Twentieth Century
Howard Hawks (1934)
Broadway impresario Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) transforms lingerie model Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into a star actress called Lily Garland. Their partnership enjoys a string of theatre hits but Lily has soon had enough of Oscar’s controlling her life offstage as well as her performances on it. She leaves him and Broadway for Hollywood, and prospers there. Without Lily in his shows, Oscar produces a succession of flops. Deep in debt and in disguise (to hide from his creditors), he boards the luxury train ‘Twentieth Century Limited’ en route from Chicago to New York. When he learns Lily is in the next-door compartment, Oscar seizes the chance to get her back and turn the tide.
In Ben Hecht’s press lampoon Nothing Sacred (1937), tabloid journalism is represented by unscrupulous opportunists. In Twentieth Century, a satire of theatrical drives and temperaments, the targets are flamboyant, impractical egotists. Both films, in other words, trade in instantly recognisable professional caricatures. Oscar Jaffe is a distillation of show business megalomania: he’s a theatre manager-producer-director who, from the way he carries on, might as well be a marquee-name actor too. On the Twentieth Century, Lily barely stops performing – as a big-name actress, she no longer distinguishes between real life and playing a part. The lesser mortals accompanying the principals are familiar types too: Oscar’s harassed worrywart accountant (Walter Connolly); another acolyte (Roscoe Karns) who, thanks to his Irishness, is reliably inebriated; Lily’s boyfriend (Ralph Forbes) – rich, literal-minded, terminally boring.
The dialogue, adapted by Hecht and Charles MacArthur from their stage play (with uncredited contributions by Gene Fowler and Preston Sturges), is relentlessly witty. If you’re not entranced by the acting, though, Twentieth Century feels like a demonstration of the writers’ ingenuity – maintaining a supply of incidents and smart lines within narrow limits of plot and characterisation. John Barrymore and Carole Lombard go at their roles full tilt, barely pausing for breath. Barrymore does other amazing physical things: there are moments when you can’t fathom how he got from one position to another quite so quickly. His co-star, at times, has a coarseness that contrasts not only with Lily’s sleek satin costumes but also, and refreshingly, with the more polished kooky persona that Carole Lombard had perfected within a couple of years. There’s no denying how accomplished both leads are but they’re exhausting too.
Howard Hawks would go on to direct other screwball classics in rapid succession (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire). I suppose he must count as a master of the genre. I laughed once early on in Twentieth Century. Halfway through, I was trying to remember what had made that happen. The prospect of a second laugh was looking remote and I’m afraid it stayed that way. To be fair to Walter Connolly, singled out for censure in my note on Nothing Sacred, he’s a lot more varied here – more varied, in fact, than any of the other supporting players. They also include Charles Lane, as Oscar’s professional rival, and Etienne Girardot, as an amiable escapee from a mental institution, who wanders round the train sticking ‘Repent – the time is at hand’ notices to anything and anyone in sight. To describe this as a running gag is putting it very mildly. There are also jokes about the world of Hollywood being infra dig in the eyes of Broadway theatre people – a comic idea going strong eighty-five years later, in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story.
16 January 2020