Many film historians feel that The Awful Truth is the first true screwball comedy. I’m not sure about that, or even if it matters, but it is a very special comedy. It was directed and basically constructed on the set by Leo McCarey, one of the giants of Hollywood comic film, and the star actors, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, both believed McCarey made them comedy stars. Grant in particular credits McCarey with creating the “Cary Grant” persona that would define his career. McCarey learned his craft directing Laurel and Hardy silents, and later the Marx Brothers’ masterpiece Duck Soup. (He was also a master of powerful sentimental melodramas.) The Awful Truth has a special place in film history for the way it joins physical slapstick with verbal wit — a core quality of screwball comedy.
Apparently all the principal actors of The Awful Truth were initially confused by the lack of a script. McCarey would arrive for each day’s shooting with ideas on scrap paper, often putting the players on the spot to force them to come up with solutions. When Grant says that McCarey helped to create his star persona, I think this technique of putting him off-balance may have been key. In his best roles Grant always acts a little bit nervous, as if he’s suspicious that his partners are about to play a trick on him. Dunne, too, was a fairly stiff actress before The Awful Truth — that changed. This is also the film in which the great third-wheel of classic screwball comedy was born: The Bellamy. Ralph Bellamy plays the role of the prosaic odd-man-out in a romantic triangle for the first time — a role he’ll reprise so often (memorably in His Girl Friday) that the type was soon named for him.
At the start, the plot appears to be headed toward a totally conventional boulevard sex farce. Lucy and Jerry Warriner (Dunne and Grant) are upscale Manhattanites in Luxury Land. Jerry has fibbed to Lucy that he was away in Florida on business, when he was actually staying in town to binge on poker with his friends. Just as Jerry returns to their apartment from his faux business trip, enter Lucy in the company of Armand Duvall, Lucy’s debonair voice teacher. Lucy informs Jerry and the group of friends he has invited for drinks that she and Armand had been attending a recital upstate, but their car broke down, forcing them to spend the night in a little motel. Jerry doesn’t believe Lucy’s protestations of marital fidelity. Meanwhile, Lucy discovers that Jerry was lying about his Florida trip. The quarrel grows. They decide to get a divorce. The film thus begins exactly like an old-school parlor play — and the opening scene is stiff and stagey, with few hints of the wildness to come.
After the conventional opening act, every scene seems to take on a character of its own. First, Lucy and Jerry appear in court and are headed to a no-contest divorce, but who will have custody of their beloved dog, Mr. Smith (played by Asta, the same terrier who plays Asta in The Thin Man series and George in Bringing Up Baby)? Lucy gets custody, but Jerry gets visiting rights.
The action is constrained by a strict time-limit: the couple has a probationary period of 90 days to finalize the divorce. Much can happen in that time, but the clock is always ticking. Lucy is sluggish without Jerry. Her Aunt Patsy brings home an ostensibly eligible bachelor, Dan Leeson (Bellamy), an Oklahoma rancher visiting New York in the company of his overbearing mother. Dan is decent and dull — a far cry from Jerry’s sardonic, smooth urbanity. As Dan becomes enamored with Lucy, she responds with rebound affection — which gets stronger as Jerry taunts her for it. In the course of time, Lucy is engaged to Dan and Jerry is engaged to Barbara Vance (Molly Lamont), a classy daughter of the New York Old Rich. The heart of the film is in Lucy’s and Jerry’s antic attempts to break up each other’s engagements until they can be reconciled and reunited at the last possible minute.
It’s obvious that the ensemble is having a lot of fun, and the improvisations are inspired. But what struck me on my most recent viewing is how classical the structure is — and how comically alive McCarey and his stars make what is on paper a fairly rigid framework. The action is in two halves. The first half is Jerry’s sabotage of Lucy’s engagement; the second is Lucy’s revenge. Each half includes scenes that echo the other in surprising and original ways. (Formally, The Awful Truth has a lot in common with The Lady Eve.) Here’s an example. Dan has just met Lucy and is immediately taken with her, just as Jerry arrives at their apartment to exercise his visiting rights with Mr. Smith. While Lucy tries to conduct polite conversation, Jerry and Mr. Smith perform a duet in the art of noise.
