Bringing Up Baby (1938) is a screwball comedy from the genre's classic period.
Screwball comedy is a film subgenre of theromantic comedy genre that became popular during theGreat Depression, beginning in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1950s, that satirizes the traditional love story. It has secondary characteristics similar tofilm noir, distinguished by a female character who dominates the relationship with the male central character, whosemasculinity is challenged,[1] and the two engaging in a humorousbattle of the sexes.[2]
What sets the screwball comedy apart from the generic romantic comedy is that "screwball comedy puts the emphasis on a funny spoofing of love, while the more traditional romantic comedy ultimately accents love."[4] Other elements of the screwball comedy include fast-paced, overlappingrepartee,farcical situations,escapist themes, physical battle of the sexes, disguise and masquerade, and plot lines involving courtship and marriage.[2] Somecomic plays are also described as screwball comedies.
Screwball comedy gets its name from thescrewball, a type ofbreakingpitch inbaseball andfastpitch softball that moves in the opposite direction from all other breaking pitches. These features of the screwball pitch also describe the dynamics between the lead characters in screwball comedy films. According to Gehring (2008):[5]
Still,screwball comedy probably drew its name from the term's entertainingly unorthodox use in the national pastime. Before the term's application in 1930s film criticism, "screwball" had been used in baseball to describe both an oddball player and "any pitched ball that moves in an unusual or unexpected way." Obviously, these characteristics also describe performers in screwball comedy films, from oddballCarole Lombard to the unusual or unexpected movement ofKatharine Hepburn inBringing Up Baby (1938). As with the crazy period antics in baseball, screwball comedy uses nutty behavior as a prism through which to view a topsy-turvy period in American history.
Screwball comedy has proved to be a popular and enduring film genre.[6]Three-Cornered Moon (1933), starringClaudette Colbert, is often credited as the first true screwball,[7] thoughBombshell starringJean Harlow followed it in the same year. Although many film scholars agree that its classic period had effectively ended by 1942,[8] elements of the genre have persisted or have been paid homage to in later films. Other film scholars argue that the screwball comedy lives on.
During theGreat Depression, there was a general demand for films with a strong social class critique and hopeful, escapist-oriented themes. The screwball format arose largely due to the major film studios' desire to avoid censorship by the increasingly enforcedHays Code. Filmmakers resorted to handling these elements covertly to incorporate prohibited risqué elements into their plots. The verbal sparring between the sexes served as a stand-in for physical and sexual tension.[9] Though some film scholars, such asWilliam K. Everson, argue that "screwball comedies were not so much rebelling against the Production Code as they were attacking – and ridiculing – the dull, lifeless respectability that the Code insisted on for family viewing."[10]
Films that are definitive of the genre usually feature farcical situations, a combination of slapstick and fast-paced repartee, and show the struggle between economic classes. They also generally feature a self-confident and oftenstubborn central female protagonist and a plot involving courtship, marriage, orremarriage. These traits can be seen in bothIt Happened One Night (1934) andMy Man Godfrey (1936). The film criticAndrew Sarris has defined the screwball comedy as "asex comedy without the sex."[11]
Like farce, screwball comedies often involve masquerades and disguises in which a character or characters resort to secrecy. Sometimes screwball comedies feature male characterscross-dressing, further contributing to elements of masquerade (Bringing Up Baby (1938),Love Crazy (1941),I Was a Male War Bride (1949), andSome Like It Hot (1959)). At first, the couple seems mismatched and even hostile to each other, but eventually overcome their differences amusingly or entertainingly, leading to romance. Often, this mismatch comes about when the man is of a lower social class than the woman (It Happened One Night (1934),Bringing Up Baby andHoliday, both 1938). The woman often plans the final romantic union from the outset, and the man is seemingly oblivious to this. InBringing Up Baby, the woman tells a third party: "He's the man I'm going to marry. He doesn't know it, but I am."
