I have watched "Libeled Lady" for 35 years in rep houses. It has legs and class. Ed Sikov charts the corkscrew arc of screwball comedy in his 1989 book SCREWBALL. I would hold that "Libeled Lady" (1936) remained MGM's finest entry into the screwball stakes until "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) upped the studio's ante.
Columbia birthed the genre with "Twentieth Century" and "It Happened One Night" (both 1934). Universal's "My Man Godfrey" (1936) enriched the breed considerably. Paramount and RKO introduced Cary Grant into the mix through "The Awful Truth" (1937) and "Bringing Up Baby" (1938).
Warners may have given us the classiest screwball ever in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935), Shakespeare by way of Max Reinhart, William Dieterle, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. William Powell and Myrna Loy collaborated with Dashiell Hammett early in the game to give screwball turns to cinema marriage and the mystery genre in "The Thin Man" (1934), though that's not a pure example of the form.
I like the simple definition that screwball comedy involves a pursuit relationship between a man and a woman, marked by inversions of the social order. The pursuit relationship takes a natural course in "Libeled Lady". William Powell sets off to end a libel suit against the Evening Star. This quest broadens into love for Myrna Loy, who correctly suspects him of ulterior motives for his attentions to her.
Inversion of the social order certainly slips in. Working people labor to upset the apple cart of a rich father and daughter, who seek to smash the Evening Star after 20 years of political enmity. Yet the film artfully sidesteps the naked social satire of "The Front Page" (which Howard Hawks transformed in 1939 into a screwball divorce masterwork, "His Girl Friday").
The most radical inversion of our expectations may lie in jettisoning the entire class struggle--no small feat in the Great Depression. The wealthy Allenburys don't appear as oppressors or mindless sybarites, nor do they represent a wholesome aristocracy under assault by Bolsheviks.
The common folk neither champion social causes nor shine forth in natural virtue. No one's noble, no one's iniquitous. All seem equal under the eye of Heaven. You don't find that in Frank Capra's later populist movies.
Further, we have a film that made bigamy funny in the 1930's, in the teeth of the Production Code, the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, and grassroots Bible Belt principles.
Five gifted performers help to dampen any outrage. "Libeled Lady" accords Powell and Loy more dignity than they'd get from "I Love You Again" (1940) or "Love Crazy" (1941), though the script musters less purring wit than their Nick and Nora Charles exploits. Spencer Tracy gets to roar and bluster in a very James Cagney vein.
(Pause a moment: Could you envision a Warner Bros. "Libeled Lady"? Star Errol Flynn as Bill, the dapper libel-suit quasher. Have Olivia DeHavilland undertake Connie, the offended heiress. Let Cagney do Warren, the commitment-shy newspaper editor. Either Una Merkel or Glenda Farrell could suffer as his fiancée, the sublimely frustrated Gladys, whose road to the altar proves long and devious indeed. I think this imaginary version would gallop friskily, a typical Warners knockabout farce, but it would lack the pervasive elegance that MGM built into its actual production.)
Though asked to play Gladys very broadly, Jean Harlow still has some subtle moments. Watch when she tells Powell that he's a strange egg. "Wife Vs. Secretary" (1935) had presented her in a subdued mode, gentle as a whisper. "Libeled Lady" chooses to use her mostly in brassy counterpoint to Myrna Loy's soft woodwind.
Walter Connolly, though only five years older than Powell, portrays a very well-heeled father with all the skill accumulated in a career filled with canny industrialists, money men, outraged parents, and elder statesmen. "The Bitter Tea of General Yen" (1933) and "Twentieth Century" gave him stronger sidekick roles, but no one ever did more to flesh out a stereotypic part. His only rival at comic authority figures remains Eugene Palette (ideal for my Warner Bros. fantasy).
Jack Conway's direction defines workmanlike. Gregory La Cava or Leo McCarey would certainly have spent more time with the script and the actors to refine more metal from the ore. However, Conway does a briskly pleasant job.
This film does not have the character depths of "My Man Godfrey", nor does it reshape a screen persona the way "The Awful Truth" re-molded Cary Grant from mere leading man to an icon of the art form. We don't see the sublime mayhem of Howard Hawks' pioneering screwballs.
