Screwball month continues with a look at Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936). Based on the novel and co-written by Eric Hatch, the film stars William Powell as the titular Godfrey. He’s a forgotten man, living in a Hooverville in New York City where he’s picked up by a bunch of swells out on a scavenger hunt. Bringing in a forgotten man will net a lot of points and help Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) win the game. In return, she hires Godfrey as a butler to the wacky Bullock family. And, of course, hilarity ensues...
Special Guest: Joseph McBride Guest Co-Hosts: Lutz Bacher, Ken Stanley, Paula Guthat
We conclude our discussion about Ernst Lubitsch with a discussion of his 1942 film To Be or Not To Be, the story of Joseph and Maria Tura (Jack Benny and Carole Lombard), two actors in Poland who are in a current run of Shakespeare’s Hamlet though working on a new play called Gestapo. The new play never happens on stage but they’re able to act it out in real life after Poland falls to the Nazis. The film is one of the first films to openly lampoon Nazis, made in a time before Pearl Harbor -- though released afterward -- in a time when mocking Nazis wasn’t as acceptable as it should have been.
Guest Co-Hosts: Kat Ellinger. Maurice Bursztynski
Special Guest: