At a time when the American public was going through a very rough period, the Depression-era, Hollywood gave way to a new genre, the romantic comedy of the 1930's.

Initiated by Frank Capra, a few directors (Preston Sturges, Gregory La Cava, George Stevens or Leo McCarey) followed and defined its methodology. Together with some writer-collaborators, they brought a slapstick humour, an improvisatory touch and portrayed heroines who stood for something particular : independence, stubbornness, eccentricity, wit and strength of character. Capra and his confreres who collaborated with stylish comedy stars (Barbara Stanwick, Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, Claudette Colbert, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Carole Lombard) also tried to imagine what it might feel like to be a woman…

In her erudite book, The Runaway Bride, Elizabeth Kendall analyzes some of the most fruitful collaborations between these directors and actresses. She gives not only concise biographies of the people involved but she explains how these men and women worked together with ease and shaped the genre to make movies that contained -as she writes- "real wisdom about the relations between the classes and the sexes and real wit about the persistently hopeful naiveté of the Americans."

Elizabeth Kendall is also the author of American Daughter, and Where She Danced, she is a professor at Eugene Land College in New-York and a dance and culture critic.

Interview Elizabeth Kendall

Dear Patricia, and Readers, I wrote The Runaway Bride many years ago. It was a fascinating process, to find out all this stuff. But I may not remember it all as precisely as I knew it then, 3 books back. So I will do my best… --Elizabeth

Can you explain the title of your book The Runaway Bride ?

For a long time I didn't know what to call the book. But I was focusing on the moment at the end of It Happened One Night, when Claudette Colbert runs away from her fancy outdoor wedding. I thought she was the template for many of the Romantic Comedy heroines - running away from the wrong kind of wedding, after she, and (especially) her guy, had learned what the right kind of marriage could be. Hence this title.

Your book focuses mainly on a dozen films, what has determined your choice? Why have you decided to exclude movies such as Bringing Up Baby or The Philadelphia Story, for instance?

I saw and studied, for this book, almost all the romantic comedies made during the 30's and early 40's. The movies I chose to focus on, were the movies in which, it seemed to me, the whole genre moved forward, into a new dimension. So, the movies that marked the growth and development of the genre, over the course of the 30's and 40's. I realized, after I had chosen these particular movies, that all of them used improvisation on the set, as part of the filming. That is, during filming, all of them diverged from whatever script the director went in with. All of their directors were comfortable with improvising to improve the script. And - it turned out - all of those directors had worked in, or admired, silent film comedy. Howard Hawks was not such a director; he was not a silent comedy director; he followed his scripts very closely.

 

After The Jazz Singer, the studios tried to find a new tone. Fox concentrated on westerns, Paramount on musicals, Irving Thalberg at MGM invested in talking melodrama with Greta Garbo. Harry Cohn at Columbia bought a Broadway play which became the movie Ladies of Leisure (1930). You devote the first chapter of the book to this (quite forgotten) film, why ?

I feel that the roots of 30's romantic comedy as we know it lie in Capra's own "creative process." At the time he started to make serious films, he was outside the big-studio system. He could invent his own way of doing things, without bigger bosses breathing down his neck. I also believe that he and Stanwyck were an amazing collaborative duo. I believe they were romantically connected in real life during this time. Many moments from Ladies of Leisure were repeated again, in slightly different form, in later Capra movies, especially in It Happened One Night, the template for the whole genre.

Frank Capra, in the thirties, became a "weeper" specialist. He made three other -underrated- movies with Barbara Stanwyck (The Miracle Woman, Forbidden, and The Bitter Tea of General Yen). Then, his 1934 film It Happened One Night, is generally considered as an important step for his career and for the screwball comedy of the 30's. Why was it such a huge hit and a landmark movie?

I don't really know why it became such a huge hit. Maybe because it's so fun. It treats severe Depression problems with such a light touch. In fact, it was an even huger hit than we generally understand. Columbia Pictures did not have its own theaters for distributing movies. The bigger studios all did have their own theaters. It Happened One Night became a landslide bestseller even without a theatre network waiting to receive it.

 

The romantic comedy of the 1930's is linked to the American History and the Depression, you mention the "nightmarish Hoover years" and at the same time, the audience who had license to enjoy the "catharsis" of a love story, a catharsis intimately bound up with their own trauma. Do these comedies represent the concerns of a generation ?

I think they do.

 

When David O. Selznick approached Katharine Hepburn for A Bill of Divorcement (George Cukor, 1932) she demanded the huge sum of $ 1,500 a week and was hired anyway! You write that her off screen image was surrounded by a kind of "settled Anglo-Saxon respectability"….Apparently, she intimidated the studio bosses…Why? Where does her "prestige" come from ?

