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Screwball Syll
Webster University FLST 3160: Topics in Film Studies: Screwball Comedy Instructor: Dr. Diane Carson, Ph.D. Email: [email protected] COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course focuses on classic screwball comedies from the 1930s and 40s. Films studied include It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Awful Truth, and The Lady Eve. Thematic as well as technical elements will be analyzed. Actors include Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, and Barbara Stanwyck. Class involves lectures, discussions, written analysis, and in-class screenings. COURSE OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this course is to analyze and inform students about the screwball comedy genre. By the end of the semester, students should have: 1. An understanding of the basic elements of screwball comedies including important elements expressed cinematically in illustrative selections from noteworthy screwball comedy directors. 2. An ability to analyze music and sound, editing (montage), performance, camera movement and angle, composition (mise-en-scene), screenwriting and directing and to understand how these technical elements contribute to the screwball comedy film under scrutiny. 3. An ability to apply various approaches to comic film analysis, including consideration of aesthetic elements, sociocultural critiques, and psychoanalytic methodology. 4. An understanding of diverse directorial styles and the effect upon the viewer. 5. An ability to analyze different kinds of screwball comedies from the earliest example in 1934 through the genre’s development into the early 40s. 6. Acquaintance with several classic screwball comedies and what makes them unique. 7. An ability to think critically about responses to the screwball comedy genre and to have insight into the films under scrutiny. -
Leisen, Mitchell (1898-1972) by Craig Kaczorowski
Leisen, Mitchell (1898-1972) by Craig Kaczorowski Encyclopedia Copyright © 2015, glbtq, Inc. Entry Copyright © 2010 glbtq, Inc. Reprinted from http://www.glbtq.com Mitchell Leisen was a noted director during Hollywood's Golden Age. He is credited with more than 40 feature films, which are celebrated for their stylishness and visual elegance. He excelled at witty, romantic comedies that are often tinged with a touch of melancholy, such as the classic "screwball" comedy Easy Living (1937) and the clever, cosmopolitan farce Midnight (1939). Leisen has also been hailed for his "gender role-reversal" films, where the male lead is cast as the sex object and the female lead as the aggressor. Not surprising for a bisexual director working in Hollywood, Leisen's other thematic obsessions included mistaken identity, role-playing, and deception. Leisen returned to the same performers film after film, developing strong working partnerships. Although he was instrumental in shaping the careers of such actors as Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland, Leisen became typed as a "woman's director" for the fastidious, detailed attention he paid to the costuming and art direction of his productions, as well as for the nuanced, spontaneous performances he coaxed from such actresses as Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert, and Olivia de Havilland. Among many film historians, Leisen's artistic reputation has been tarnished somewhat by the stormy relationships he became embroiled in with some of his screenwriters, most notably Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. After working on several films with Leisen, both writers demanded to be allowed to direct their own scripts, in part because they objected to the sophisticated veneer of Leisen's directorial style and to the changes he frequently made to their screenplays. -
![1934-04-26 [P C-4]](https://docslib.b-cdn.net/cover/8420/1934-04-26-p-c-4-738420.webp)
1934-04-26 [P C-4]
PIERCE HALL PLAYERS hostess. There have been Invited a lng the play. The stage crew, under a model constructed by Miss Brown. number of dinner guests. Including the direction of Newell Lusby, has The business stall Is headed by Jennifer, who poses as a general's National constructed one of the most difficult Ployd Sparks. Tickets for the play Players Prepare End” PRESENT GOOD COMEDY widow, but is In reality the pseudo — ever amateur be obtained at Wardman Parle Reviving “Journey’s prince’s estranged wife. After a series settings attempted by may A. A. Milne's Play, “To Have the of humorous situations, the two Im- organizations. They weye guided by Theater tonight and tomorrow night. To Their New Season posters finally reveal their identities Open Is Vehicle for Honor,” to their understanding hostess and to take another in the Amateurs. proceed flyer First Will Be The Pur- matrimonial market. “THH- Play Monday Evening “To Have the Honor” Is to he re- A. A. Milne's play about a pseudo by the players at Successful on Broad- prince or a pseudo country who runs peated tonight suit of Happiness,” Pierce Hall at 8:30 o’clock. Is di- Into difficulty when he runs Into his It rected Ina L. Hawes. estranged wife, also posing as some by the Film Theaters. M. W. B. A way—At or e else she is not, at an English din- woman, The story Pierce Hall ner party, gave Players, sure of her of « wife Paul Alexander, Ruth Perrott and IN “JOURNEYS END.” BY E. -
