#917: McCAREY, Leo: The Awful Truth (1937)
McCAREY, Leo (United States)
The Awful Truth [1937]
Spine #917
Blu-ray
The Booklet
Twenty page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Molly Haskell.
Commentary
None.
Interview
With critic Gary Giddins about director McCarey.
Video essay
By film critic David Cairns on Grant’s performance.
1978 audio interview with actor Dunne.
Lux Radio Theatre
Adaptation of the film from 1939, starring Grant and Claudette Colbert.
Always interesting to see how they edit things down to 50 minutes for radio …
Extras Rating (0-40):
The Awful Truth [1937]
Spine #917
Blu-ray
In this Oscar-winning farce, Cary Grant (in the role that first defined the Cary Grant persona) and Irene Dunne exude charm, cunning, and artless affection as an urbane couple who, fed up with each other's infidelities, resolve to file for divorce. But try as they might to move on, the mischievous Jerry can't help meddling in Lucy's ill-matched engagement to a corn-fed Oklahoma businessman (Ralph Bellamy), and a mortified Lucy begins to realize that she may be saying goodbye to the only dance partner capable of following her lead. Directed by the veratile Leo McCarey, a master of improvisation and slapstick as well as a keen and sympathetic observer of human folly, The Awful Truth is a warm but unsparing comedy about two people whose flaws only make them more irresistible.
91 minutes
Black & White
Monaural
1:37:1 aspect ratio
Monaural
1:37:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2018
Director/Writer
Based on a play by Arthur Richman.
Screenplay by Viña Delmar.
Leo McCarey was 41 when he directed The Awful Truth.
Other McCarey films in the Collection:
The Comedy of remarriage was a subgenre of the Screwball comedy which was a subgenre of the romantic comedy. As they say — you can look it up!
McCarey threw away most of the source material, in favor of an improvisational style of directing. Often the actors gathered around the piano, while Leo banged out some tunes and came up with situations and dialogue. The actors did little actual improvisation, save for those moments where characters talk over one another, or react with one-liners …
Cary Grant (Jerry Warriner) tried everything in his power to get out of finishing this picture. He offered to return his advance, tried recruiting Joel McCrea to take his place, offered to switch roles with Ralph Bellamy (Dan Leeson), and constantly fought with McCarey.
This is the film that turned Grant from an overacting ham into an A-list star, and — although he worked with McCarey twice again [Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) and An Affair to Remember (1957)] — the relationship was forever strained.
Irene Dunne (Lucy Warriner) was — like Grant — also not yet under contract to a studio, and McCarey apparently chose her because he felt that her “serious” persona would play well in a comedy. He was right — she’s one of the best things about this film, although she too had big reservations about McCarey’s working methods, at first.
Dunne’s finest moment:
Jerry has such come crashing into a room, expecting to find Lucy and Armand in a clutch, when in fact Lucy is singing a classical aria in front of an audience. Jerry is gobsmacked, does a pitfall, and Dunne ends the aria with a little laugh-as-trill that just can’t be beat!
Supporting actors: Cecil Cunningham (Aunt Patsy); Esther Dale (Dan’s mother); Joyce Compton (Dixie Belle Lee), Alexander d’Arcy (Armand Duvalle) and Molly Lamont (Barbara Vance) are all fine.
Only Skippy (Asta in the Thin Man series) was difficult, refusing to jump into Grant’s arm at the right moment …
The film is fine right up until the end, when the Hays Code forced McCarey to invent a bunch of silly business involving a creaking door that goes on way too long, and is only “saved” by a shot of the cuckoo clock getting lascivious.
There are a lot of good one-liners, but one of the best is delivered by Aunt Patsy, as Jerry and Armand are chasing each other at full speed:
“You forgot to touch second base.”
Film Rating (0-60):
54
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Twenty page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Molly Haskell.
“Endings are always difficult in screwball comedy, because the anarchic natures of the lovers, who don’t fit the pattern of romantic comedy and its denouements as practiced from the Greeks and the Romans through Shakespeare and beyond. The reestablishment of order, the moment of collective celebration when the couple is reintegrated into society, seems anathema to screwball, wherein couples stake out turf in opposition to convention, a private world of their own making with its own language and in-jokes. Society as such exists more to be ridiculed than embraced.”
Commentary
None.
Interview
With critic Gary Giddins about director McCarey.
“He had a tremendous feeling for the way human beings act, and this led him to a style based on improvisation to a degree that no other director in the studio system at that time — and even today — would have the courage to do.”
Video essay
By film critic David Cairns on Grant’s performance.
A look at Grant’s work in pre-1937 cinema — stiff, awkward performances, the acting all too self-aware:
- This is the Night (1932)
- I’m No Angel (1933)
- The Woman Accused (1933)
- Ladies Should Listen (1934)
- Kiss and Make-Up (1934)
- Wings in the Dark (1935)
- Sylvia Scarlet (1935)
1978 audio interview with actor Dunne.
Lux Radio Theatre
Adaptation of the film from 1939, starring Grant and Claudette Colbert.
Always interesting to see how they edit things down to 50 minutes for radio …
Extras Rating (0-40):
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