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The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s
In the 1934 classic It Happened One Night , heiress Claudette Colbert races away from the altar and a conventional marriage and throws herself into a wisecracking rough-and-tumble affair with Clark Gable. The new brand of movies following in the wake of Capra's kooky masterpiece-and the women starring in them-are the focus of Kendall's The Runaway Bride , a look at the films that mirrored the climate of the Great Depression while at the same time helping Americans get through it. Kendall details the collaborations between the romantic comedy directors and the female stars, showing how such films as Alice Adams (with Katherine Hepburn), Swing Time (where Ginger Rogers enjoys "A Fine Romance" with Fred Astaire), The Awful Truth (with Irene Dunne), and The Lady Eve (wherein Barbara Stanwyck's shapely leg repeatedly trips naïve millionaire Henry Fonda) came to be, and what they said about the 1930s. Written with erudition and enthusiasm, The Runaway Bride is a trip through some of Hollywood's most memorable moments, and a key to the national issues of an era as revealed in its films.
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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May 14, 2016
The men were new types, hard-bitten and down on their luck. And as for the women…
Remember how the young bride escaped across the lawn of her father’s estate? The central image of The Runaway Bride recalls the climax of Frank Capra’s 1933 masterpiece “It Happened One Night.” Picture the scene: Claudette Colbert flees her wedding, veils streaming behind her, leaving behind all traditional expectations. For author Elizabeth Kendall, it becomes a potent symbol.
Prohibition (and gangsters) notwithstanding, the Roaring Twenties had been a period of cultural enlightenment. Jazz and modern dance, painting and literature – the arts in America blossomed. But the party couldn’t last forever. When Black Thursday pulled the rug out from under the country, a distraught and floundering public turned a gaze of profound distrust upon all things “progressive.” Slowly, however, a new order emerged from this wake of mayhem and panic, one that sloughed away many timeworn preconceptions about the roles dictated by gender and social position. “One of her suitors offers her upper-class status,” Kendall explains. “The other offers sex and companionship, adventure and good cheap fun. She chooses sex, which all Americans had potentially in common, over class, which they didn’t.”
Therein lay the hook – despair and optimism characterized the schizoid mood of the times. Naturally, this mood was reflected, exploited and even intensified by the movies. Exhaustively researched and (to its credit) reminiscent of Molly Haskell’s “From Reverence to Rape,” Kendall’s book advances a deceptively simple thesis. During the Great Depression, when financial success was well beyond the grasp of most people, a new attitude about the importance of relationships evolved. It altered American society forever, and few things delineate these changes more distinctly than the Hollywood films of the period. All at once, plots focused on a struggle for honesty and equality between the sexes. As though the Crash had forever challenged the concept of male omniscience, leading men relinquished their grip on dominant roles, and camaraderie between the genders – previously a grave taboo – suddenly became permissible onscreen.
And what of the women? Feisty, eccentric characters abounded. In place of homespun modesty, the new crop of actresses flaunted pragmatic intelligence and a healthy carnality. From Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard to Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn, the female stars of the decade remain the most diverse and fascinating group ever assembled in Hollywood, and Kendall considers their careers with a combination of careful scholarship and passionate feminism. The effect dazzles – critical writing at its most exciting.
By the end of the 30s, though the national economy had far from recovered, the pain and terror of the early Depression years had largely receded from public consciousness. Traditional values gradually reasserted themselves (to a degree), and soon afterwards the outbreak of the war put an end to this intensive examination of the romantic ideal.
But the films remain.
Art heals. (Or at least can be a balm.) These movies addressed the anxieties and needs of audiences, their poverty and desperation, their hopes. Finally, against all odds, they evoked a world in which background, money and connections mattered less than energy, inventiveness and courage. (Sound timely?) Forget film noir and its poisonous misogyny. The Runaway Bride illustrates the philosophy and methodology of what is perhaps the true American style. “Even in the face of disaster,” observes Kendall in her closing chapter, “these films demonstrated real wit about the persistently hopeful naiveté of us – the Americans.”
Remember how the young bride escaped across the lawn of her father’s estate? The central image of The Runaway Bride recalls the climax of Frank Capra’s 1933 masterpiece “It Happened One Night.” Picture the scene: Claudette Colbert flees her wedding, veils streaming behind her, leaving behind all traditional expectations. For author Elizabeth Kendall, it becomes a potent symbol.
Prohibition (and gangsters) notwithstanding, the Roaring Twenties had been a period of cultural enlightenment. Jazz and modern dance, painting and literature – the arts in America blossomed. But the party couldn’t last forever. When Black Thursday pulled the rug out from under the country, a distraught and floundering public turned a gaze of profound distrust upon all things “progressive.” Slowly, however, a new order emerged from this wake of mayhem and panic, one that sloughed away many timeworn preconceptions about the roles dictated by gender and social position. “One of her suitors offers her upper-class status,” Kendall explains. “The other offers sex and companionship, adventure and good cheap fun. She chooses sex, which all Americans had potentially in common, over class, which they didn’t.”
