Arthur again)’s troubles start when a fur coat lands on her head in Easy Living—for who threw it, see ‘Man with Money’—and Alice Sycamore’s (Arthur yet again) eccentric family jeopardizes her romance with the boss’ son in You Can’t Take It With You. Penniless showgirl Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) masquerades as a noblewoman in Midnight, and New York tests the mettle of writer Ruth Sherwood (Rosalind Russell) and her sister Eileen (Janet Blair) in My Sister Eileen (1942).
Did I miss anyone? Let me know!
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