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Screwball Comedy
see all genres ›The "screwball" era of screen comedy officially began and ended in the 1930s, as crazy shenanigans among the wealthy (or aspiring) entertained Great Depression audiences thirsty for escape. But its influence has extended far forward.
Discover Screwball Comedy Films
Genres / Comedy / Screwball Comedy
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Alice Chops the Suey
A highly unusual Alice Comedy, featuring devices familiar from other cartoon series. The opening and closing are similar to those in the OUT OF THE INKWELL cartoons which the Fleischer Studio was producing at the same time, with the main characters emerging from, and disappearing back into, an ink bottle....Start your free trial to watch
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Alice in the Jungle
This short is a reworking of ALICE HUNTING IN AFRICA, which had been produced in 1924 with the original Alice, Virginia Davis. ALICE HUNTING IN AFRICA had received only limited release, and Disney's distributor asked him to produce this new version, with Virginia's original scenes combined with new...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice Rattled by Rats
Several of the Alice Comedies, including this one, featured crowds of nondescript mice or rats. These rats bear scant resemblance to the later Mickey Mouse, but this particular short was loosely remade in 1929 as a Mickey Mouse cartoon, WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY. Here it's Alice who goes away, leaving Julius in...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice Solves the Puzzle
Little Margie Gay, who would go on to play Alice in more than half of the Alice Comedies, made her first appearance in ALICE SOLVES THE PUZZLE (The title introducing her was lettered by Ub Iwerks, who was not only the studio's lead animator but also its lettering specialist). And this short also marked the...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice the Jail Bird
In this offbeat entry, Alice and her friends steal a pie from a windowsill and wind up on the wrong side of the law. The sight of a Disney character in prison stripes may seem incongruous today, but in fact this film anticipates a Mickey Mouse short, THE CHAIN GANG, produced five years later. Note that...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice the Whaler
This entry in the Alice Comedies was released near the end of the series. In it we can see the fourth and last of the girls who played Alice, the relatively little-known child actress Lois Hardwick. Notice that Ub Iwerks' drawing style has matured by 1927, and now looks very different from that in the 1925...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice's Balloon Race
Reflecting the mid-1920s obsession with air travel, stunts and competition, this short pits Julius against Pete as more or less friendly rivals. By late 1925 Julius had as more or less friendly rivals. By late 1925 Julius had effectively replaced Alice as the main protagonist in these films. Here Alice,...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice's Egg Plant
A child actress known as Dawn O'Day made her first and only appearance as Alice in this delightful short. In later years she would change her name and become much better known in the 1930s and 40s as Anne Shirley. Here she's the owner of an "Egg Plant," a factory in which hens lay eggs until incited by an...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice's Orphan
The title is a misnomer: Alice can be glimpsed here, but it's really Julius who finds, adopts and attempts to raise the orphan. The basic situation, and even some of the individual gags, are borrowed from Chaplin's feature-length comedy THE KID, released four years earlier. But Julius' unconventional parenting techniques are...Start your free trial to watch
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Alice's Tin Pony
The title of this short is a takeoff on John Ford's THE IRON HORSE (1924), an epic Western about the building of the railroads. The short itself is a spoof on Westerns and, in particular, railroad films. Walt Disney indulges his well-known affinity for railroad trains here, with extended train gags and a...Start your free trial to watch
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As You Were
Oh, those Army daze and nights! An infusion of WAC beauties adds to the fun when ex-G.I. "Dodo" Doubleday (William Tracy), now a hotel clerk, impresses Army brass with his memory and considers going back into the military. But recruiting station sergeant Bill Ames (Joe Sawyer), remembering how Tracy jinxed him back in WWII...Start your free trial to watch
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The Fifth Wall
THE FIFTH WALL is a screwball comedy about video artist Willie Boy Walker's life being turned upside down by his winning the Nobel Prize in Literature (and accompanying cash award of nine million Swedish Crowns = $900,000). The thing is, he's never written a book! A Channel 8 reporter (Rohana Kenin) is placed on the strange...Start your free trial to watch
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French Cops Learning English
Consider how you might create a language lesson for a silent film and then marvel that Georges Méliès somehow managed it. Although not an unqualified success, the police officers attending the English School under the management of Miss Blackford learn to conjugate "to have" and get to cuddle some female...Start your free trial to watch
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Getting Evidence
A jealous husband visits the Hawkshaw Detective Agency (a redundant naming device in its own right) and asks the detective to obtain evidence of his wife's supposed infidelities. Only a photograph is deemed acceptable evidence and the private eye's attempts to secure it provide a series of comic incidents,...Start your free trial to watch
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The Headless Ghost
Three foreign exchange students, Americans Ronnie and Bill, and Danish Ingrid, go on a day-trip to the supposedly haunted Ambrose Castle. The students decide to spend the night in the castle to find out if it is really haunted, and meet the ghost of the Fourth Earl of Ambrose and various other spooks.Start your free trial to watch
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Leave It to the Marines
Quintessential schnook Sid Melton, looking for the license bureau so that he can marry his girl Mara Lynn, instead stumbles upon a Marine recruiting office and ends up in uniform. Lynn reacts by joining the Woman's Marine Corps. Between the two of them, they're the Howls of Montezuma and the Roars of...Start your free trial to watch
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Mr. Walkie Talkie
Joe Sawyer and William Tracy return in another wacky service comedy, Sawyer as the exasperated sergeant of a GI trainee (Tracy) who remembers everything he has ever heard. Their misadventures include reassignment to Korea, an enemy spy and the offer of a Congressional Medal of Honor for Sawyer, if he can...Start your free trial to watch
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Nothing Sacred
He's an unscrupulous newspaperman eager to exploit the story of a young woman's death by radium poisoning. She knows she's not really dying but can't pass up a free trip to New York with all the trimmings. So begins William Wellman's wonderful black comedy NOTHING SACRED, starring Frederic March and Carole Lombard. Legendary...Start your free trial to watch