Lawrence Eisenberg

By Lawrence Eisenberg

Appeared In Total TV, April 23, 1988.

When is a movie classic no longer a classic? When you've had fond memories for years and then, seeing it again, you wonder what you liked about it in the first place. That goes for performances, too.

This week we have two perfect examples of how the years have been unkind: TOPPER (Saturday, April 23 at 2:30 p.m. on Charnel 35) and MY MAN GODFREY (Saturday, April 23 at 11 pm on Channel 13). TOPPER is about two madcaps, killed ahead of their time, who come back to haunt a millionaire friend. MY MAN GCDFREY concerns a spoiled, rich girl who picks up a bum as part of a scavenger hunt and learns real values from him. Both screwball comedies, they're still funny and watchable.

But what's wrong with these pictures?

Because they were comedies of the 30s, they poked fun at the rich, as did nearly every other Depression era movie (produced, directed, written and acted by weaithy people to lure the unnemployed and destitute into spending their money for tickets). Almost all the rich in thosc films were (pick one or all) misguided, spoiled, nasty, superficial, stupid, buffoonish. They never enjoyed themselves and rarely got the leading
man or woman at the end of the picture. The on1y way they could be redeemed was by listcning to the infinite wisdom of a poor person. (No poor people were stupid or arrogant in the '30s).

The rich folk in MY MAN GODFREY--especially Carole Lombard--only thought they were having a good time until wise Godfrey (WilliamPowell)convinced them that true happiness was the opposite of wealth. In TOPPER,
George and Marian Kirby (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett) had more fun dead than tycoon Cosmo Topper (Roland Young) ever had alive. Though they weren't exactly dirt poor, especially considering their elegant evening clothes, money was meaningless to George and Marian. What was even more lovable about them, somebody said adoringly, was that the only thing they took seriously was fun. Topper, of course, couldn't enjoy himself until they showed him how--which meant turning his back on his money and everything it represented.

Try selling that philosophy to the yuppie generation. Or even to many of the rest of us. Not that the rich have gotten so nice. Despite the excellent PR job they've done on themselves in the last few decades, via truly good works, as weil as charity events that give them the chance to wear new clothes, a lot of them are all the terrible things they were in'30s movies. Some are even more sinister (air and water polluters, insider stock traders, real estate developers and corporate raiders come to mind), and they still need lifetime crash courses in morality. But no articulate bum can teach them a thing about how to enjoy themselves. Their money is buying them a hell of a good time, as money is likely to do. And evervbody now knows that giving away all your wealth, far from bringing you happiness, will more than likely get you committed and not even to a good asylum. So much for that old wives' tale.

On to the next smashed icon: Anbody who has ever heard Carole Lombard's name is familiar with the now-cliched reference to her rare talent for combining comedy with glamour. She certainly did, in many of her movies, and was a powerful dramatic actress as well. But in MY MAN GODFREY, with screenwriter and director as criminal accessories, she is teeth-gratingly cutesy-poo, pouting, chirping and trilling up and down the scales, rarely making a recognizable human sound, and speaking unbearable dialogue --including a moment when she looks out a window at the ocean and says something l
Iike, "What a lovely view. Is it always there?" By the final clinch you may want to punch her beautiful face out.

You'll be inclined to do worse to Constance Bennett while watching TOPPER. This glamour doll, this comedy enchantress. is a kaleidoscope of nauseatingly adorable mannerisms, half the time walking around with limp wrists in front of her, like a puppy begging for food. (Somebody must have thought that was the height of cuteness). After you'vc heard her say, "Toppie, dahling" for the 1Oth or l1th time, you may forget that you have the option of switching channels and go straight to kicking in your screen.

Interesting that the leading men in these movies, William Powell and Cary Grant, were as funny and classic as though they were doing the parts today. Obviously, women's comedy roles in the'30s didn't have built-in timelessness. And yet, Katharine Hepburn, Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne also played in those screwball comedies, and they never once made you reach for a barf bag.

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Copywright Lawrence Eisenberg. 2008. All Rights Reserved