Sony unlocks the Columbia vaults and eight screwball gems tumble out

June 2, 11:07 AMPittsburgh Stage and Screen ExaminerAlan Petrucelli

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Something screwy is going on here.

Blame Sony Pictures Home Entertainment who are about to open the doors to the Columbia vault and release Icons of Screwball Comedy Volumes 1 and 2. Each set is home to four off-centered gems.

Screwball comedy didn’t just happen one night.

For those who don’t know their Lombard from their Lubitsch, we offer a brief history: Screwball comedy was virtually invented at Columbia Studios during the height of the depression. Following the success of Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (1934), Columbia would make more of these madcap romantic comedies than any other studio. Typical screwballs featured marital mix-ups, a breezy approach to the roles of the sexes and plenty of opportunities to poke fun at the wealthy, while allowing audiences to dwell in the luxury of the upper-class. These films also offered some of the best roles for actresses in this period, often playing working-girls in a man’s world (think Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday) or socially liberal gals battling restrictive upper-crust society (now think Katharine Hepburn in Holiday). 

Just how many laughs are involved?
Here’s a look at the each collection and each film.

Icons of Screwball Comedy: Volume 1
If You Could Only Cook (1935)
Unemployed Jean Arthur (seen here) happens to meet Herbert Marshall sitting on a park bench. Assuming that he needs work too, she asks him to pose with her as husband and wife so they can get jobs as a cook-and-butler team at the mansion of a mobster.  
Charmed by her, Marshall, who's actually the head of an auto firm, goes along with the plan, learning the finer points of butlering from his own butler. In order to sell the deception, the “couple” has to share the servants’ quarters, and the comedy complications multiply from there.

Too Many Husbands (1940)
Director Wesley Ruggles assembled a stellar cast, including Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas, for this fast-paced, Oscar-nominated comedy. Arthur finds herself in the position of having one extra spouse when MacMurray returns one year after he’s been declared legally dead—and shortly after she’s married his best friend!

My Sister Eileen (1942)
Rosalind Russell (who was nominated as Best Actress for her role) teams with Brian Aherne and Janet Blair in this tale of two Ohio girls who, newly arrived in New York, settle into a Greenwich Village basement apartment, then are promptly confronted by the neighborhood characters.
Russell would later reprise this role in the Broadway musical version Wonderful Town. Dialogue at its zippiest.

She Wouldn’t Say Yes (1945)
Director Alexander Hall was reunited with his My Sister Eileen star Rosalind Russell for this comedy about a psychiatrist who ardently believes one should keep one's impulses under control. Lee Bowman plays the cartoonist who’s most successful comic creation, “the Nixie,” embodies the opposite approach to life. Bowman and Russell are thrown together when a ticket agent, inspired by the Nixie, assigns them to the same train berth—unleashing some of Bowman’s own impulses.

Icons of Screwball Comedy: Volume 2
Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
Irene Dunne (below) was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for this zany romantic comedy about a small-town girl who, under a pseudonym, writes a racy best-selling novel that scandalizes her prudish neighbors. On a trip to New York, she falls in love with a sophisticated artist (played by Melvyn Douglas), who discovers her secret and sets out to free her from the confines of her small-town society.

But Theodora takes up the task of liberating him using his own tools: gossip, humiliation, and plenty of humor. Once censored for suggestive situations, the film has been newly restored and is presented uncut.

Together Again (1944)
Director Charles Vidor reunited Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer for their third and last film as a team. This is a tale concerning a small town mayor and a widow who hire a suave sculptor to immortalize her deceased husband. The New York Times, in an enthusiastic review, declared this picture “suggestive of naughtier things” than censors allowed for the period.

A Night to Remember (1943)
Brian Aherne and Loretta Young (so colorful, eh?) star as a married couple who move to New York’s Greenwich Village. Young hopes the new surroundings will inspire her hubby to write books other than thrillers . . . perhaps a love story. Her plans go awry when the building turns out to be filled with shady characters and the body of a dead man is found in their backyard.

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940)
Ray Milland and Loretta Young star in this story of a best-selling authoress who expounds the virtues of the single life, and the doctor who is mistaken for her husband. The supporting cast sparkles, including Gail Patrick and Edmund Gwenn, often more the the leads.