Ronald Davis Oral History Collection on the Performing Arts
Oral History Collection on the Performing Arts in America Southern Methodist University The Southern Methodist University Oral History Program was begun in 1972 and is part of the University’s DeGolyer Institute for American Studies. The goal is to gather primary source material for future writers and cultural historians on all branches of the performing arts- opera, ballet, the concert stage, theatre, films, radio, television, burlesque, vaudeville, popular music, jazz, the circus, and miscellaneous amateur and local productions. The Collection is particularly strong, however, in the areas of motion pictures and popular music and includes interviews with celebrated performers as well as a wide variety of behind-the-scenes personnel, several of whom are now deceased. Most interviews are biographical in nature although some are focused exclusively on a single topic of historical importance. The Program aims at balancing national developments with examples from local history. Interviews with members of the Dallas Little Theatre, therefore, serve to illustrate a nation-wide movement, while film exhibition across the country is exemplified by the Interstate Theater Circuit of Texas. The interviews have all been conducted by trained historians, who attempt to view artistic achievements against a broad social and cultural backdrop. Many of the persons interviewed, because of educational limitations or various extenuating circumstances, would never write down their experiences, and therefore valuable information on our nation’s cultural heritage would be lost if it were not for the S.M.U. Oral History Program. Interviewees are selected on the strength of (1) their contribution to the performing arts in America, (2) their unique position in a given art form, and (3) availability. -
Screwball Actress
P a g e SCREWBALL ACTRESS RAY E. BOOMHOWER efore the days of cable and satellite dishes, when there were only three major networks avail able for viewing, one of the few things on television that always sparked my interest was the perennialshowing of old movies, usually on lazy Sunday afternoons. The films ranged from Bud Abbott and Lou Costello meeting a host of monsters (Frankenstein, the WolfMan, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man to name but a few) to the detective adventures of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. My favorites, however, were the sophisticated, and hilarious, screwball comedies produced lly Hollywood studios during the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s and into the early 1940s. These films, which often matched the wits of daz an eccentric Park Avenue family. Bullock hires zlingly daffy females with those of hapless males, fea Parke as the family's new butler and eventually tured the talents of such well known stars as Cary Grant, falls in love with her new "protege." Irene Dunne, Katherine Hepburn, Clark Cable, and Of course, as often happens in these movies, Claudette Colbert. Who hasn't chortled over the bud Parke, representingthe decency and forthright ding romance between a spoiled heiress and a recently ness of the common man, teaches the wealthy fired reporter in It Happened One Night ( 1934), the mis family a thing or twoabout life and saves them understandings between a married couple in TheAwful from disaster. A box-office hit at the time, the Truth (1937), the madcap search for a missing dinosaur movie featured fine acting from not only its bone in Bringing Up Baby ( 1938), and the bizarre machi stars-both Lombard and Powell received nations of a newspaper editor attempting to lure his Academy Award nominations for their per ex-wife back to her former job in His GirlFriday (1940)? formances-but also from its supporting cast. -
“Can't Help Singing”: the “Modern” Opera Diva In
“CAN’T HELP SINGING”: THE “MODERN” OPERA DIVA IN HOLLYWOOD FILM, 1930–1950 Gina Bombola A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences. Chapel Hill 2017 Approved by: Annegret Fauser Tim Carter Mark Katz Chérie Rivers Ndaliko Jocelyn Neal ©2017 Gina Bombola ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Gina Bombola: “Can’t Help Singing”: The “Modern” Opera Diva in Hollywood Film, 1930–1950 (Under the direction of Annegret Fauser) Following the release of Columbia Pictures’ surprise smash hit, One Night of Love (1934), major Hollywood studios sought to cash in on the public’s burgeoning interest in films featuring opera singers. For a brief period thereafter, renowned Metropolitan Opera artists such as Grace Moore and Lily Pons fared well at the box office, bringing “elite” musical culture to general audiences for a relatively inexpensive price. By the 1940s, however, the studios began grooming their own operatic actresses instead of transplanting celebrities from the stage. Stars such as Deanna Durbin, Kathryn Grayson, and Jane Powell thereby became ambassadors of opera from the highly commercial studio lot. My dissertation traces the shifts in film production and marketing of operatic singers in association with the rise of such cultural phenomena as the music-appreciation movement, all contextualized within the changing social and political landscapes of the United States spanning the Great Depression to the Cold War. Drawing on a variety of methodologies—including, among others, archival research, film analysis, feminist criticisms, and social theory—I argue that Hollywood framed opera as less of a European theatrical art performed in elite venues and more of a democratic, albeit still white, musical tradition that could be sung by talented individuals in any location. -