Her prestige I believe was a "class thing." She came from a fancy Boston family; she spoke with an upper-class accent. She wasn't one of the down-and-out young women who flocked to Hollywood desperate to make their fortunes. She might have been desperate, but she played it very nonchalant, and very "entitled." This seemed to mightily impress the Hollywood bosses.

 

Can you explain what happened on the set of Spitfire when Hepburn demanded $10,000 for an extra day of shooting?!

This one you'll have to find in the book, where it's all written down. I think Hepburn was testing her studio, RKO.

 

George Stevens wasn't Pandro Berman's (or Hepburn's) first choice to direct Alice Adams (1935) ? Why wasn't Stevens a safe choice in the beginning? How did he start his career ?

This one too, I don't quite remember all the details. Stevens was very young in the early 30's. And he looked young. He didn't appear to have the gravitas usually required for Hepburn's directors.

 

Ginger Rogers, even if she had emerged as a movie star of her own at RKO in 1936, wasn't as lucky as Katharine Hepburn in her contractual dealings with the studio heads, why ?

Ginger didn't have that special upper-class Eastern edge - "good" family, personal stability and entitlement, as these were narrowly understood by the Hollywood bosses. She was from Missouri & Texas. All she had was a brassy mom.

 

You write that Rogers was perhaps the "most natural female democrat working in Hollywood in the thirties". In Stage Door, are the social class differences between Hepburn's and Rogers's characters visible ?

Stage Door is built on the class differences among young women living in a New York theatrical boarding house, trying to become actresses. It reproduces the situation in Hollywood, in another dimension. In this respect (the class angle), I think Hepburn and Rogers are playing pretty much themselves in Stage Door.

 

You're also a dance critic : What is your opinion on Ginger Rogers's dancing abilities? Why did she make the difference in general ?

Rogers was a wonderful dancer, who appeared to move easily, naturally. One can only do that if one has a lot of experience and technique. She also had a knack for dancing with a partner - synching her movements with his ; looking into his eyes, etc.. Many dancers forget about the partner.

 

On the Astaire-Rogers Partnership, John Mueller wrote: "Ginger Rogers's special contribution to this amazing series of masterpieces derives not from her dancing ability alone, but from the fact that she was a cagey and intuitive actress. In an important sense, then, she may have been Hollywood's greatest actress. [… ]The dances continue to glow so radiantly more than a half-century later because of the skill and artistry with which they have been choreographed and staged by Astaire, and also because Ginger Rogers was such a consummate actress." Do you agree?

Yep, and her dancing and acting were blended.

Gregory La Cava's keen talent for comedy is perfectly reflected in My Man Godfrey (1936) and Stage Door (1937). Wasn't he one of the first directors to give a touch of "cinéma-vérité"? How did he work ?

He worked a lot with improvisation. He was able to do this, because he had a background in screen animation (he had been a cartoonist). He knew more precisely than most other directors exactly how long a shot took. He could do a lot of calculating of length and timing at the same time he was actually shooting.

 

La Cava had also control on the production staff, wasn't it quite unusual for that era ?

Yes, it was. He always came in under budget, probably because of the skills described above.

 

Another original personality was Carole Lombard. You explain that she was able to "trade insult for insult with the crassest Hollywood producers"! Harry Cohn and others! What was her background and how did she get the part in My Man Godfrey ?

I think she was a Hollywood kid - grew up there. Don't quite remember how she got the role, but she was known for having a lot of spirit and excellent comic timing.

The Awful Truth avec Cary Grant et Irene Dunne

Leo McCarey's methods were also unusual at that time, during the shooting of The Awful Truth, he brought the actors speeches on pieces of paper, and according to some of them (Ralph Bellamy), when the shooting of the film began in June 1937, there was practically no script. However, these films relied on the work of important and sometimes forgotten scriptwriters, for instance the Delmars, for The Awful Truth. Even if the movies were products of work collectives, could you explain the contribution of these writers ?

I think writers played a different role in each movie. Some of them worked actively with the director during the shooting process, to adjust the script. Some of them merely contributed the script at the beginning of the process. The Delmars I believe were active scriptwriters.

 

In the thirties, the Broadway Theater was in a sorry state, and writers were trying to get jobs in Hollywood, wasn't Preston Sturges a good example? How did he start ?

Preston Sturges had such a crazy life, that he almost can't serve as an example of anything. He also had really good luck. But yes, he did have a single Broadway hit, "Strictly Dishonorable," which was semi-autobiographical, and which he used as currency to get to Hollywood.

 

What are you working on now?

The book I'm writing now is about the youth in Russia of choreographer George Balanchine (he left Russia for Europe in 1924, at the age of 20) ; and the death of his close friend and classmate, the young ballerina Lidiia Ivanova. She drowned, or possibly was murdered, just 2 weeks before she would have gone out to the West with Balanchine and 4 other young dancers. This book involves much primary research in Russian archives. At the moment, I've written the first 2 chapters.