Fri 28 Jan 2011
A Movie Review by Michael Shonk: THE MAD MISS MANTON (1938).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Mystery movies , Reviews[19] Comments
THE MAD MISS MANTON. RKO Pictures, 1938. Cast: Melsa Manton: Barbara Stanwyck, Peter Ames: Henry Fonda, Lt. Brent: Sam Levine, Sullivan: James Burke. Screenplay by Philip G. Epstein. Director: Leigh Jason.
It is rare to find a comedy mystery with a strong enough mystery to equal the comedy. The Mad Miss Manton is screwball comedy mystery at its best.
While walking her dogs at 3 am, debutant Melsa Manton discovers a dead body in an old house. She runs to notify the police, but when she returns with them the body is gone and the cops are convinced it is all a prank. Young newspaper editor Peter Ames uses the “prank” to ridicule Miss Manton and the idle rich lifestyle.
Melsa enlists the help of her closest seven friends to help her clear her name. Eight determined debutantes out to find a killer. The cops, the press, even the killer are doomed.
The murder mystery plot could stand on its own without the comedy and make a good typical RKO B-movie mystery. What follows Melsa’s discovery of the body is a mystery that will keep you guessing until Melsa finds the final clue. The story features a variety of suspects, all involved in one kind of relationship or another.
In screwball comedy tradition, Peter and Melsa hate each other. Peter hates Melsa so much he falls in love with her. But whenever Melsa’s begins to weaken towards Peter the mystery interrupts, and Melsa’s feelings for him return to hate.
Reacting to Peter and Melsa, two of the debutantes exchange comments that sums up the philosophy of all screwball comedies.
“Yeah, but it’s the lull in between that drives you crazy.”
Director Leigh Jason maintains the frantic pace of the screwball comedy without losing any of the tension of the mystery. He also effectively uses the entire cast, especially the pack of debutantes, giving each character their own identity.
From the opening titles on, the film’s dark look creates an atmosphere fitting for the murder mystery, not letting the screwball comedy overwhelm the suspense. Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca would later be the cinematographer for Out of the Past.
The main attraction of The Mad Miss Manton is Philip G. Epstein’s (Casablanca, Arsenic & Old Lace) script in the hands of Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. The chemistry between Fonda and Stanwyck works as well for this film as it will later in Lady Eve.
The comedy and mystery blends well in The Mad Miss Manton, each playing off the other. Peter is at the first murder scene where the debutantes left him bound and gagged. The young ladies find a second murder victim. Believing it to be another hoax, the police refuse to respond. So the women take the second body and leave it in the lobby of Peter’s newspaper.
When asked why, Melsa explains, “I thought if you read it in the paper you’d believe us.”
The screwball comedy genre is skilled at dealing with sexual attraction between characters. When Peter learns the killer has threatened Melsa, he runs to her rescue. Melsa is trying to sleep, but he insists he is spending the night there. Melsa mockingly congratulates Peter, of all the attempted subterfuge of others to remain in her bedroom, his is the best.
The atmosphere, twists, and clues will appeal to those in search of a good B-movie murder mystery. Those looking for a funny screwball comedy will enjoy the non-stop wisecracks, gags, slapstick and wit. Unless you are one of the young men the debutantes dump without a word whenever the mystery surfaces, The Mad Miss Manton will prove entertaining.
You can find more about this film, including the original trailer, at TCMdb.com. It is available on DVD from Warner Archive Collection.
January 28th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
One of my favorite films, the highlight when Miss Manton informs Fonda she plans for them to live on his income and a shocked Fonda replies: “Who’s going to live on yours?”
Great as the Thin Man films were, this, Woody Van Dyke’s IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD, and REMAINS TO BE SEEN are my favorite screwball comedy mystery films.
January 28th, 2011 at 10:47 pm
The screwball comedy is my favorite of all films genres. Sadly, its a genre that existed because of the Hayes code. The bedroom scene between Stanwyck and Fonda works comedically because of the forced limits of the code. Her comment about him trying to stay in her bedroom, the talk about the cigarette lighter, the discussion of how they are alike, burned with repressed passion that can not exist in the open free world of today’s films.
