Hindsight

Classic Kids, or 100 films that the kids in your life have to see by 13 or else!
Day 72:  My Man Godfrey  (1936)

I fell in love with Carole Lombard when I saw this movie as a kid.  There was something so free and zany about the way Lombard played her character, Irene, a rich spoiled but ultimately sensitive person.   The film is now considered a classic within the Screwball comedy genre, but at the time, it was just another love-triangle-farce that Lombard had become known for.  Her co-star, William Powell (Lombard's former-real-life Husband) plays the character of Godfrey.  Made during the peak of the depression, the film pokes fun at high society and the idle rich. The plot starts with Godfrey living alongside the river, in the city dump.  One evening, Irene is part of an absurd game of scavenger hunt, taking place at the Waldorf-Ritz Hotel in Manhattan.  One 'item' on the list is to find a "forgotten man." This is how Irene and Godfrey meet.  She realizes the cruelty of the game and in an effort to apologize hires him as her Butler.  Godfrey accepts the post, and the fun really starts.  It certainly doesn't sound like a comedy, but it is played so lightly, and yet at times so honestly, that the film never trivializes the disenfranchised.  Co-stars are Gail Patrick (future producer for the television series Perry Mason), and three fantastic character actors: Alice Brady, Eugene Pallette and Mischa Auer.

Themes:  Depression, Charity, Kindness and Humanity
Media Literacy Questions:  Why did Godfrey play a butler?  How did the filmmakers suggest the community of the forgotten men?  Why was this film in Black and White?  Why do people call films like this a Screwball Comedy?  How were the rich portrayed and why?  Do you think the characters were believable?