The same move is made near the end of the film, at Jerry’s expense. Escaping from a party at the Vances (more about that later), Lucy and Jerry drive off in Lucy’s car. The volume knob on the dashboard radio drops off with the radio playing hot jazz at peak volume. Now it’s Jerry that gets the noise.
These are slapstick moves, perfectly adapted to sound. A more physical — and ironically, a more subtle — doubled scene also turns on musical farce. Jerry has a table in an upscale nightclub with his current date, cabaret singer Dixie Belle Lee (Joyce Compton), when Lucy and Dan arrive and are persuaded — much to Lucy’s annoyance — to sit with them. Jerry sets out to demonstrate how much of a rube Dan is and how ridiculous Lucy is to believe that she can be happy with him (compared with Jerry, of course). Dan begins to enjoy the nightlife — and takes Lucy out for a turn on the dance floor. Lucy has been hiding her dancing skills from Dan. I love this scene — Bellamy delivers it. Dan won several “cups” for his dancing back in Oklahoma, and we expect to see some stiff postures in the sedate waltz. But then the band shifts to hot jazz, and Dan is in his element — and Lucy isn’t. Bellamy is good! We’re surprised by his skill, but it’s made hilarious by his goofy posture and enthusiasm, and Lucy can’t keep up. (It’s a good satire of Astaire-Rogers routines, where Ginger immediately picks up Fred’s steps.) In the end, it’s a kick in the shins. (The tune and performers are uncredited. Too bad.)
Echoing this is the famous recital-crashing scene. Jerry, thinking that Lucy is having a tryst with Armand, bursts into his apartment in a jealous fury, only to discover that he’s actually crashed Lucy’s singing recital. Without missing a beat, she continues, watching Jerry with the same amusement Jerry felt watching her dance with Dan, as Jerry tries to act natural and takes a pratfall from a folding chair.
The doubling is also compressed into a single scene, the adventure of Mr. Smith and the two bowler hats. Armand visits Lucy in her apartment and they agree on a plan to have Armand convince Jerry of Lucy’s innocence. Jerry arrives inconveniently at the door, and Armand has to hide in Lucy’s bedroom. (Step one in the oldest bedroom farce formula.) Adding to the problem is that Armand and Jerry have come wearing almost identical — but not quite — bowlers. Lucy quickly hides Armand’s, but Mr. Smith — who loves object-finding games — retrieves it, and a hilarious shell-game with hats ensues. This isn’t classy farce anymore, it’s Laurel and Hardy.
Even more inconveniently, Dan and his mother also arrive on the scene, and Jerry has to hide in the same bedroom where Armand has been quietly stashed. (Step two in the formula.) The ensuing little brawl (and more noise) puts an end to Dan’s hopes and Lucy’s engagement.
This moment is echoed later in the best scene in the film — when Lucy crashes Jerry and Barbara’s engagement party at the Vances’ monumental digs. Pretending to be Jerry’s black-sheep sister Lola, the genteel Lucy plays the floozy to the hilt, ending Jerry’s engagement as sure as he ended hers.
True to form, this doubling includes a secondary doubling. Early in the film, in the nightclub scene, Jerry’s date Dixie Belle sings “My Dreams Are Gone With the Wind” in a performance that presages Marilyn Monroe’s famous upskirt moment in The Seven Year Itch.
In her pièce de resistance, Dunne treats the high-class gathering to Lola’s version.
The couple end up at Lucy’s old family lodge upstate in the last hours of their probation period, preparing for bed in adjoining rooms. After the hyperactive fun of the scenes leading up to it, I always find the conclusion a bit flat. But true to form, the resolution hinges on a conversation that’s a kind of doubletalk — it sounds like nonsense, but it’s not. We end up back in Lubitschland — the Swiss cuckoo clock discreetly tells us how it all ends.
The Awful Truth is a great example of screwball comedy’s “phallus, phallus, who’s got the phallus?” game. Comic power keeps hopping — from Jerry to Lucy and back again, to Mr. Smith, even to the bowler hats, bedroom doors, and black cats. Even Dan gets some in the dance scene. Practically every joke, gag, and wisecrack marks a shift in power. Lucy gains major control by the end, but the Comic Spirit never sleeps.