In a Sunday NY Times column, movie critic A. O. Scott questioned whether Hollywood will react to the current economic hard times as well as it did during The Great Depression. In truth, the widely acknowledged Golden Age of Hollywood actually produced mostly mindless trash to divert Depression audiences from their troubles. The studios rarely exhibited an interest in making audiences think seriously about social problems, at least not in the sorts of conscious efforts that marked the post-war era of "realism" in the movies.
However, many in the creative workforce of the time were anxious to comment on conditions, and some even squeezed into their plots some sympathy with the New Deal. Despite the strictures imposed by commercial concerns and the tight censorship of radical social, sexual, and political notions, they managed to slip some fairly subversive philosophy into their storytelling. For instance, the "Forgotten Man" number of Busby Berkeley’s "Golddiggers of 1933" was a rare example in the most frivolous of forms, the Hollywood version of the Broadway musical. Warner Brothers, the studio responsible for that film, was known for its dramas on subjects "ripped from the headlines" like "I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang" and "Dead End". They even dared a movie exposing the KKK, "Dark Legion". The studio’s gangster staples likewise contained story arcs that worked as commentary about poverty and crime. Of course, John Ford’s "The Grapes Of Wrath" is the best known example of the kind of socially aware filmmaking that, by the time of the Cold War, was pointed to as proof of a conspiracy of leftist influence in the movie business.
It was in comedies, especially the screwball comedy form, that the socially aware writers found the most palatable vehicle for smuggling progressive notions into an entertaining and very commercial product. Depression audiences lapped up story lines that skewered the pompous mores of the monied classes that were seen as smugly inattentive to the privations of the masses. The writers, many of whom had sprung from journalistic roots, contrived plots woven around love fables that allowed them to make points about class inequality through wryly satirical voices.
Frank Capra’s output during the decade epitomized and made the most lasting impact on the genre. His films were cleverly designed to appeal to Depression audiences, who could identify with the protagonist a woman or man who was toughened by the hard times, but became involved in romances that exposed an idealistic core of uplifting values. Though Capra is best remembered for the formula, others also found success.
The first time Capra toyed with this formula was in "Platinum Blonde" (1932), in which a wise-cracking newsman (Robert Johnson) allows himself to be temporarily seduced into becoming a pet of a society girl (Jean Harlow). When ridiculed by his pals as the "Cinderella Man," he walks out and finds himself, with the aid of his working girl pal (Loretta Young), finally writing a play about his experiences. Johnson’s performance, laced with witty, sardonic asides that flayed the foibles of the rich, was highly praised by critics; but he died shortly after the premiere, and remains a sadly forgotten pioneer of the genre.
In 1934, Capra joined again with scenarist Robert Riskin (who had written the snappy dialogue for "Platinum Blonde") in "It Happened One Night," a film that has provided the template for innumerable road romances up to the present day. A frisky heiress (Claudette Colbert) dives from her yacht to escape her overprotective father (Walter Connelly), intending to marry an aviator. Naive about life’s difficulties, she is helped by a cynical newsman (Clark Gable). Among the hoi polloi on a night bus, she gives what money she has to a boy whose mother has fainted for lack of food while she is traveling to look for work. On the road, she learns the facts of life for ordinary people in hard times as they scramble to hitch rides, fight hunger. She finds that money can’t buy true love. Extremely popular, the film was the first to sweep the Academy Awards - best actor, actress, director, screenplay, and picture, it remains one of the few comedies to achieve that distinction.
Capra and Riskin followed up with "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town" (1936) in which Gary Cooper played a small town eccentric who suddenly inherits millions and finds himself living in a New York mansion, surrounded by sycophants, con artists, sneaky lawyers, and pompous socialites. Jean Arthur is the working girl of the story, a news hound who is assigned to write stories ridiculing the new "Cinderella Man," pretending to be an out of work shop girl, but of course soon falls as hard for him as he for her. Boy loses girl when he discovers her deception. Disillusioned, he plans to go home to his small town, but is waylaid by a jobless would be assassin who decries the Cinderella Man’s frivolous waste of wealth while so many are starving. Deeds feeds the man and devises a plan to give his fortune to men willing to work. For this he is deemed insane and must defend himself in court.
Also released in 1936, "My Man Godfrey" (directed by Gregory La Cava from a script by Morrie Ryskind) is often cited as the quintessential screwball comedy, starring the perfect screwball actress, Carole Lombard, as Irene Bullock, the slightly off center young socialite daughter of a troubled businessman (Eugene Pallette) and airhead mother (Alice Brady). Bored society butterflies conduct a scavenger hunt, seeking a "forgotten man" in the shacks by the river. Godfrey Smith (William Powell), a fallen son of an upper class family, now reduced to homelessness, is the prize. Despite his scathing denunciation of the shallowness of his sponsors, Irene hires him as the family butler. While love blossoms between Godfrey and Irene, he discovers a purpose to his life, opening a restaurant to employ his homeless friends and restore their dignity, while saving his employers from financial disaster.
