The Mad Miss Manton is one of the dozens of comedy-whodunits made in the 1930s following the success of The Thin Man. Although you rarely hear it mentioned as a classic of the period, it’s always praised as one of the funnier films. It stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda three years before their collaborationContinue reading “The Mad Miss Manton (1938)”
Category Archives: Barbara Stanwyck
The Lady Eve (1941)
The Lady Eve is the Sistine Chapel of screwball comedies. A lot has been written about it, but somehow it eludes analysis. When I taught courses on film comedy, I’d warn my students: don’t ever think you’re smarter than Preston Sturges, don’t ever think to yourself “I’ve got this all figured out.” On a thirdContinue reading “The Lady Eve (1941)”
Remember the Night (1940)
Remember the Night should have been a great comedy. It was written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen. Three years earlier they had collaborated on Easy Living, one of the classics of the period. But this one is a mess. There’s hardly a trace of Sturges’s sophisticated wit and cynicism, and Leisen’s directingContinue reading “Remember the Night (1940)”
Ball of Fire (1941)
For some reason Ball of Fire doesn’t figure in the Grand Canon of classic Hollywood sound comedies. Film historians who write endlessly about its director, Howard Hawks, and its screenplay writers, Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, rarely mention the film, except maybe in footnotes. Apparently it isn’t dazzling enough when compared with Hawks’s ground-breaking motormouthContinue reading “Ball of Fire (1941)”
Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
Christmas in Connecticut is a puzzle I will never solve. It’s apparently very popular with nostalgic audiences. There are at this writing almost 90 viewers’ reviews of it on IMDB, and they are overwhelmingly positive – glowing, even. It was apparently successful when it came out, and it’s treated as if it were a niceContinue reading “Christmas in Connecticut (1945)”