Chelsea Classics Summer 2023

Live/Laugh/Lie: Screwball Comedies - My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936, 93 min) Carole Lombard and William Powell dazzle in this definitive screwball comedy by Gregory La Cava—a potent cocktail of romantic repartee and social critique. Irene (Lombard), an eccentric, wealthy Manhattanite, wins a society-ball scavenger hunt after finding a “forgotten man” (Powell)—an apparent down-and-out drifter—at a dump. She gives him work as the family butler and soon falls head over heels for him. Her attempts to both woo Godfrey and indoctrinate him in the household’s dysfunction make for a string of madcap high jinks that has never been bested, and the film remains one of Hollywood’s greatest commentaries on class and the social unrest of the Depression era.