"The Awful Truth"

Tonight's movie was "The Awful Truth" (1937), a five star Screwball Comedy that I found at the Libe in a search for new Criterion releases. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant star as a well-to-do couple who don't seem to trust each other. As the movie begins, Grant is returning from a "Florida vacation" that he never went on. Before heading home, he checks into a spa to use a tanning lamp in order to achieve the "Florida" look. Why he is faking his vacation is never made clear, but the insinuation is obvious enough. When he returns home in his newly bronzed skin, a Welcome Home party awaits him. His friends are all there, but not his wife. When she does arrive a short while later, she is in the company of a Handsome and Debonair Man, who happens to be her voice coach. She is an aspiring singer.

Cary Grant, likely cheating himself, doesn't believe her story that her car broke down, and her Handsome Voice Teacher offered her a ride home. The fact that the guy is a smarmy Continental type doesn't help matters either. Accusations fly. Divorce papers are soon filed

During the divorce proceedings, one of the movie's great bits involves the couple's dog, played by Skippy, one of the great movie dogs of all time (he also played "Asta" in The Thin Man movies).

Skippy plays "Mr. Smith" in this film, and he has several good scenes, including one where he plays "hot and cold", the game that you do in a living room where you hide an object and the other person (in this case a dog) tries to find it.

Once Dunne and Grant divorce, both seek new relationships, but they can't seem to stop running into one another, and that is because they are both trying to sabotage each other. Dunne becomes engaged to Ralph Bellamy, an Oklahoma oil tycoon, but Cary Grant throws a monkey wrench into the proceedings. Then it is Irene Dunne's turn to wreck Grant's pending marriage to a wealthy heiress. I have been an Irene Dunne fan since I first got into old movies, and she was a great dramatic actress, but I didn't know until tonight that she could pull off fast talking farce as well as anybody.

"The Awful Truth" is a riot from start to finish, with freewheeling performances from Dunne and Cary Grant, whose suave persona is said to have started with this film.

Of course, the couple are made for each other, much like the couple from "Trouble In Paradise" (1932) that I reviewed a couple weeks ago and also gave my highest rating.

In "Trouble In Paradise", the couple wound up together, and in "The Awful Truth"......

I can't tell you because you will have to see for yourself.

We all should have lived, at least for a while, in Hollywood, on a studio set, inside a movie like "The Awful Truth" or "Trouble In Paradise" or "His Girl Friday" (the ultimate Screwball Fast Talker). These movies are a world unto themselves, in which every interior is Palatial, and in which the heroine is always dressed to the hilt in designer fashions that stand out with unique shape and pattern, and in which the leading man (Cary Grant) is not just Handsome but just a tad ridiculous.

You had you be super talented to pull off any of the roles in a film like this, and I've said before that it could not be done today, not because the actors of today are less or more talented, but because they are talented in a different way that corresponds to the world of 2018.

This is why we should all go live in Hollywood in 1937, just for a movie shoot or two.

Just to soak up the style and glamour and rapid fire humor of the time.

It was over 80 years ago, but man......those guys and gals were all over it, and they knocked what they were doing so far out of the park that it cannot be replicated today.

Ten Stars for "The Awful Truth", Golden Age Hollywood at it's finest, with a style and energy never to be seen again.

Thanks, Movie Stars.  :)

See you in the morning.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)