I think of the Thin Man series more comedy mystery rather than screwball comedy. It lacked the sexual tension, the I hate you so much I love you part of most screwball comedies.
I liked IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD and REMAINS TO BE SEEN as well. MURDER, HE SAYS has its moments. Have you seen that, David?
January 28th, 2011 at 10:58 pm
I saw MURDER, HE SAYS when it was on TCM not too long ago. I didn’t write up a review of it at the time, probably because it was during my annual second-half of December break.
Fred MacMurray plays a hapless insurance investigator who falls into the hands of the notorious hillbilly Feagle family, headed by matriarch Marjorie Main.
A little Main goes a long way for me, but I’d have to agree that this is the screwiest screwball comedy ever filmed.
Fred’s costar was Helen Walker, a truly lovely actress who career was cut short all too soon.
If anyone hasn’t seen it, they should, depending on how tolerant you are of hillbilly humor, inbred to the nth degree. I believe it will be released on DVD soon by TCM.
— Steve
January 29th, 2011 at 5:49 am
MURDER HE SAYS is another favorite, though not a screwball mystery completely though it certainly is a screwball comedy.
Those we mentioned above, plus THE PRINCESS COMES ACROSS with MacMurray and Carole Lombard, all have a strong detective element to them while MURDER HE SAYS — while a great film — comes closer to the old dark house theme with the main mystery being the treasure hunt — it is more in line with THE OLD DARK HOUSE than a mystery per se. To some extent it plays like a more sophisticated Bob Hope or even Abbot and Costello movie than the other films we discussed, all of which are clearly in the screwball mode.
And definitions here are tough since films like Red Skelton’s WHISTLING IN series and many of Bob Hope’s films are comedy mystery, but not really of the screwball school — screwy perhaps, but not exactly screwball, which like true noir has some easily defined characteristics.
Screwball comedy is a bit like Justice Potter’s definition of pornography, you know it when you see it.
I agree about the Thin Man films, though Powell and Loy were so identified with the screwball school that any comedy they are both it almost has to be included.
Not all comedy mysteries are screwball in the same way not all screwball comedies with crime in them are comedy mysteries.
John Ford’s THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING is screwball for instance, but despite the gangster element not a comedy mystery. On the other hand ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT is a comedy mystery, but not really screwball despite the Runyonesque characters. THE SMILING GHOST, a fast paced little B from Warners, is certainly a comedy mystery, and almost as insane as MURDER HE SAYS, but I don’t think any of us would argue it is a true screwball comedy mystery.
I suspect the films that fit the exact definition of screwball comedy mystery are fairly small in number.
For instance, is THE GAZEBO a screwball comedy mystery, a satire (on television mostly), or a black comedy? You could make an argument for any of those. I tend to think it fits better in the latter two categories, but it still has some screwball sensibilities. And John Farrow’s HIS KIND OF WOMAN isn’t srewball or a comedy, but film noir, but still plays with screwball comedy elements for much of its running time with several characters better suited to screwball comedy than film noir (Vincent Price’s delightful Errol Flynn style actor for one).
THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY is certainly a black comedy, but has screwball elements, and Hitch did do at least one screwball film (MR. AND MRS. SMITH). ARSENIC AND OLD LACE is screwball, but there is no real mystery involved.
We’ve talked here before about whether THE BIG CLOCK is screwball or film noir, or both. I happen to think it is the latter with some comedic elements borrowed from the screwball school, but I can see the other argument even if I don’t agree.
I doubt the people making them cared how they were labeled, but still it’s interesting when we start to try and discuss them trying to come up with some sort of general definition. A list of comedy mysteries would be as long as your arm, but not one of screwball comedy mysteries.