II. Remembrance Representation
II. Remembrance & Representation Figure 1. Benson Fong, Beulah Quo, and George Takei on the set of My Three Sons. 2016 Amerasia Journal Amerasia 96 Amerasia Journal 42:2 (2016): 96-117 10.17953/aj.42.1.96 The Asian American Next Door Enfiguring the Model Minority on the Domestic Melodrama Melissa Phruksachart In the years between the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans (1942-1946) and the 1965 Immigration Act, what prepared the Ameri- can public to recognize and validate the term “model minority?” This essay proposes a televisual genealogy of the model minority as dis- tinct from the 1966 formulation published by The New York Times in William Petersen’s feature “Success Story, Japanese-American Style.”1 Building upon prior scholarship, I inquire into the early Cold War log- ics that precipitated the popular rise of the model minority figure in 1966. In particular, I point to network television as an archive that circulated the structures of feeling necessary for the model minority to take hold. By doing so, I place recent histories of Asian American do- mesticity during the Cold War era into closer conversation with U.S. popular culture, particularly television. While popular media histories lament the rarity of Asian Ameri- cans on television, I identify the trope of the Asian American neigh- bor as increasingly common on television in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both the television industry and Asian American communities found themselves rapidly growing in size in mid-1950s California. At stake for both the television industry and Asian American commu- nities was the chance to be “domesticated” into the American home. -
Films from the THIRTIES: PART II 1935-39
t% The Museum of Modern Art 1] West 53 Street, New York, N.Y. 10019 Tel. 245-3200 Cable: Modernart No. 83 FOR RELEASE: Friday, August 25, I968 Films from THE THIRTIES: PART II 1935-39 The Museum of Modern Art, will present a retrospective of films from the thirties beginning August 23, and running through October 6. The Thirties, according to Willard Van Dyke, Director of the Department of Film, will consist of 39 pictures, representing some of the richest creative talent in American cinema at a time that has been called "the dear, dead days not beyond recall." Two years ago the Museum presented The Thirties, U.S.A., Part I, covering the first half of the decade. The films being shown now as Part II were made from 1935 ^^ 193 '• Among the pictures to be shown are: Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon"; Paul Muni in "The Life of Emile Zola," the Story of a Northern Jew's lynching in the South; the great thriller "Night Must Fall," an adaptation of the Emlyn Williams play starring Robert Montgomery; and "The Good Earth," a spectacle film in black and white, from Pearl Buck's popular novel, for which Luise Rainer won her second Academy Award, with Paul Muni in the starring role. The latter part of the thirties was characterized by further achievements in the musical film, largely due to the talents of Fred Astaire, who with Ginger Rogers starred in "Top Hat," and "Shall We Dance," both of which are in the retrospective. The most important contributions to the annals of films made in the thirties was the series of "snowball" comedies Hollywood turned out at a time of grim, economic hardships. -
Barbara Stanwyck Movies: a Treasure Trove
Life & Times Barbara Stanwyck movies: a treasure trove Barbara Stanwyck movies are all over careers. When hers eclipsed his, he fell into 50 years old. In the recent retrospective of alcoholism and wife beating. Later, their her films at the BFI Southbank season, half story became the plot of a movie, A Star were over 80 years old. Yet what stands out is Born. from this body of work is how modern the Her co-stars were a roll call of stars on films are, not in their plots or settings but the rise including Clark Gable (Night Nurse), in the characters she played and how she John Wayne (Baby Face), Kirk Douglas played them. (The Strange Love of Martha Ivers), Burt Stanwyck was never meek, decorative, Lancaster (Sorry, Wrong Number), Henry or incidental to the plot. Whether a young Fonda (The Mad Miss Manton), James woman sleeping her way to the top in Baby Mason, Cyd Charisse, and Ava Gardner (East Face (in 1933, before the Hays code), a Side, West Side), Humphrey Bogart (The preacher in Capra’s The Miracle Woman, or Two Mrs. Carrolls), David Niven (The Other an eroticised missionary’s wife in The Bitter Love), Marilyn Monroe (Clash by Night), and Tea of General Yen, she chose a range even Elvis Presley (Roustabout). She had of parts in which strong-minded women more regular partners in Gary Cooper (Meet made a difference to how the story turned John Doe, Ball of Fire), William Holden out. In her 82 films she had top billing in all (Golden Boy, Executive Suite), Joel McCrea (The Great Man’s Lady, Banjo on my Knee), but three. -
