NFR Project: 'Twentieth Century' (1934)

 

NFR Project: ‘Twentieth Century’

Dir: Howard Hawks

Scr: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur

Pho: Joseph August

Ed: Gene Havlick

Premiere: May 11, 1934

91 min.

“When asked by John Barrymore why he should play the role of Oscar, Hawks replied, ‘It’s the story of the biggest ham on earth and you’re the biggest ham I know.’ Barrymore accepted at once.”

To make a great screwball comedy, you need a great script and actors who can commit to a loopy scenario. These director Howard Hawks had. He had a killer scenario from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, best known as the writer s of the immortal The Front Page. And he had two actors – one at the top of his game, the other just beginning her stardom – who chew the scenery as they play a couple of daffy dolts who also happen to be “great artists.”

The story is absurd from the word go. John Barrymore plays the great and blustery theatrical impresario Oscar Jaffe, who has just made a new discovery in the acting department, a former lingerie model with the lumpish name of Mildred Plotka, played by the great comedienne Carole Lombard in her first starring role. Oscar has a carapace of egomaniacal bluster that conceals the desperation of a con artist.

Barrymore is by far the dominant and motivating madcap. His own theatrical career is parodied; even his world-famous profile comes for derision. Barrymore gasps, gulps, strikes poses, goes cross-eyed, does everything but walk on his hands. It works because his supremely knowing performance goes right to the edge of believability and stays there for an hour and a half.

Rechristening her Lily Garland, Jaffe molds her into suitable Broadway material, and soon they embark on a string of hits together. However, Lily chafes under Oscar’s aegis and decides to head off to Hollywood, becoming a big success. Oscar has four flops in a row.

Now Oscar finds himself stuck in Chicago, unable to pay the bills and facing the seizure of his show by the sheriff. He sneaks out of town and onto the Twentieth Century, the train to New York. He discovers that Lily is on the train, and concocts a scheme – to get her signature on a contract with him so that he can raise the money to get out of debt and mount new shows.

The only problem is, Lily is thoroughly sick of him. “How about . . . your delusion that you were a Shakespeare and a Napoleon and a Grand Lama of Tibet all rolled into one?” she asks him.

 So how can Oscar get her to sign? The pace of the movie picks up slowly and steadily, becoming more and more fevered. Oscar freaks out, Lily pitches fits. The two are children disguised as grown-ups. Beyond their grand pretensions, they are two star-crossed lovers, relative idiots but shamelessly loveable.

Oscar is supported by two great character actors, the humble Walter Connolly and the brash and cynical Roscoe Karns. Oscar says of them: “It’s typical of my career that in the great crises of life, I should be flanked by two incompetent alcoholics.”

Oscar and Lily richly deserve each other, and soon the status quo is restored. By that, I mean the two are driving each other crazy on a daily basis – just like two people in love.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Becky Sharp.