But I don’t think I quite accept MURDER HE SAYS as a screwball comedy mystery, since though there are murders there is no central murder mystery. I think, for me anyway, that an actual murder to be solved is a must in a true screwball comedy mystery, or else you have to include films like BALL OF FIRE and THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY.
January 29th, 2011 at 8:16 am
Marjorie Main gets a bad rap because of the Ma Kettle character she played. But she could be funny in other movies. For instance on TCM, January 27, she starred in a MGM B-mystery, MRS O’MALLEY AND MR MALONE(1950), based on the Craig Rice series.
Her co-star was a young James Whitmore and almost the entire film takes place on a train with a couple of disappearing bodies. Two other beautiful actresses had roles also: Dorothy Malone and Phyllis Kirk. I found the everything to be hilarious and very entertaining. Marjorie Main was a joy and it’s a shame she got stuck with the Ma Kettle plots.
January 29th, 2011 at 1:05 pm
David
That’s a masterful summing up of the screwball comedy mystery category. Nicely done.
Walker
Marjorie Main may have been good as Mrs O’Malley, but I still have to grit my teeth every time I watch it. The Kettle movies may have been popular but they sure set her image in concrete.
She was in MURDER, HE SAYS before the Kettles came along, though, and in opinion, they had to turn her down a notch or two before they allowed her to play Ma.
— Steve
January 29th, 2011 at 1:48 pm
From comic strips to movies, both subjected to censorship, screwball humor was a common and popular form of humor through most of the first half of the twentieth century.
Even today virtually all comedy contains some element of screwball humor.
Because the term is overused and often loses its meaning I try to limit it to what probably is better called screwball romantic comedy mystery. A sub-genre to a sub-genre (romantic comedy or comedy mystery) to a genre (comedy or mystery).
Of course as we all agree, what makes THE MAD MISS MANTON special is its a great film in both comedy and mystery genres. There are too few films you can say that about.
January 29th, 2011 at 7:19 pm
Steve
Like you I watch MRS. O’MALLEY AND MR. MALONE through gritted teeth. Whitmore is wonderful as Malone (though Pat O’Brien, Brian Donlevy, and television’s Lee Tracy were good Malone’s too), but turning Hildegarde Withers into Marjorie Main — arrghhh!
Main was fine in her own milieu, the housekeeper in MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS or the title character in THE WISTFUL WIDOW OF WAGON GAP, but she was no Hildegarde Withers and the film is fairly faithful to “Once Upon a Train” overall, but turning Withers into Main is about like casting Slim Summerville as Philo Vance or Basil Rathbone as Pa Kettle.
January 29th, 2011 at 11:42 pm
Humor is such a subjective thing. What I find hilarious, someone else may consider to be not funny at all. I almost didn’t watch MRS O’MALLEY AND MR MALONE but I read a couple good things about it on IMDB and thought I’d give it a try because I like mystery comedies and movies that take place on a train. For me this was a complete success and I wish I had a copy to watch again.
For instance, the scene where James Whitmore and Marjorie Main manhandle a corpse through the train, all the time pretending that it’s Marjorie’s mother who is drunk, I found to be a really funny. Others may not find it amusing at all. Hollywood was always changing characters and plots. Who knows why they changed the Hildegarde Withers into Marjorie Main? I guess it all boiled down to who was available for filming, etc.
January 30th, 2011 at 12:35 pm
I’ve been trying to find an authoritative definition of Screwball Comedy, and most commentators seem to view it as ‘sex comedy without sex’. The mutual attraction is sublimated into argument and often interrupted by slapstick. THE PENGUIN POOL MURDERS could almost be viewed as a proto-Screwball; Hildegarde and Oscar bicker constantly throughout the film, but are heading for the altar by the end of it (although they never get there!)
THE THIN MAN and its sequels are wonderful, although the mutual contentment between Nick and Nora shifts it slightly outside of classic Screwball. They both seem to be almost hovering outside of the narrative, looking down on the situation with an amused detachment. When Nora finds Dorothy in Nick’s arms,she isn’t suspicious and doesn’t get into an argument with her husband. They just both look amused, as though they’ve already read the script. It’s the opposite of what would happen in a Screwball. Is it Anti-Screwball?
