I'll start this topic off with a doosey....Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace , 1944..although maybe it is more of a screw-loose comedy...starring Cary Grant....and Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre no less....

A drama critic learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are homicidal maniacs, and that insanity runs in his family.

It is an excellent movie and if you haven't ever seen it...well you need to go stand in the corner until you do....

There are countless screw-ball comedies from the 30' and 40's...

Have at it folks....

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What defines a 'screwball' comedy from any other type of comedy?

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Oh good question....

Screwball?
(Screw-ball [skrue’bol] Noun, Slang, meaning unbalanced, erratic, irrational, unconventional), became a popular slang word in the 1930s. It was applied to films where everything was a juxtaposition: educated and uneducated, rich and poor, intelligent and stupid, honest and dishonest, and most of all male and female. When two people fell in love, they did not simply surrender to their feelings, they battled it out. They lied to one another, often assuming indifferent personas toward each other. They often employed hideous tricks on each other, until finally after running out of inventions, fall into each others arms. It was fossilized comedy, physical and often painful, but mixed with the highest level of wit and sophistication, depending wholly on elegant and inventive writing.

Some characteristics of Screwball Comedy
Reverse class snobbery, to be poor is somehow to be more noble. What’s more, to be rich is to be castigated, passions befitting theater patrons, during the Great Depression. A very skillful blend of sophistication and slapstick. Although screwball characters move in an elegant world, where even a simple bathroom appears to be the center of their universe, they may still whack one another over the head, but while The Three Stooges use sledgehammers, screwball characters use silver chafing dishes, and the like—weapons of the upper class.

A well written script, laced with barbed dialog. An overlapping style of delivery, with lines tossed off in rapid fire. An emphases on elegant clothes, cars, and furniture. The use of exotic locals, even the dump site in “My Man Godfrey”, (see below). The hero or the heroine living by his or her wits alone, though this is often balanced by a reliable gainfully employed love interest.

Last and probably most important, supporting casts of first-rate character actors playing eccentric types as well as a stable of familiar faces in leading roles (Cary Grant, William Powell, Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn)

My Man Godfrey
One of the most unusual screwball comedies was My Man Godfrey 1936, a Universal production directed by Gregory La Cava. It begins at a garbage dump along New York’s East River. People in evening clothes, taking part in a scavenger hunt for a charity event, step out of a roadster to look for a “forgotten man”, a 1930s term for the unemployed and homeless. A derelict, after pushing one woman into an ash heap, agrees to go along with her sister. His dignity and sardonic humor impress her, and she hires him as butler for the family’s Fifth Avenue mansion. The wealthy family turn out to be spoiled, selfish, and inane—“empty-headed nitwits,” as the derelict-turned-butler calls them.

He, it turns Out, is also from a rich family; he landed in the dump through despondency over a broken love affair, Through his butler work he pulls his life together and in the end opens a posh nightclub, the Dump, on the dump site to provide employment, food, and shelter to “forget men” The film’s predominant point, however, is not that the poor are redeemable, but that the wealthy are.

Screwball comedy crested in the late 1930s. And with the increasing hostilities brewing in Europe, the glib, and at times genteel barbs between two highly disillusioned participants seemed docile, and trivial. Certainly Romantic comedy had it’s place during the war years. Films such as, “Mr. Lucky (1943)”, used the urbane characters of the Screwball genre, augmenting them with a win the war at all costs purpose. By wars end the less sophisticated, but more utilitarian comedy of Preston Sturges had come into fashion.

The invasion of television, and the dismantling of the Hollywood studio system put an end to the classic Romantic comedy. There was, however a brief revival in the postwar years with such forgettable films as “The Mating of Millie (1948)”, “Please Believe Me (1950)”, and “Confidentially Connie (1953)”.

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My Man Godfrey I think I own that, hmmm, now I don't remember

For screwball I have to add Bringing Up Baby and perhaps His Girl Friday as well. So much dialogue in those two it's difficult to keep up!

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The Philadelphia Story is a 1940 romantic screwball comedy starring James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

It is about a bride-to-be whose plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her cynical but romantic ex-husband (Grant), and a cynical but romantic journalist (Stewart).

This is one of my favorite comedies of any kind.....

How about it Silver...

Also Nothing Scared 1937..with Fredric March and the wonderful Carole Lombard...

one of the best screw-ball comedies ever...

About a reporter, a doomed {but not really} woman..and a hoax...

It has that famous scene where March knockouts out Lombard with a punch....

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I know I have Nothing Sacred, it's a great one. O I just thought of another, with my favorite chick....Claudette! Tovarich. I believe her co-star was Charles Boyer, but not sure.

Tovarich is your classic "royalty is tired of being royal". They go out into the world, tring to make it, and they end up working for a family as maid and butler.

It may not be totally screwball, but it definitely has it's moments!

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Some Like It Hot has often been called a modern screwball comedy..I agree with that...

how about It Happened One Night, that's a good screwball comedy...

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Alright well this one's from the 80's, but I think it definitely qualifies as a screw ball comedy, Clue, especially when it comes to line delivery. And Madeline Kahn and Tim Curry although not huge stars, were definitely the best asset(s) of the film.

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I never grow tired of watching that movie. It's a comfort film I think

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Yea, it's an everything film for me. Comfort, comedy, rainy day movie, and one of those movies (along with What About Bob) that I put on to show my friends who's only knowledge of "comedy films" are the American Pie series and Road Trip.

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