FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 @ 10:00 AM (ET)
Put William Powell on screen with Myrna Loy and you’ve got chemistry. Add Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow, and you’ve got Libeled Lady-depression-era screwball comedy at it’s best. Tracy is Warren Haggerty, a newspaper editor with two loves: his long-suffering fiance Gladys (Harlow) and his job. To save one, (possibly at the expense of the other), he contrives a plot to avoid a libel suit by millionairess Connie Allenbury (Loy). This master plan involves ladies’ man Bill Chandler (Powell) seducing Loy, and then being discovered by his wife. Unfortunately, Powell isn’t married. Despite her considerable squawking, Gladys is coerced into the role.
Identities and relationships are invented and swapped. Affections at first feigned become real, and the confusion between the two creates some great comedic situations. Each of the principles has points of conflict with the other three, creating a comedic matrix that makes the film crackle Until you’ve witnessed the free-for-all which is about to ensue, you can’t appreciate the irony of the opening four-shot that appears before the title: the principles walking arm in arm, dressed formal wear and laughing jovially.
One thing that always interests me in the screwball comedy is the archetypal character of the screwball comedy daughter. From Claudette Colbert in It happened One Night to Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey to Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, it is frequently the daughter who puts the screwball in screwball comedy. In Libeled Lady, Myrna Loy’s heiress is at first assumed to be the ditzy dame, but turns out to be closer to the Hepburn of The Philadelphia Story than Bringing Up Baby.
And here’s a bizarre little piece of trivia: at one point, the bellhop comes to the door and announces “telegram for Mr. Chandler,” Powells character. In fact, the actor delivering the telegram to Mr. Chandler is named George Chandler. It’s the same George Chandler who, as the bartender in the 1947 noir Dead Reckoning, speaks so highly of Lizabeth Scott’s character, Coral Chandler. If anybody knows of another case of an actor speaking his/her own name in two different movies, let me know!