Spectator 1959-04-16 Editors of the Ps Ectator
Seattle nivU ersity ScholarWorks @ SeattleU The peS ctator 4-16-1959 Spectator 1959-04-16 Editors of The pS ectator Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/spectator Recommended Citation Editors of The peS ctator, "Spectator 1959-04-16" (1959). The Spectator. 642. http://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/spectator/642 This Newspaper is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The peS ctator by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ SeattleU. Irene Dunne to Speak at Commencement University's can Heart Assn., Red Cross drive, and the volun- Irene Dunne will be the Com- Society. A. A. Lemieux, teer field army of the American Cancer mencement speaker, the Very Rev. Medal S.J., today. The University will award Notre Dame awarded her the Laetare announced annually outstanding Cath- honorary doctor of law degree at the June in 1949, given to the her an She will be the third 5 exercises. olic layman of the year. University Dunne," Laetare Medalist to speak at S.U.s commencement "Seattle will honor Miss Alfred said, "because of her work with the in the past five years.The others wereGen. Fr. Lemieux 1956, and Jefferson United Nations and because of her outstanding M. Gruenther, who spoke in achievements innumerous civic andpublicgroups." Caffrey, a diplomat, in 1955. Fr. Lemieux said the degree would be a testi- MISS DUNNE WON the American Brother- monial to an outstanding woman who has been hood Award of the National Council of Christians a credit to her community, her country and her and Jews in 1948 for her contributions toreligious profession. -
The Dark Side of Hollywood
TCM Presents: The Dark Side of Hollywood Side of The Dark Presents: TCM I New York I November 20, 2018 New York Bonhams 580 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10022 24838 Presents +1 212 644 9001 bonhams.com The Dark Side of Hollywood AUCTIONEERS SINCE 1793 New York | November 20, 2018 TCM Presents... The Dark Side of Hollywood Tuesday November 20, 2018 at 1pm New York BONHAMS Please note that bids must be ILLUSTRATIONS REGISTRATION 580 Madison Avenue submitted no later than 4pm on Front cover: lot 191 IMPORTANT NOTICE New York, New York 10022 the day prior to the auction. New Inside front cover: lot 191 Please note that all customers, bonhams.com bidders must also provide proof Table of Contents: lot 179 irrespective of any previous activity of identity and address when Session page 1: lot 102 with Bonhams, are required to PREVIEW submitting bids. Session page 2: lot 131 complete the Bidder Registration Los Angeles Session page 3: lot 168 Form in advance of the sale. The Friday November 2, Please contact client services with Session page 4: lot 192 form can be found at the back of 10am to 5pm any bidding inquiries. Session page 5: lot 267 every catalogue and on our Saturday November 3, Session page 6: lot 263 website at www.bonhams.com and 12pm to 5pm Please see pages 152 to 155 Session page 7: lot 398 should be returned by email or Sunday November 4, for bidder information including Session page 8: lot 416 post to the specialist department 12pm to 5pm Conditions of Sale, after-sale Session page 9: lot 466 or to the bids department at collection and shipment. -
Double Indemnity by Matt Zoller Seitz “The a List: the National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films,” 2002
Double Indemnity By Matt Zoller Seitz “The A List: The National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films,” 2002 Reprinted by permission of the author “I never knew that murder could smell like honeysuckle.” That’s a confession by the narrator and hero of “Double Indemnity,” a hard- boiled insurance man named Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) who died be- cause he fell for a great pair of legs. Walter Neff narrates quite a bit of this 1944 Billy Wilder classic, laying out the story of how a routine sales call some- how turned into a steamy adulterous Fred MacMurray checks out Barbara Stanwyck‘s “honey of an anklet.” affair with one Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Courtesy Library of Congress Stanwyck), a black-widow blonde who wanted to kill her husband for the insurance money and ed censor Will Hays waving his scissors in Hollywood’s needed an expert to help maximize her profit. Remarka- direction in the 1930s and 1940s, the stories couldn’t end bly enough, he thought he was in love with the woman — any other way — noir films were still deeply subversive and thanks to the doomed romantic charge passing be- affairs. Cynicism trumped optimism; naïve or generous tween MacMurray and Stanwyck, audiences nearly be- characters existed mainly to be taken advantage of, or to lieved the feeling was mutual. remind us of how far the hero had fall from anything re- sembling decency. The genre singlehandedly contradicted Their story takes the form of an extended deathbed con- and undermined the optimistic attitude of most Holly- fession by the fatally shot hero.