Notes on my Favorite Films Year By Year (1936): My Man Godfrey

For most of his life, Godfrey Parke had had it made. Coming from a wealthy family with a healthy inheritance awaiting him and possessing a natural charm that drew everyone around him in, it seemed like life only had wine and roses in store for Godfrey. Life has a way of falling apart at the drop of a designer hat though and a splintered love affair had hit Godfrey hard. Depressed and near suicidal, Godfrey escapes to a depressed hobo-village down by the east river where he discovered that happiness has little to do with financial prosperity.

Gregory La Cava had been knocking around the film industry for as long as it had basically existed. Born in Pennsylvania in 1892, La Cava got his start in the silents in 1916 as an animator. Dozens upon dozens of animated and finally short live-action films followed for the ambitious La Cava, who quickly established himself as one of the most prolific fellows in the silent-film industry. He made the jump to talkies fairly smoothly but he never quite made the leap to the top-tier directors of his day. No one could argue with the spirited and brilliant touch he gave to My Man Godfrey though, his masterpiece from 1936 that remains one of Hollywood's greatest and most moving comedies.



La Cava crafted the script of the very brave My Man Godfrey from an Eric Hatch novel along with screenwriter Morrie Ryskind and Hatch himself. Opening with a cruel scavenger hunt perpetrated by seemingly selfish socialite Irene Bullock, who decides a homeless man would be the greatest prize of all, My Man Godfrey remains as surprising and potent as ever. The never less than brilliant script would act as a romantic screwball comedy but would also attempt to come to terms with the terrible financial depression America was suffering at the time. My Man Godfrey would lament the plight of the working class while poking fun at the rich and powerful that had stepped all over them, and it would do so with a style and wit that has rarely been matched to this day.



With La Cava's sure-handed touch and the wondrous lead work by William Powell and the glorious Carole Lombard (still probably the greatest female comedian the screen has ever seen), My Man Godfrey remains one of the most purely entertaining and thought-provoking Hollywood films of the thirties. It would snag a solid six Oscar nominations (although it was shut-out) and it would briefly give Gregory La Cava the respect that had mostly alluded him. Sadly, he would only complete a half dozen or so more films before he passed away in 1952.



My Man Godfrey is available as part of The Criterion Collection, where a brilliant series of outtakes featuring the beautiful Lombard cursing like a sailor can be enjoyed as an extra. Avoid at all costs the colorized version that is floating around, as it mercilessly destroys the wonderful black and white photography of Ted Tetzlaff that is so essential to the film's success.

Carole Lombard is Supernatural (The Film Isn't)

An excessively silly, and only sporadically interesting, early horror-thriller from Paramount, 1933’s Supernatural is really only worth searching out for fans of its star, the beautiful and extremely talented Carole Lombard, or its director, White Zombie creator Victor Halperin.



Serial Killer Vivienne Osbourne promises revenge before she is taken to the electric chair, a promise that is made good on when her spirit takes possession of millionaire socialite Roma Courtney. Thankfully a psychologist named Dr. Carl Houston, an expert in all things supernatural, is on hand to make sure everything works out the best for Courtney and her doubting fiancée Grant.



Clocking in at just over an hour, Supernatural would have probably been all but lost in time by this point if it wasn’t for the luminous Lombard. The Indiana born Carole Lombard will forever associated with the Screwball comedies that she excelled in before her tragic death in 1942, but like all studio players from the period she had to work in every conceivable genre. Supernatural is Lombard’s one assignment in the horror field, which is fortunate, as she doesn’t in all honesty give one of her better performances, although she is quite good in the outlandish last quarter of the film once the possession takes place.



Supernatural is an early feature for the rather unprolific Victor Halperin. The Arizona born director has just seventeen features to his credit as director, an extremely small number for a studio filmmaker and most of them have all but been forgotten. There are some major exceptions though, such as the brilliant White Zombie (the film Halperin shot right before Supernatural) and the early undead work Revolt of the Zombies (1936). Fans of White Zombie hoping that Supernatural might be some sort of lost horror classic will be particularly disappointed, as the film fails both as a thriller and a mystery at nearly every turn.



The biggest problem Supernatural can’t overcome is the extremely weak script, credited to Garnett Weston, Harvey Thew and Brian Marlow. The very definition of underdeveloped, the writing behind Supernatural feels like it was completed within a day or so and, at best, it does a real disservice to Halperin and Lombard. It’s particularly disappointing as Weston was indeed the mind behind White Zombie, a fact that makes Supernatural feel like a cheap cash-in on a great work.



Lombard isn’t the only great star let down by Supernatural, as a young Randolph Scott is on hand as well as Vivienne Osborne. Working in the film’s favor is the fact that it is a pre-code production, so it is allowed to be much racier than it would have been down the road (Lombard’s breast is even groped at one point during the slim running time).



Supernatural did have an absolutely terrific marketing campaign, as one can see through the film’s striking poster and haunting publicity stills, and it’s a shame that neither Halperin’s direction nor cinematographer Arthur Martinelli manage to do anything as evocative in the actual film.



Supernatural was released on VHS in the mid nineties by MCA/Universal, but it has not been granted any sort of release on DVD. It’s hard to imagine it being released on disc unless it was a part of some sort of Lombard, or early horror collection…both of which would be extremely welcome even though Supernatural would be far from the main drawing point. I haven't been able to find much literature on the film, as the books I have on Lombard barely mention it, but the always reliable Video Watchdog offered a nice review of the film in issue 35 from John Charles for those interested.

The Art of the Movie Poster: A Triple-Feature from Director John Cromwell