These pictures also offered a cultural escape valve: a safe battleground to explore serious issues such as class under a comedic and non-threatening framework.[12] Class issues are a strong component of screwball comedies: the upper class is represented as idle, pampered, and having difficulty coping with the real world. By contrast, when lower-class people attempt to pass themselves off as upper class or otherwise insinuate themselves into high society, they can do so with relative ease (The Lady Eve, 1941;My Man Godfrey, 1936). Some critics believe that the portrayal of the upper class inIt Happened One Night was brought about by theGreat Depression, and the financially struggling moviegoing public's desire to see the upper class taught a lesson in humanity.[13]
Screwball comedies also tend to contain ridiculous, farcical situations, such as inBringing Up Baby, where a couple must take care of a pet leopard during much of the film. Slapstick elements are also frequently present, such as the numerous pratfallsHenry Fonda takes inThe Lady Eve (1941).[14]
One subgenre of screwball is known as thecomedy of remarriage, in which characters divorce and then remarry one another (The Awful Truth (1937),His Girl Friday (1940),The Philadelphia Story (1940)).[15] Some scholars point to this frequent device as evidence of the shift in the American moral code, as it showed freer attitudes toward divorce (though the divorce always turns out to have been a mistake: "You've got an old fashioned idea divorce is something that lasts forever, 'til death do us part.' Why divorce doesn't mean anything nowadays, Hildy, just a few words mumbled over you by a judge.")
The philosopherStanley Cavell has noted that many classic screwball comedies turn on an interlude in the state ofConnecticut (Bringing Up Baby,The Lady Eve,The Awful Truth).[16] InChristmas in Connecticut (1945), the action moves to Connecticut and remains there for the duration of the film.New York City is also featured in a lot of screwball comedies, which critics have noted may be because of the economic diversity of the city and the ability to contrast different social classes during the Great Depression.[13] The screwball comediesIt Happened One Night (1934) andThe Palm Beach Story (1942) also feature characters traveling to and fromFlorida by train. Trains, another staple of screwball comedies and romantic comedies from the era, are also featured prominently inDesign for Living (1934),Twentieth Century (1934) andVivacious Lady (1938).
Elements of classic screwball comedy often found in more recent films which might otherwise be classified asromantic comedies include the "battle of the sexes" (Down with Love,How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), witty repartee (Down with Love), and the contrast between the wealthy and the middle class (You've Got Mail,Two Weeks Notice). Many ofElvis Presley's films from the 1960s had drawn, consciously or unconsciously, the many characteristics of the screwball comedy genre. Some examples areDouble Trouble,Tickle Me,Girl Happy andLive a Little, Love a Little. Modern updates on screwball comedy are also sometimes categorized asblack comedy (Intolerable Cruelty, which also features a twist on the classic screwball element of divorce and remarriage). TheCoen Brothers often include screwball elements in a film which may not otherwise be considered screwball or even a comedy.
In his 2008 production of the classicBeaumarchais comedyThe Marriage of Figaro, authorWilliam James Royce trimmed the five-act play down to three acts and labeled it a "classic screwball comedy". The playwright made Suzanne the central character, endowing her with all the feisty comedic strengths of her classic film counterparts. In his adaptation, entitledOne Mad Day! (a play on Beaumarchais' original French title), Royce underscored all of the elements of the classic screwball comedy, suggesting that Beaumarchais may have had a hand in the origins of the genre.
^Dancyger, Ken; Rush, Jeff (2006).Alternative Scriptwriting (Fourth ed.). Focal Press. p. 85.ISBN978-0240808499.The screwball comedy is funny film noir that has a happy ending... The premise of the film is about the struggle in their relationship. During the course of the struggle, which is highly sexually charged, the maleness of the central character is challenged. The female is the dominant character in the relationship. This role reversion is central to the screwball comedy.
^Cavell, Stanley (2003).Pursuits of happiness: the Hollywood comedy of remarriage (10. print ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.ISBN978-0-674-73906-2.
^Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981
^abcdHalbout, Grégoire (2023).Hollywood Screwball Comedy 1934-1945: sex, love, and democratic ideals (Paperback ed.). New York London Oxford New Delhi Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic.ISBN978-1501347610.
^Beach, Christopher (2004).Class, language, and American film comedy (Transferred to digital print ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 117.ISBN978-0-521-00209-7.
^Hart, Hugh (9 April 2001)."The Gift of Gab".Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 4 January 2021. Retrieved8 September 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
