88% (3)  It Happened One Night  105 min,  Not Rated,  [Comedy, Romance]  [Frank Capra]  [22 Feb 1934]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 81%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 98%,   Metacritic: 87%,   External Reviews
Awards:  Won 5 Oscars. Another 5 wins & 2 nominations.
Actors:  Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Roscoe Karns, Walter Connolly
Writer:  Robert Riskin (screen play), Samuel Hopkins Adams (based on the short story by)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Ellie Andrews has just tied the knot with society aviator King Westley when she is whisked away to her father's yacht and out of King's clutches. Ellie jumps ship and eventually winds up on a bus headed back to her husband. Reluctantly she must accept the help of out-of- work reporter Peter Warne. Actually, Warne doesn't give her any choice: either she sticks with him until he gets her back to her husband, or he'll blow the whistle on Ellie to her father. Either way, Peter gets what (he thinks!) he wants .... a really juicy newspaper story.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Frank Capra's seminal screwball comedy, which won all five major Academy Awards for 1934, is still as breezy and beguiling today. Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a spoiled heiress who has married fortune-hunting aviator King Westley (Jameson Thomas), despite her father (Walter Connolly)'s objections. To keep Ellie from marrying this lothario, her father has been holding her prisoner aboard his yacht. But Ellie bolts from the yacht, swims ashore in her clothes, and eventually slips onto a Greyhound bus bound for New York. Aboard the bus is newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who has recently been fired for drinking on the job. Peter gets the last seat on the bus -- but when he gets up to argue with the bus driver, Ellie takes his seat. Since it is the last seat on the bus, they have to share it. When Ellie has her purse stolen and she refuses to report it, Peter begins to suspect something. The next morning, they both miss the bus after a leisurely breakfast, and Peter reveals that he knows her identity. She makes a deal with him: if he helps her get to New York, he can write a scoop about her for his paper. Peter thinks she is a spoiled brat, however, and refuses a monetary bribe: "I'm not interested in your money or your problem. You, King Westley, your father -- you're all a lot of hooey to me!" But as they travel northward and engage in a series of misadventures, the gruff newspaperman and the spoiled rich girl, thrown together by circumstances, fall in love with each other. This movie set the pace for the "screwball" comedy, the witty and romantic clash of temperaments between a man and a woman mismatched in both personality and social position, a type of movie often associated with Katherine Hepburn in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and, with Spencer Tracy, Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), and Desk Set (1957), among others. The only other movies to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay) were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi
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83% (2)  Twentieth Century  91 min,  [Comedy, Romance]  [Howard Hawks]  [11 May 1934]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 78%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 88%,   External Reviews
Awards:  1 win & 1 nomination.
Actors:  Carole Lombard, John Barrymore, Roscoe Karns, Walter Connolly
Writer:  Charles Bruce Millholland (play), Ben Hecht (screenplay), Charles MacArthur (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English, German    Country:  USA
Plot:  Broadway director Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) is a bigger ham than most actors, but through sheer drive and talent he is able to build a successful career. When one of his discoveries, Lily Garland (Carole Lombard), rises to stardom and heeds the call of Hollywood, Oscar begins a career slide. He hits the skids and seems on his way out, until he chances to meet Lily again, on a train ride aboard the Twentieth Century Limited. Oscar pulls out all the stops to re-sign his former star, but it's a battle... because Lily, who is as temperamental as Oscar is, wants to have nothing to do with her former mentor.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Despite his successful efforts at turning her into a star, theatrical producer Oscar Jaffe is persona non grata to actress Lily Garland - a situation that he attempts to fix when a coincidence places the two aboard the same train.
