NFR Project: 'My Man Godfrey' (1936)

 

NFR Project: ‘My Man Godfrey’

Dir: Gregory La Cava

Scr: Morrie Ryskind, Eric Hatch, Zoe Atkins, Robert Presnell Sr.

Pho: Ted Tetzlaff

Ed: Ted J. Kent, Russell F. Schoengarth

Premiere: Sept. 6, 1936

94 min.

The screwball comedy reaches new heights with My Man Godfrey. The urbane tale of a “bum” who becomes a 5^th Avenue butler contains tons of laughs, while engaging in some serious soul-searching and espousing a progressive point of view at the same time.

Godfrey Smith (William Powell) is the resident of a city dump in Manhattan. The haughty Cornelia Bullock (an icy Gail Patrick) wants to use him to win a scavenger hunt, but is refused. Her daffy sister Irene (Carole Lombard), much more compassionate, enlists Godfrey’s sympathy. He goes with her and helps her win the scavenger hunt.

This leads to a job offer. It seems that the wealthy Bullocks are always losing butlers. Would Godfrey care to make a try?

Godfrey assents, and soon he is cleaned up and impeccably mannered, dealing with the crazy inhabitants of the Bullock household. Besides Cornelia and Irene, there is their mother (Alice Brady), a muddle-headed dimwit who keeps a “protégé,” the sponging Carlo (Mischa Auer). Presiding uncomfortably above the mania is Mr. Bullock (Eugene Pallette), a financier. The family dysfunction is extreme, hilarious, and quite costly.

Godfrey begins to work a little magic, coming to grips with all the Bullocks’ peccadillos and smoothing away their anxieties, all the time keeping them at an arm’s length about his true past. (It seems that Godfrey is one of the Parks of Boston; he left society and fell into homelessness following a disastrous marriage.)

Through all this, loopy Irene has fallen in love with Godfrey, and continually throws herself at him, which Godfrey politely deflects, although you can see that her daffy charm is working on him. Things come to a head – and I hate to spoil the ending, but you will have to see it to believe it. Everyone ends up with a quiet moment of reflection. Godfrey transforms the dump into a nightclub (The Dump), with jobs and housing for 50 “forgotten men.”

The script is absolutely top-notch, full of crushing observations and wry winks. Lombard and Powell have great chemistry together (they were married and divorced before this film). Powell was a master of the understated reaction, and he is delightfully subtle as Godfrey. It’s a fairy-tale story, but a good one.

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