Screwballs of the silver screen: a treasured comedy genre turns 70: the 1934 releases of "It Happened One Night" and "Twentieth Century" launched Hollywood into an era of madcap zaniness that endures to this day

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2004 by Wes D. Gehring

However, one need not limit case studies of period nuttiness to film comedians. In that pivotal year of 1934, America was captivated by the crazy behavior of major league base ball's world champion St. Louis Cardinals--the "Gas House Gang." The team's success was largely the result of pitching brothers "Dizzy" and "Daffy" Dean. Moreover, screwball comedy probably drew its name from the term's entertainingly unorthodox original use in the National Pastime. Prior to the term's application in 1930s film criticism, "screw ball" had been used in baseball to describe both an oddball player, typified by Dizzy Dean, and any pitched ball that moves in an unexpected way. Obviously, these characteristics nicely describe performers in screwball comedy, too, from the oddball Lombard, to the unusual movement of Barrymore on the Twentieth Century Limited.

A fifth Depression-era impact on the form was how the birth of talking pictures encouraged an army of wordsmiths to descend upon Hollywood. Journalists, playwrights, novelists, humorists, and every other kind of writer found at least a temporary California home as the film capital panicked over the sudden importance of verbiage. All this talent helped usher in a golden age of dialogue comedy. For example, in "Twentieth Century"--scripted by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur--Lombard tells a supporting player, "Who cares about your respect? I'm too big to be respected!" When Barrymore threatens suicide, one of his flunkies observes, "He won't kill himself. It'd please too many people!"

Screwball comedy often was a marriage of witty dialogue from these East Coast writers and visual comedy from former silent comedy directors such as Capra and Hawks. Moreover, storylines frequently mirrored the former occupations of the screenwriters. Thus, "Twentieth Century" is about an attempted Broadway comeback by Barrymore, while "It Happened One Night" might be described as an attempted comeback by Gable's New York newspaper reporter.

A final influence--from focus year 1934, no less--was the screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's celebrated comic murder mystery "The Thin Man.'" Though not a screwball comedy per se, there was much about this W.S. Van Dyke directed film which complemented the emerging genre, from the comically chic party atmosphere permeating the picture, to the then novel concept that a married couple (William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles) could continue to find each other sexy and amusing. Powell is more vulnerable, more human, and decidedly funnier than the classic detective, from his ongoing inebriation to shooting balloons off the Christmas tree with a toy air rifle, attributes that make him a first cousin to the screwball male. Subsequently, the film produced five entertaining sequels.

Before closing the books on the emergence of this ongoing American treasure, a special addendum is necessary: Capra's 1930s and 1940s films that followed "It Happened One Night" are populist, not screwball, comedies. As critic Jim Leach observes of Capra's semifinal populist effort, "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936): "... where the only positive strategy in screwball comedy is to accept the all-pervasive craziness, the populist comedy argues that what society regards as crazy (Mr. Deeds' attempts to give away his fortune) is really a manifestation of the normal human values with which society has lost touch."