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. My favorite screwball comedy, however, involved a I still marvel at the fine comedic timing of Hoosier-born actress who became a fixture in this Mischa Auer, who played Carlo, Angelica film genre: Carole Lombard. In 1936 Lombard Bullock's protege, and Eugene Pallette, who starred alongside her ex-husband William Powell portrayed the harried patriarch of the ("the only intelligent actor I've ever met," according Bullock family. Not even a fine physical come­ to Lombard) in the Universal movie My Man Godfrey. dian such as Jim Carrey could hope to match Directed by Gregory La Cava, the movie tells the story Auer's side-splitting imitation of a gorilla to of Godfrey "Duke" Parke (Powell), a former Boston amuse Irene during a (fake) crying spell. Brahmin who after a failed romance begins living at The delight I took upon first viewing My the city dump with victims of the depression. A scav­ Man Godfreycame back to me again recently enger hunt organized as part of a society fund-raiser through two events. The first was when I for the underprivileged brings Parke-the prover­ received the film on a new DVD from the bial forgotten man-in contact with Irene Bullock Criterion Collection, which through the (Lombard), a young and scatterbrained member of years has pulled cinematic treasures from 2 TRACES Spring 2002 .