My Man Godfrey (1936)

Julie Gerding

Nominated for all four acting Oscars in addition to Best Director and Best Screenplay, My Man Godfrey is a classic example of 1930s screwball comedy. The film opens with a conversation between down-and-out men in a city dump where they are interrupted by society men and women who are on a scavenger hunt to find things nobody wants; on their list is“the forgotten man.” Played by William Powell, Godfrey, one of the dump dwellers, fits the bill and returns with one of the socialite sisters (after having pushed the other one into an ash heap) where, when asked to give a speech to the wealthy crowd, he decries their senseless pursuit. Irene, the sister who brought him, played by Carole Lombard, decides he should be the new butler, and thus Godfrey gets a job, though admittedly with a madcap, overly dramatic family with its mistress keeping a gorilla-act- performing protégé and the father trying to maintain his sanity. Godfrey, we later learn, comes from a well-to-do family with whom he is no longer in communication. As the aptly named Bullocks family seems bound for ruin, we discover that Godfrey has been making financial deals on the side and saves the family from destitution while also opening a residence for his buddies back at the city dump. The film ends with Godfrey inexplicably marrying Irene, whom he supposedly loves.

As a screwball comedy, My Man Godfrey is rife with inane behavior by the wealthy, a common trend in the genre. Irene often puts on an act for attention, and her mother participates solely in vapid dialogue. In contrast, those of the lower orders, such as Godfrey and the maid, seem relatively normal and do their best to contain the insanity of the house. Like most screwball comedies, the film ends in a marriage between what were seemingly unlikely lovers (and, in this case, unlikely at the end as well, in my mind). Additionally, the dialogue is fast-paced and witty, reminiscent of Wilde but of a more American variety.

As a 1936 release, the film is interesting in that it depicts life for the down-and-out at the dump before the country was truly out of the Depression. Life for the dump residents involves constantly shifting the location of their box homes as the dump keeps filling in, the characters only half joking about eventually being pushed into the river by the mounds of debris. Godfrey, on a tour late in the film, remarks that one of the residents is a banker whose bank has gone bust, a hint to the ruin that could have lain ahead for the Bullock family if not for Godfrey.