Having mastered every genre tossed her way (‘wronged’ woman’s-weepie, historical epic, musical-comedy/operetta, dysfunctional family: WASP to urban ethnic), Irene Dunne wasn’t keen to try on ‘Screwball’ comedy. (THEODORA surrounded by four Jerome Kern musicals.) But in spite of trepidations, she came up trumps: second of her five Oscar noms with more comedy to come in next year’s THE AWFUL TRUTH/‘37.* Less noted is the ace comic technique from former Moscow Arts Players actor-turned -Hollywood director Richard Boleslawski which is just as much a surprise. Where did the impeccable timing, shot selection, perfectly staged & composed group playing come from? No doubt the Frank Capra vets on the film (supporting actors, Sidney Buchman script, Joseph Walker lensing) had a lot to do with Boleslawski getting so much out of this enviably human comedy. Dunne’s a small-town New Englander with a secret: under a pseudonym she’s authored a bodice-burning bestseller. A scandal in waiting for the town’s bluenose tastemakers. Worse, her own maiden Aunts are leading the charge to stop the local paper from serializing it. In New York to meet with her publisher, she’s the talk of the town, and a challenge to Melvyn Douglas’s smitten book-cover artist. Hard on her tail (today we’d call this stalking), he lands on her country doorstep and sticks to her like glue. The rest of the first act plays a bit too hard, but it’s really a set up as Buchman’s clever script turns out not to be about Theo getting stinking drunk and going wild, but in how she finds/reveals her true self, revels in it, and causes everyone around her to go a little wild. And that very much includes Douglas, not at all the free spirit he fashions himself to be, but more inhibited than Theodora ever was. This brings in an emotional layer rare in Screwball and helps make the last act unusually satisfying rather than a capitulation. Look for a huge laugh when Theodora gets off the train when she comes home with special little package. ‘Thirties audiences must have howled thru the end of the film which, in true Capraesque fashion, dashes from there to the finish.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Dunne’s follow up comedy, Leo McCarey’s THE AWFUL TRUTH/’37 even more celebrated. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/awful-truth-1937.html
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