Yet MGM's star factory knew how to produce highly polished entertainment week in and week out. "Libeled Lady" glistens lustrously.
Columbia birthed the genre with "Twentieth Century" and "It Happened One Night" (both 1934). Universal's "My Man Godfrey" (1936) enriched the breed considerably. Paramount and RKO introduced Cary Grant into the mix through "The Awful Truth" (1937) and "Bringing Up Baby" (1938).
Warners may have given us the classiest screwball ever in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935), Shakespeare by way of Max Reinhart, William Dieterle, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. William Powell and Myrna Loy collaborated with Dashiell Hammett early in the game to give screwball turns to cinema marriage and the mystery genre in "The Thin Man" (1934), though that's not a pure example of the form.
I like the simple definition that screwball comedy involves a pursuit relationship between a man and a woman, marked by inversions of the social order. The pursuit relationship takes a natural course in "Libeled Lady". William Powell sets off to end a libel suit against the Evening Star. This quest broadens into love for Myrna Loy, who correctly suspects him of ulterior motives for his attentions to her.
Inversion of the social order certainly slips in. Working people labor to upset the apple cart of a rich father and daughter, who seek to smash the Evening Star after 20 years of political enmity. Yet the film artfully sidesteps the naked social satire of "The Front Page" (which Howard Hawks transformed in 1939 into a screwball divorce masterwork, "His Girl Friday").
The most radical inversion of our expectations may lie in jettisoning the entire class struggle--no small feat in the Great Depression. The wealthy Allenburys don't appear as oppressors or mindless sybarites, nor do they represent a wholesome aristocracy under assault by Bolsheviks.
The common folk neither champion social causes nor shine forth in natural virtue. No one's noble, no one's iniquitous. All seem equal under the eye of Heaven. You don't find that in Frank Capra's later populist movies.
Further, we have a film that made bigamy funny in the 1930's, in the teeth of the Production Code, the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, and grassroots Bible Belt principles.
Five gifted performers help to dampen any outrage. "Libeled Lady" accords Powell and Loy more dignity than they'd get from "I Love You Again" (1940) or "Love Crazy" (1941), though the script musters less purring wit than their Nick and Nora Charles exploits. Spencer Tracy gets to roar and bluster in a very James Cagney vein.
(Pause a moment: Could you envision a Warner Bros. "Libeled Lady"? Star Errol Flynn as Bill, the dapper libel-suit quasher. Have Olivia DeHavilland undertake Connie, the offended heiress. Let Cagney do Warren, the commitment-shy newspaper editor. Either Una Merkel or Glenda Farrell could suffer as his fiancée, the sublimely frustrated Gladys, whose road to the altar proves long and devious indeed. I think this imaginary version would gallop friskily, a typical Warners knockabout farce, but it would lack the pervasive elegance that MGM built into its actual production.)
Though asked to play Gladys very broadly, Jean Harlow still has some subtle moments. Watch when she tells Powell that he's a strange egg. "Wife Vs. Secretary" (1935) had presented her in a subdued mode, gentle as a whisper. "Libeled Lady" chooses to use her mostly in brassy counterpoint to Myrna Loy's soft woodwind.
Walter Connolly, though only five years older than Powell, portrays a very well-heeled father with all the skill accumulated in a career filled with canny industrialists, money men, outraged parents, and elder statesmen. "The Bitter Tea of General Yen" (1933) and "Twentieth Century" gave him stronger sidekick roles, but no one ever did more to flesh out a stereotypic part. His only rival at comic authority figures remains Eugene Palette (ideal for my Warner Bros. fantasy).
Jack Conway's direction defines workmanlike. Gregory La Cava or Leo McCarey would certainly have spent more time with the script and the actors to refine more metal from the ore. However, Conway does a briskly pleasant job.
This film does not have the character depths of "My Man Godfrey", nor does it reshape a screen persona the way "The Awful Truth" re-molded Cary Grant from mere leading man to an icon of the art form. We don't see the sublime mayhem of Howard Hawks' pioneering screwballs.
Yet MGM's star factory knew how to produce highly polished entertainment week in and week out. "Libeled Lady" glistens lustrously.