Screwball Comedies - Your Favorites?

I just noticed Adam's Rib in Scooterpiety's list. Add that to mine.

 

His Girl Friday with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell would be my pick.

For a modern screwball comedy, I'm a big fan of What's Up Doc, with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal. Very, very funny film, with the most complicated plot I can remember seeing in a comedy.

 

I think that would fit, although it's more of a buddy movie. But so are "The Front Page," which was on the list (and was remade for a male/female pairing as "His Girl Friday") and certainly "Some Like it Hot." By the way if the last line of "What's Up Doc" is memorable, the last lines of "The Front Page" and "Some Like it Hot" are among the greatest of all time.

 

Someday I will try to track the suitcases. I'll bet it works.

 

The Great Race

 

Great thread, I love screwball comedies.

Let me add one of my favorites to the list: Midnight (1939)

 

A lesser Lombard film called True Confession has been one of my long-time favourites. Ball of Fire with Stanwyck and Cooper is also great.

 

Almost any of Don Knotts' classic movies. Especially:

The Incredible Mr. Limpet
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
The Reluctant Astronaut
The Shakiest Gun In The West
The Love God

 

Another big What's Up Doc fan here. I like just about everything else that has been mentioned, too.

 

It came out of the faucet that way, Eunice.

 

Bringing Up Baby

 

I'll throw in one more (somewhat more controversial) title by Peter Bogdanovich - "Noises Off."

"Noises Off" was a play, and it is best seen on the stage. Frank Rich, the former theatre critic of the New York Times, called it the funniest play written in his lifetime. A lot of theater companies across the country have done it. Bogdanovich put together an almost perfect cast for the film, but he couldn't fully compensate for the fact that the original was a play about a play, and it was meant to be viewed from a particular audience perspective. (If you've ever seen it you'll know what I mean.) The camera is an impediment.

I once had the opportunity to ask the playwright, Michael Frayn, what he thought, and he said he was pleased with the result.

Nevertheless, unless your local theatre company is planning a production, the film is worth checking out.

By the way, "Clockwise," written by Michael Frayn and starring John Cleese is pretty funny. As is the 1960's British comedy, "The Wrong Box," whose cast includes Michael Caine, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

 

I'm a huge screwball comedy fan. I've loved these films since I was in junior high.

I think some of the films mentioned above are really more whacky comedies than screwball comedies, but I won't be (any more) annoying and point out specifics.

I think the elements of the sexes clashing, rapid witty dialogue, marriage or divorce conflict, and class-oriented satire or conflict are nearly mandatory to the genre. That just be my personal feel for the category.

My two favorites? Easy.

Bringing Up Baby
My Man Godfrey

A rare modern screwball comedy is Danny Boyle's strange, underrated A Life Less Ordinary. It isn't a classic, but I remember finding it loaded with oddball fun...

Another (better) modern entry is the most radically under-valued film from the Coen brothers, Intolerable Cruelty.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

Maybe more oddball than screwball, but two Andrew Bergman screenplays:

"The Freshman"
"The In-Laws"

 

My Man Godfrey.

I just rewatched this recently. What a great and funny film!

 

YES!
Those aren't just two of my favorite screwball comedies they are two of my favorite movies period.
"What's Up Doc" is a nearly perfect homage to those wonderful screwball comedies of the 30's and 40's with Ryan O'Neal essentially playing Cary Grant in "Baby".

At work when things are getting out of control the phrase used and understood is, "I'm inside a Chinese Dragon."

 

Arsenic and Old Lace hasn't been mentioned.

Cary Grant and Carole Lombard are the King and Queen of screwball comedy. Never been the same since them.

 

Off the top of my head :

The Pharmacist, a 1933 short WC Fields

The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock 1949 Harold Lloyd

Have Rocket Will Travel 1959 3 Stooges

Visit To A Small Planet 1960 Jerry Lewis

Lovers And Other Strangers 1970

High Anxiety, 1978 Mel Brooks

Airplane! 1980

Naked Gun, 1988 Leslie Nielsen

 

Das Limpet!

 

Agreed, this is something that has to be seen on the stage. I haven't seen the film, but the stage version is SO good I recommend it whether the film version matches it or not.

I see lot of titles in this thread that aren't really "screwball" even by a loose definition of the term. Generally speaking, we're talking a romantic comedy where things go "screwball" between the male and female leads. The antics stop well short of farce. Usually a 30s film, though there are later attempts to capture the same energy (What's Up Doc? is the most notable).

 

Merrily We Live (1938) starring Constance Bennett

any of the Preston Sturges comedies especially Hail The Conquering Hero and The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek

 

Twentieth Century
Libled Lady
The Good Fairy
My Man Godfrey
Bachelor Mother
The Awful Truth
Bringing Up Baby
Theodora Goes Wild
You Can't Take It With You
His Girl Friday
The Man Who Came To Dinner
I Love You Again
Christmas In July
The Great McGinty
The Lady Eve
Sullivan's Travels
The Palm Beach Story
Ball Of Fire
The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek
Hail The Conquering Hero
The More The Merrier
The Devil And Miss Jones

 

I'm not sure if it qualifies as a screwball comedy, but I'd like to add "The Man in the White Suit" with Alec Guinness.

 

Thanks to all for your continued recommendations!