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.
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Genres / Comedy / Screwball Comedy
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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...Watch Movie
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My Man Godfrey
Whilst on a scavenger hunt for a high society party game, Cornelia Bullock and her sister Irene find Godfrey, a tramp living on the city dump. Godfrey takes a dislike to Cornelia and decides to help Irene win the hunt for a "forgotten man." Soon Irene persuades him to work for her family as the...Watch Movie
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Ladies Who Do
Whilst financier James Ryder (Harry H. Corbett) discusses a potential takeover deal, he is unaware that Mrs. Cragg (Peggy Mount) is busy polishing the floor beneath his desk. After Ryder leaves, Mrs. Cragg retrieves an unsmoked cigar from the wastepaper bin, wraps it in a crumpled telegram and...Watch Movie
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Rat Pfink a Boo Boo
When sexy Ceebee Beaumont, main squeeze of rockabilly superstar Lonnie Lord, is kidnapped by the Chain Gang, Lonnie and his friend Titus Twimbly leap into leotards and swing into action as Rat Pfink and Boo Boo, champions of downtrodden women and children everywhere! The...Watch Movie
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The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog
One of several Edison films from this period that used animated intertitles. It continued "a popular fad which has been widely advertised by lithographs and souvenir mailing cards." These postcards showed portraits of various members of the Dam family, with their names: I. B....Watch Movie
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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...Watch Movie
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Double Bunk
When newlyweds Jack (Ian Carmichael) and Peggy (Janette Scott) face eviction, they are tricked into buying a rundown houseboat. After rebuilding the engine they take their old friends Sid (Sid James) and Sandra (Liz Fraser) on a local trip down the river to Folkestone. But as the fog gets thicker...Watch Movie
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A Night in a Dormitory
Top-billed Ginger Rogers, three years before her initial career-making teaming with Fred Astaire, was just dipping her tapping toes in the movies when she made this Pathé melody comedy. Having already conquered vaudeville and Broadway, she is introduced here under her own name...Watch Movie
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Team-Mates
"We're supposed to be going steady, but you're not!" spits heroine Vicki at football captain Brian when she realizes he's been, uh, "playing ball" behind her back with half of womankind. In retaliation (but "only because I want Brian to recognize me as an individual!"), she insists on trying out...Watch Movie
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Something to Sing About
Though one of Warner Brothers' most popular stars, James Cagney was often at odds with his studio, complaining that they worked him harder and paid him less than many smaller box-office names. Walking out during one contract dispute in 1938, he made two independent features,...Watch Movie
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Strictly Confidential
'Commander' Bissham-Riley and 'Major' Rory McQuarry bump into each other when they play the same confidence trick in a restaurant. After being thrown out by the enraged proprietor, the two comic heels have a chance meeting with a beautiful young widow, Maxine Millard, who is...Watch Movie
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The Gay Dog
Jim Gay is a northern miner with an obsession for greyhound racing. Having seen Raving Beauty romp to first place at short odds because everybody had backed it, Jim decides to increase its odds for the big race by pretending that Raving Beauty is ill and unlikely to finish. But keeping this a...Watch Movie
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The Terrible Kids
Part of the popular bad boy genre that would soon come under heavy criticism for providing young viewers with undesirable role models. Porter's comedy shows two boys disrupting a neighborhood's routine with the help of their dog, played by Mannie. Every scene is a variation on...Watch Movie
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Operation Cupid
When three bumbling conmen win a dating agency in a rigged card game they think their luck has finally changed. When they take charge of the business though, they discover that the con is on them and that the agency is in debt, the furnishings are all on credit and the staff haven't been paid!...Watch Movie
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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...Watch Movie
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Stick 'Em Up
Released as LET'S HAVE A MURDER in England, this hour-long version stars Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss as two inept detectives who are brought in by the Colonel Gordon to save his son from a murder charge and the gallows. As the detective duo searches for clues to clear Gordon's name, they find a...Watch Movie
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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...Watch Movie
