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·     British Comedy ·     Masterpiece Comedies ·     Romantic Comedies   Screwball Comedies

Screwball Comedies
Dizzy plots, daffy sight gags, deft dialogue: common denominators to our screwball-comedy Essentials.
During the 1930s, the introduction of film sound, along with the social ferment of the depression, helped propel cinematic comedy beyond the broad visual payoff of slapstick into a unique comic realm. A new generation of smart writers (including theatrical scenarists like Ben Hecht and Preston Sturges) and inspired directors (such as Sturges, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, and Frank Capra) opened up the predictable arc of romantic comedy by adding volatile plot twists, gusts of social satire, and, above all, a tradition of rapid-fire verbal duels and deliciously antic characters. Screwball comedy remains a proud American dialect emulated through the decades since.

	The Awful Truth (1937) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Cary Grant / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $19.95 Our Price: $16.99 You Save: $2.96 (15%)
Amazon.com essential video One of the top five screwball comedies of the '30s, this helped to cement a genre that waxed golden until the end of WWII. Director Leo McCarey won an Oscar for Best Director for this 1937 romantic comedy--one of the most successful films of his career. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are a squabbling couple who separates because of supposed infidelities on both sides. They part, but cannot really keep away from each other. Grant finds himself hooked up with a socialite, Dunne becomes engaged to a... Read More
	Bringing Up Baby (1938) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Katharine Hepburn / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $19.98 Our Price: $14.99 You Save: $4.99 (25%)
Amazon.com essential video "The love impulse in man," says a psychiatrist in Bringing Up Baby, "frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict." That's for sure. For a primer on the rules and regulations of the classic screwball comedy, which throws love and conflict into close proximity, look no further. A straight-laced paleontologist (Cary Grant) loses a dinosaur bone to a dog belonging to free-spirited heiress Katharine Hepburn. In trying to retrieve said bone, Grant is drawn into the vortex surrounding the delicious... Read More
	Duck Soup (1933) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Marx Brothers / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $11.24 You Save: $3.74 (25%)
Amazon.com essential video For those who love the Marx Brothers (Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera), that this movie is side-slappingly funny is a given. For those new to the Marx Brothers, this is the perfect introduction to Groucho, Chico, and Harpo (and even Zeppo), three of the funniest men to ever grace the screen. Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) is the dictator of the small nation Freedonia. The country is a disaster, in financial disrepair, and the wealthy Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont) is its benefactor and the... Read More
	Royal Wedding (1951) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 1-2 weeks
	Fred Astaire / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $19.99 Our Price: $16.99 You Save: $3.00 (15%)
Amazon.com Fred Astaire dances on the ceiling in this 1951 Alan Jay Lerner musical for MGM, directed by Stanley Donen (Singin' in the Rain). The appealing story finds Astaire as part of a brother-and-sister act (along with Jane Powell) that travels to London at the time of Queen Elizabeth II's wedding. Astaire and Powell each find romances that threaten to break up the act, but that's mostly fun window dressing in a movie better known for some truly creative sequences made vivid by Donen, including... Read More
	It Happened One Night (1934) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Clark Gable / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $19.95 Our Price: $14.96 You Save: $4.99 (25%)
Amazon.com essential video Director Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) took home every Oscar in the book (well, okay, all the major ones) for this seminal 1934 comedy starring Clark Gable as a hard-bitten reporter who stays close to a runaway heiress (Claudette Colbert) rather than lose a good story. Funny and sexy, the film is full of memorable scenes often referred to in other films, such as the "walls of Jericho" (a mere bedcover hung on a line down the middle of a room so opposite-sex roommates can get... Read More
	The Lady Eve (1941) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Barbara Stanwyck / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $13.99 You Save: $0.99 (7%)
Amazon.com essential video In 1941, Barbara Stanwyck was offered two screwball roles equally suited to her tart intelligence, deft comic timing, and undeniable sex appeal, and it's a photo finish as to which was funnier--showgirl-on-the-lam Sugarpuss O'Shea, the title character in Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire, or con artist Jean Harrington a.k.a. Lady Eve Sidwich, the delirious fulcrum for this classic Preston Sturges comedy. Under Sturges's typically antic microscope, the collision between the gold-digging Harrington and... Read More
	The Palm Beach Story (1942) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Claudette Colbert / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $13.99 You Save: $0.99 (7%)
Amazon.com essential video Among the earliest writers to set his sights on the director's chair, Preston Sturges brought a frank, unsentimental view of the war between the sexes to his mid-'40s features that exemplify his style, as demonstrated in this prescient 1942 gem. Architect Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and his wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert), further refine the archetypal Sturges couple--the male embodying strength, idealism, and a certain naivete, the female ultimately stronger, smarter, and (as revealed early on in... Read More
	Raising Arizona (1987) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Nicolas Cage / Rated PG-13 NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $13.99 You Save: $0.99 (7%)
Amazon.com essential video Blood Simple made it clear that the cinematically precocious Coen brothers (writer-director Joel and writer-producer Ethan) were gifted filmmakers to watch out for. But it was the outrageously farcical Raising Arizona that announced the Coens' darkly comedic audacity to the world. It wasn't widely seen when released in 1987, but its modest audience was vocally supportive, and this hyperactive comedy has since developed a large and loyal following. It's the story of "Ed" (for Edwina, played by... Read More
	Some Like It Hot (1959) ~ VHS ~ Usually ships in 24 hours
	Marilyn Monroe / Not Rated NTSC format (US and Canada only) Click here for more information	List Price: $14.95 Our Price: $11.21 You Save: $3.74 (25%)
Amazon.com essential video Maybe "nobody's perfect," as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer,... Read More