Black & White World

The Awful Truth (1937)

I’ve read that Cary Grant really didn’t like working on this picture, and tried on a number of occasions to get out of his contract.  Most of the time when he and Irene Dunne showed up to shoot, there was no script and director Leo McCarey had them improvise scenes.  Or, when McCarey was stuck, he’d just go off and play the piano for a while.  I guess I can understand why Grant was nervous.  Hell, even the finished product has no plot to speak of, and in the last ten minutes it threatens to collapse like a house of cards.

Looking back on his career, oh let’s say a decade or so later, Grant must have been relieved that RKO wouldn’t let him out of his contract, since The Awful Truth effectively turned his career around and molded him into the light comic, well-dressed, fast-talking, urbane, witty, smooth operator he would become legendary as.  There were some hints of his capabilities earlier in his career, but always fleeting.  The Awful Truth was a box office smash that catapulted Grant into stardom.

There’s no real plot to the movie at all—a young wealthy couple, Jerry and Lucy Warriner, divorce on a spur of the moment decision (neither appears to be very honest with the other); they have a custody battle over their dog Mr. Smith (Asta, the cinema’s greatest canine star ever); they interfere with one another’s romances and get involved in hysterical levels of one-upsmanship.  It’s almost like a farcical chess game.  The greatest sequence is an ill-fated double date between Jerry and his new flame Dixie Belle Lee, and Lucy and her new beau Dan Leeson (the always great and underrated Ralph Bellamy).  It’s an hilarious mix of verbal sparring and visual gags.

The final ten minutes of this movie really start to drag—like a lot of screwball comedies, The Awful Truth doesn’t seem to know when to put the brakes on.  But it’s saved in the final scene with adjoining bedrooms and a clever device with a cuckoo clock.  Great fun and well worth seeing.  If you’ve seen it before, it’s well worth another look, too.