"Easy Living" (1937), directed by Mitchell Liesen from a script by Preston Sturges (who would later refine the screwball genre with his masterpieces, "The Palm Beach Story," The Lady Eve," "The Miracle Of Morgan Creek" and "Sullivan’s Travels"), begins with a banker (Edward Arnold) throwing his wife’s latest extravagance, a mink coat, out of the window. It falls on the head of a working girl (Jean Arthur), triggering a set of screwy events typical of the genre. Thinking she is the mistress of the banker, she is offered a luxury hotel suite, a car, a wardrobe. She meets the banker’s son (Ray Milland) who is working in the automat to rebel against his father and somehow it all works out.
Morrie Ryskind (no relation to Robert Riskin) is credited as writer of "Easy Living" as well as the Marx Brothers’ classics, "Cocoanuts", "A Night At The Opera" and "Room Service." In 1938, he adapted the Ferber / Kaufman play, "Stage Door" for Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers. Hepburn plays an heiress who wants to be an actress, moves into a residential hotel for starving aspiring actresses, learns about the travails of young women struggling for independence in a cutthroat Depression market. The ensemble of wise cracking gals included RKO contract girl Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, and Ann Miller.
Also in 1938, Capra released his film of Riskin’s adaptation of the Kaufman and Hart play, "You Can’t Take It With You" which won Capra’s second Oscars as best director and and for best picture. The film starred James Stewart as son of a banker (Edward Arnold), in love with his secretary (Jean Arthur), whose family is like a commune of free spirited screwballs, led by the patriarch (Lionel Barrymore) who long ago gave up the rat race to enjoy life. The class barrier between the families is broken when the son breaks free and the banker is converted to seek peace of mind.
Released the same year, "Holiday" was directed by George Cukor from a screenplay credited to Donald Ogden Stuart and Sidney Buchman from a Philip Barry play. Johnny Case (Cary Grant) is a hard working stock broker who is turning 30 and wants to quit the rat race to travel for a year to find the meaning of life. He falls for "Julia Seton", not knowing she is the daughter of a wealthy financier. While Julia and her father plan their life after the marriage to disabuse him of his radical notion of abandoning the chase for wealth, her sister, Linda (Katherine Hepburn) encourages his dream. With aid from his bohemian academic friends (Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon) and her alcoholic brother Ned (Lew Ayres), Linda opposes her sister and father, in the process falling in love with Johnny and sailing away with him.
Social commentary during the era didn’t always apply to wealth or class distinctions. In "Theodora Goes Wild," Irene Dunne’s first foray into comedy, she is the straight laced member of a small town family of blue nosed ladies who is chosen as a spokesperson to prevent serialization of a scandalously sexy novel in the town’s newspaper. In fact, Theodora has written the novel under a pseudonym as revealed when she enter’s the office of her New York publisher. While there she meets an artist (Melvyn Douglas) who falls for her and tries to loosen her morals by getting her pleasantly snockered and showing her his etchings. When Theodora escapes, he follows her to her town and threatens to expose her secret. Eventually, he succeeds in freeing her from her puritanical fears, allowing her to thumb her nose at those which are out of joint.
Two notable movies of the day found comedic fodder in Soviet Russia. In "Tovarich" (1937) Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer are Russian aristocrats living in Paris after the revolution. They are impoverished, even though they possess the czar’s fortune, which was entrusted to them in the event of collapse of the Bolsheviks. Evicted from their shabby flat, they find refuge as butler and maid to a Parisian banker and his family. Of course, their taste and manners are far superior to their employers and much of the comedy comes from the couple’s humility as servants contrasted with pretensions of the nouveau riche family. When the family discovers their true identity, the social confusion of the upstairs - downstairs variety. A guest arrives (Basil Rathbone) who is the Bolshevik commissar who had tortured them, failing to secure the fortune. Despite their hatred for him and the Soviet, the couple decide to turn over the money in order to aid mother Russia and, unburdened, decide to continue their roles as servants to the family.
Billy Wilder collaborated with Charles Brackett and director Ernst Lubitch for "Ninotchka" in 1939, the film in which Garbo laughs. She plays a dour Soviet emissary who has come to Paris to recover the crown jewels and finds love with a Parisian man-about-town (Melvyn Douglas).
It will be interesting to see whether our movie makers will find relevant ways to help us through the hard times to come.
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