The Awful Truth

Directed by: Leo McCarey - 1 hour, 31 minutes - 1937 - USA – B&W - DVD - 1.37:1
Starring: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Asta

Lucy and Jerry Warriner are a wealthy socialite couple whose affections have started to wander. When they catch other in compromising lies about where they’ve been and who they’ve been with, they declare their marriage washed-up and file for divorce. After a brief courtroom battle over their dog, Mr. Smith, they go their separate ways, and only meet on the two weekends a month Jerry has dog custody. As Lucy and Jerry each move on to their new lovers, their old jealousies rekindle, and they each set out to sabotage the other’s new romance by any means necessary.

The Awful Truth is one of the classic screwball comedies, a distinctly American genre with elements of bedroom farce and comedy-of-errors filtered through the censorship of the Hays Code to create what critic Andrew Sarris called, “a sex comedy without the sex.” The film marked the latest in a series of box office hits for Irene Dunne, who had successfully taken up comedy a few years earlier after making her name as a dramatic actress. But the film is probably best known for launching the career of Cary Grant. Though he had already been in several films, The Awful Truth created “The Cary Grant Persona,” the broad mannerisms, expressive hands and eyes, and self-deprecating humor that Grant would build a career on. The “Persona” was really the co-creation of Grant and director Leo McCarey, whose had previously worked with the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and Laurel & Hardy, and who had great instincts for physical comedy. In fact, colleagues would later attest that much of the “Persona” was based on McCarey’s own physical and vocal mannerisms. The Awful Truth would go on to earn McCarey a Best Director Oscar, in addition to nominations for Irene Dunne for Best Actress and Ralph Bellamy for Best Supporting Actor.

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