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75% (2)  Front Page Woman  82 min,  APPROVED,  [Comedy, Romance]  [Michael Curtiz]  [20 Jul 1935]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 71%,   Rotten Tomatoes: 80%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Bette Davis, George Brent, Roscoe Karns, Wini Shaw
Writer:  Laird Doyle (screen play), Lillie Hayward (screen play), Roy Chanslor (screen play), Richard Macaulay (from a story by), Laird Doyle (dialogue)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Reporter Curt Devlin loves sob sister Ellen Garfield but believes women are "bum newspapermen". When she learns the identity of a murdered arsonist, he calls it luck. When she goes after the murderer he gets enough evidence to have Maitland Coulter arrested. She finds a bunch of "not guilty" ballots and publishes the wrong story; he eavesdrops on the jury and gets the correct verdict. After being fired she gets a confession from the real killer and gets Coulter released.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Ellen Garfield (Bette Davis) is a neophyte reporter with ambitions big enough to take on assignments usually reserved for men, including the execution of a woman convicted of murder (which causes her to faint). Curt Devlin (George Brent) is a newshawk for a rival paper who likes Ellen a lot, but not her career plans. The two keep crossing paths and tripping each other up, mostly by accident, with Curt's photographer pal Toots O'Grady (Roscoe Karns) keeping score. Curt would like to romance Ellen, but wants her to give up on being a reporter; and she won't give up until she proves she's as good a reporter as any man, including Curt. And when a routine fire that they're both covering turns into a case of disappearance and murder involving a well-known Broadway producer, they end up going head-to-head on both the manhunt for the presumed killer and the trial that follows.
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77% (1)  Cain and Mabel  90 min,  APPROVED,  [Comedy, Musical, Romance]  [Lloyd Bacon]  [26 Sep 1936]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 77%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Allen Jenkins, Clark Gable, Marion Davies, Roscoe Karns
Writer:  Laird Doyle (screen play), H.C. Witwer (story)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  The managers of heavyweight champion Larry Cain and Broadway musical star Mabel O'Dare scheme up a romance to give the celebrities more glamour. But the two don't hit it off, having started on the wrong foot.
Rotten Tomatoes:   The evergreen Laurette Taylor stage vehicle +Peg O' My Heart was the basis for this Marion Davies picture. 36-year-old Davies plays a twentysomething Irish colleen who inherits a large sum of money from her grandfather. To collect the legacy, she must leave her beloved Pa (J. Farrell McDonald) and live in England for three years. Hoydenish Davies raises a ruckus in her staid family mansion, meanwhile falling in love with handsome young Onslow Stevens. It is Stevens who tells Davies that her father, who'd pretended to be dead so that she wouldn't return from England before the three years were up, is actually alive. Renouncing her inheritance, Davies returns to Pa, with Stevens not far behind. A silent version of Peg O' My Heart, with Laurette Taylor recreating her stage role, was filmed in 1923.
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71% (1)  This Thing Called Love  72 min,  [Comedy, Romance]  [Paul L. Stein]  [13 Dec 1929]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 71%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Constance Bennett, Edmund Lowe, Roscoe Karns, Zasu Pitts
Writer:  Edwin J. Burke (play), Horace Jackson (adaptation), Horace Jackson (screenplay)
External Links:  Wikipedia  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  N/A
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68% (1)  One Sunday Afternoon  85 min,  PASSED,  [Comedy, Romance]  [Stephen Roberts]  [01 Sep 1933]
Ratings & Reviews:  IMDb Reviews: 68%,   External Reviews
Actors:  Fay Wray, Frances Fuller, Gary Cooper, Roscoe Karns
Writer:  James Hagan (from the play by), Grover Jones (screen play), William Slavens McNutt (screen play)
External Links:  Wikipedia  Rotten Tomatoes  IMDb     Language:  English    Country:  USA
Plot:  Hugo and Biff were friends until they met Virginia. Biff could think of no one but Virginia, but she would never be happy with a big slow bully. So she married Hugo and Biff married Amy just because his Virginia got married. Amy loves Biff, but Biff constantly thinks of Virginia even after Hugo takes his job and has him put into prison for two years.
Rotten Tomatoes:   Gary Cooper is a small town dentist dissatisfied with his lot. Though married to the lovely and affectionate Frances Fuller, Cooper still carries a torch for his former sweetheart, Fay Wray. Years earlier, Cooper had lost Wray to his old friend Neil Hamilton, and is consumed with the desire to get even with his rival. The now-wealthy Hamilton comes to visit Cooper, with Wray in tow. Cooper then seeks to rekindle his old romance. Based on the stage play by James Hagan (which starred Lloyd Nolan on Broadway), One Sunday Afternoon was remade with James Cagney as Strawberry Blonde (41), then reworked as a musical with Dennis Morgan under its original title in 1948.
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