January 30th, 2011 at 5:34 pm
One of the fun experiences of playing here in the comment section is occasionally your own beliefs get challenged to where you have to rethink them.
Bradstreet, like you most of the books I have read limits the term screwball comedy to “sex comedy without sex”. Most point to IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT as the beginning of the genre. Yet others such as Wheeler and Woolsey were doing sex comedies without sex before that.
Many books seem to believe it is sex comedies under the Hayes code and the screwball comedy ended with the Hayes board and other state run censorship boards.
Perhaps the problem with the exact definition of screwball comedy is screwball added to describe comedy is redundant.
January 30th, 2011 at 7:42 pm
To some extent the screwball school was a collision between the old world sensibilities of men like Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder (who was a notable screwball director) and the fresher American voice of directors like Hawks, Stevens, Sturges, and even John Ford. It is almost French and Viennese sex farce strained through the wise acre American tone.
And it doesn’t always succeed. LOVE ON THE RUN with Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Franchot Tone has its moments, but over all misses the feel and the voice of the genre — though it too fits here since the plot involves a runnaway heiress and a spy plot.
Two good B films that turn out to be excellent screwball mysteries are THE LONE WOLF’S SPY HUNT (with a cast that includes Ida Lupino and Rita Hayworth) written by Jonathan Latimer; and a real sleeper, RUNAWAY with Rod Cameron, Broderick Crawford, and Albert Dekker. Cameron and Crawford are private eyes who quit their double crossing boss Dekker and are hired to find one of those typical runaway heiresses with a reward on their head and the film becomes increasingly frantic as the double cross Dekker and are double crossed by him, as well as double crossing each other. It’s one of the rare successful screwball films from a yeoman like director and with mostly B actors.
Possibly the worst mis fire in screwball history is the second version of THE MALTESE FALCON, SATAN MET A LADY with Warren William and Bette Davis. It’s so painful as to be almost unwatchable despite a first rate cast and a good director. Of course turning THE MALTESE FALCON into a screwball comedy is one of those ideas that must have sounded great at three in the morning over half a dozen martini’s, but doesn’t quite hack it by the light of day.
January 30th, 2011 at 9:09 pm
David, I always felt the surrealist movement of the twenties played a major role in screwball humor and art as well.
One of the important rules of the screwball comedy we have not really discussed is pace. The fact the action and dialog moves at a too rapid for reality pace. Notice how the pace in THE MAD MISS MANTON changes from fast for comedy to slow for romance and mystery. The bedroom scene starts fast then slows to almost a stop as the characters grow closer.
It is this rapid pace or lack of that influences me most when I label something a screwball comedy or romance comedy or just a comedy.
January 30th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
michael
Surrealism and even silent comedy both played a role in screwball comedy as did Hecht and MacArthur’s FRONT PAGE and the addition of sound to film so that rapid fire dialogue was possible. Movement plays a huge part in the genre in general; some of Hawks films resembling a Warner Brothers Looney Tune.
I agree about pace — certainly in Hawks and Wilder’s films where the dialogue bounces off the walls and the characters, or Preston Sturges where the film can build to the pace of a Hal Roach Keystone Kops comedy (where Sturges started) frequently climaxing in a montage of the characters all running around.
And screwball encompasses some odd films; Sturges even did a screwball biographical drama in THE GREAT MOMENT.
Really, a better name than screwball might be romantic comedy, since it encompasses directors like Lubitsch and Mitchell Leisen who later did screwball too. For instance, the Wilder written Leisen directed ARISE MY LOVE with Ray Milland and Claudette Colbert is a romantic drama about two Americans caught in Europe on the eve of WWII, but it plays much like classic screwball comedy in its pace, dialogue, and Walter Abel’s editor whose “I’m not happy, I’m not happy,” became his catchphrase.
