Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert need to ride in “It happened one night” in 1934. (Columbia Pictures, Columbia Pictures)Admittedly, sometimes the holiday season is as depressing as a fruitcake Rassi piece. If the usual Christmas movies thinking leaves you cold, here’s another way to shake holiday blues away: a selection of comedies classic since the 1930s and 1940s. Here are some of our favorites. If you can’t laugh for these, you really are a Scrooge.
“Horse feathers” (1932)
For those who love the Marxist comedies – as in the Marx Brothers – their first Paramount movies are much funnier and more chaotic than the most staid MGM released. Here Groucho, Chico and Harpo Zeppo take on the higher education institution in this farce wild and crazy. Groucho plays Professor Wagstaff, President of College of Huxley, who decides to reinforce the registration by the staging of a football match winning. Zeppo plays his son, Chico is a bootlegger and a seller of ice and Harpo is the receiver for dogs who are more interested in catch women. Script smart, funny was written by Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby and S.J. Perelman and co-écrit also Ruby musical numbers include the classics “Whatever it is, I’m against it” and “everyone says I Love You”.
“It Happened One Night”(1934)”.”
This romantic farce citizen is considered the granddaddy of the screwball comedy genre. He won the Oscar for best film, actor of Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, actress Director Frank Capra and scenario Robert Riskin. Colbert plays a spoiled heiress who flees her impending marriage to airman and sets out on the lam. Gable is a down-on-his-luck journalist who recognizes him when she gets on a bus and decides to befriend him, so he can get an exclusive. Of course, they fall in love before the fade-out. Don’t miss the scene wherein they are sharing one bed hotel and Gable shows Colbert order wherein he undresses. The fact that pinion did not wear a singlet caused a sensation.
“This is a gift” (1934)
Let us now praise Mr. Muckle and Carl LaFong. They are involved in two of the best gags in what is probably the most satisfying the W.C. Fields comedy. Fields, which helped to write the script under the nom de plume of Charles Bogle, plays Harold Bissonette, a trader from small town which is constantly being beaten by his family, friends and clients, such as Mr. Muckle (Charles Sellon), a man blind Grinch who is hard of hearing and in turn destroys everything in sight to the Bissonette store. Another point of the high esteem Bissonette try sleeping on the porch of the family, where he is harassed by the insurance vendor looking for a man named Carl LaFong. The final scene was filmed in the own fields, new area of 7 acres in Encino.
“Easy life” (1937)
With Carole Lombard and Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur was one of the Queens of comedy during the 1930s and 1940s. It gives one of his best amazed funny turns in this sparkling screwball comedy written by the great Preston Sturges – his first film contract with Paramount – and led by the former Mitchell Leisen Decorator. Located in the city of New York, the characteristics of film Arthur playing a clerk named Mary Smith, who is sitting on a double-decker bus, one day, when a fur coat cost falls window and landed on her head. Needless to say that his life is never the same. Edward Arnold plays the rich investor who launched the mantle and Ray Milland is his son, who seeks to make it without the help of his dad.
“Ball of fire” (1941)
Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck played in two films in 1941: Frank Capra political fable “meet John Doe” and this delightful comedy Howard Hawks. It includes a script of razor of none other than Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, a clever reimagining of “snow white and the seven dwarfs.”
Cooper played the timid, earnest young Professor Bertram Potts, who lives with a group of eccentric professors compile an encyclopedia of human knowledge. Although Potts research on modern slang, he became interested in a burlesque performer, named “sugarpuss” O’Shea (Stanwyck in her performance appointed as the Oscar). She is not interested in helping him with his research until the cops appear who want to question him about her boyfriend mob boss (Dana Andrews). Hide by cops, she takes refuge in the home of Professor and he is not long before Sugarpuss and Bertram fall in love. Martha Tilton provided vocals for his “Drum Boogie”, number Stanwyck carried out by famous Gene Krupa and his band. (Ginger Rogers and Carole Lombard denied role.) Lucille Ball almost had the job until that Cooper recommended Stanwyck).
And good night.
Great uncle of Drew Barrymore appears in 1946 “it’s a wonderful life.” Who is?
Lionel Barrymore
Susan.King@LAtimes.com
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