ENGL 250A American Screwball Films
In common parlance the epithet "Screwball," borrowed from baseball, has come to mean "insane," "eccentric," or "lunatic," but in the history of the American cinema the term characterizes a film genre that took root during the Great Depression and flourished until the end of the Second World War. Fast-paced, anarchic, irreverent, witty, giddy, subversive, and erotic, classic screwball comedies drew upon an extraordinary wealth of Hollywood talent (directors included Michael Curtiz, Howard Hawks, and Preston Sturges; actors included Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable) although not everyone found them pleasing or even acceptable: in rejecting a proposed script for My Favorite Wife, for example, Joseph K. Breen, then head of the Production Code Administration, noted that "The entire story has, in our specific judgment, a definitely unacceptable flavor that is certain to be highly offensive to motion picture audiences everywhere." Despite such criticism screwball comedies were wildly popular and for a number of reasons remain engaging today: among other things, they explored the consequences of acting upon impulses that "civilization" forces us to repress, cast a satirical eye on the escapades of the idle rich, critiqued politics, laughed at jingoism, and reveled in sexual politics.