And there is certainly a tie between the screwball school and the hardboiled school of writing with writers like Jonathan Latimer, Geoffrey Homes, Norbert Davis, Robert Leslie Bellem, Cleve Adams, Craig Rice, Stuart Palmer, Kurt Steel, and Robert Reeves all writing in a distinctly screwball vein.
January 30th, 2011 at 11:30 pm
In the 1940’s, both BLACK MASK and DIME DETECTIVE were edited by Ken White and he encouraged the writers to write a sort of screwball mystery comedy. Whacky stores with bizarre plots were written by Robert Reeves, Merle Constiner, Fred Davis, Norbert Davis, John K. Butler, Dale Clark, D.L. Champion, and others.
I’ve read practically all these stories and it is still possible to collect these magazines for reasonable prices.
January 31st, 2011 at 5:33 pm
WALKER: Has there ever been a collection of these stories? I’d love to see something like that. They must be running out of subjects for those MAMMOTH BOOKS OF… by now. The should consider it. THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF SCREWBALL MYSTERIES. Yeah!
January 31st, 2011 at 7:41 pm
Bradstreet: Yes, there are collections out there that emphasize the screwball mystery element. All of these happen to deal with DIME DETECTIVE authors:
Hard Boiled Detectives edited by Weinberg, Dziemianowicz, & Greenberg.
Tough Guys and Dangerous Dames edited by the above.
The Adventures of Max Latin by Norbert Davis
Footsteps on the Brain by DL Champion
At the Stroke of Midnight by John K. Butler
The Compleat Adventures of the Dean by Merle Constiner
The Compleat Adventures of Bill Brent by Frederick C. Davis
Ron Goulart has written three books that deal with DIME DETECTIVE:
The Dime Detectives
Cheap Thrills
The Hard Boiled Dicks
Matt Moring, publisher of Altus Press will soon have available THE DIME DETECTIVE COMPANION. This will be an index of the magazine plus a collection of articles. Altus Press also has future plans to publish the Fred Nebel Cardigan series plus perhaps Fred MacIsaac’s Rambler series, among others.
Now, I do want to point out that the above books have a mixture of screwball comedies as well as hardboiled mysteries. But all are high quality and worth reading.
February 1st, 2011 at 2:27 pm
WALKER: Thanks for the recommendations. I’ll start looking.
February 1st, 2011 at 7:25 pm
Though they aren’t anthologies, I think anyone interested in the screwball school, would appreciate the books by Robert Reeves featuring Cellini Smith, Kurt Steel’s Hank Hyer novels, Cleve Adams Rex McBride, Dwight Babcock’s HOMICIDE FOR HANNAH, and Norbert Davis three Doan and Carstairs (Carstairs is a pedigree Great Dane) novels, all of which more obscure than some of the other scewball masters.
Some are more screwball than others, but still fun, and for a modern take on the genre aside from Richard Prather there are John Jakes’ Johnny Havoc books and the Fickling’s Honey West. Carter Brown’s Mavis Seidlitz is in the screwball school as is Mark Schorr’s Red Diamond.
Of course Jonathan Latimer and Geoffrey Homes are both in the grand tradition.
At least one of Robert Kyle’s Ben Gates novels (BEN GATES IS HOT) comes very close to the screwball school with Gates hired to protect a nubile teen age girl with nymphomanical tendencies from political enemies of her father. It’s a canny mix of hardboiled mystery in the Michael Shayne style and sex farce, and my own favorite of the Gates books because of a neat twist at the end that turns the book on its head.
Walker
I don’t know if you would agree, but I would include Gardner’s Lester Leith in the screwball game, if not exactly hardboiled in the usual sense. Also Frank Gruber’s Johnny Fletcher, Simon Lash, and Otis Beagle books, and the anthology of his stories about Encyclopedia salesman Oliver Quade, BRASS KNUCKLES. And certainly one of my favorite anthologies of all time, Craig Rice and Stuart Palmer’s THE PEOPLE VS WITHERS AND MALONE.
Only Leith and Quade really fit the pulp connection, but all are screwball.