Therein lay the hook – despair and optimism characterized the schizoid mood of the times. Naturally, this mood was reflected, exploited and even intensified by the movies. Exhaustively researched and (to its credit) reminiscent of Molly Haskell’s “From Reverence to Rape,” Kendall’s book advances a deceptively simple thesis. During the Great Depression, when financial success was well beyond the grasp of most people, a new attitude about the importance of relationships evolved. It altered American society forever, and few things delineate these changes more distinctly than the Hollywood films of the period. All at once, plots focused on a struggle for honesty and equality between the sexes. As though the Crash had forever challenged the concept of male omniscience, leading men relinquished their grip on dominant roles, and camaraderie between the genders – previously a grave taboo – suddenly became permissible onscreen.
And what of the women? Feisty, eccentric characters abounded. In place of homespun modesty, the new crop of actresses flaunted pragmatic intelligence and a healthy carnality. From Barbara Stanwyck and Carole Lombard to Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn, the female stars of the decade remain the most diverse and fascinating group ever assembled in Hollywood, and Kendall considers their careers with a combination of careful scholarship and passionate feminism. The effect dazzles – critical writing at its most exciting.
By the end of the 30s, though the national economy had far from recovered, the pain and terror of the early Depression years had largely receded from public consciousness. Traditional values gradually reasserted themselves (to a degree), and soon afterwards the outbreak of the war put an end to this intensive examination of the romantic ideal.
But the films remain.
Art heals. (Or at least can be a balm.) These movies addressed the anxieties and needs of audiences, their poverty and desperation, their hopes. Finally, against all odds, they evoked a world in which background, money and connections mattered less than energy, inventiveness and courage. (Sound timely?) Forget film noir and its poisonous misogyny. The Runaway Bride illustrates the philosophy and methodology of what is perhaps the true American style. “Even in the face of disaster,” observes Kendall in her closing chapter, “these films demonstrated real wit about the persistently hopeful naiveté of us – the Americans.”
January 1, 2018
There is undoubtedly a good book to be written about romantic comedies in the 1930's, but it isn't The Runaway Bride:
Hollywood Romantic Comedies of the 1930's. I will begin by discussing Elizabeth Kendall's choices for the main films cited in this book.
If people knowledgable about this subject were asked to name films that should be included in a consideration of this topic, they would probably mention many of the films about which Ms. Kendall writes in this book. Some of those people might include Kendall's pick Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, although I don't think most people would think of Deeds as primarily a "romantic" comedy. And what is the real difference between Deeds and the same director's somewhat similar film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Kendall says that Smith wasn't:
really [a] romantic [comedy. Its] suspense was generated not from the union of the lovers but from some extra melodramatic crisis grafted onto the story.
Does Kendall not think that Mr. Deeds's sanity hearing was a "melodramatic crisis?"
In a book subtitled Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930's, it is odd to include The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story for the obvious reason that neither of these is from the 1930's. I understand Ms. Kendall's explanation for including these films, that they close:
the circle of the romantic comedy that came out of the Depression, using the heroine to dramatize the plight of the country's nonwealthy.
Kendall goes on to say (but not explain):
Both of these movies belong as well to the late, decadent phase of Depression romantic comedy.
But in what way is The Lady Eve related to the Depression? It is about a rich man who falls in love with a very successful female con-artist. She is hardly the female version of Jean Valjean, stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family; she is a crook, partly because her father is also a crook and partly because she likes being a crook. The rich man does not originally reject her because she's poor (which she is not) but because she admits to him that she is a criminal who enticed him into falling in love with her.
Nobody except Ms. Kendall would be likely to include Stage Door, which doesn't have a romance in it, despite Ms. Kendall's stated reason for including that film. Kendall argues that the characters played by Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn make up a romantic couple. But she means that they start of as enemies and end as friends, not that there is an actual romance. I think that this is an absurd stretch of the concept of "romantic."
I think that it also requires a stretch of the definition of "romantic comedy" so that it will include Alice Adams, which is basically not a comedy. Kendall herself says that "one could say" that Adams is "a romantic comedy without a love story." I think that it is also a romantic comedy without much comedy. And what does that leave?
Ladies of Leisure and Penny Serenade are both somber melodramas with touches of comedy. Ms. Kendall discusses all the ways in which these films are serious but still includes them both as comedies. I don't know how anyone can watch Irene Dunne's miscarriage, Cary Grant's tearful plea to the judge, or the child's death in Penny Serenade and still call it a comedy. Likewise, I can't find much humor in Ladies of Leisure, a movie in which the main character attempts suicide.
Ms. Kendall states in her preface that in a romantic comedy:
Two people have fallen for each other, and they're trying to communicate across all that new and confusing emotion. Both of them are struggling to be honest; but it's the woman who presides over the tone of their exchange, who lays out the psychic space they will dare to occupy and gives them both permission to open up and trust each other.
So that is part of Kendall's definition of "romantic comedy." However, what she discusses in this book is more specifically what she calls "Depression romantic comedy." She goes on to say:
This genre used the heroine to articulate the good impulses at the bottom of the American soul, and it used the heroine's romance with a charming but psychologically underdeveloped young man to dramatize a rapprochement between the good and the more negligent impulses. Put another way, Depression romantic comedies responded to their audiences' loss of faith by making a virtue of personality traits usually thought of as feminine - a moral subtlety, an unashamed belief in the validity of emotions. And they did this with a light touch, in a spirit of good-natured, comradely, and even comical wisdom.
So in a Depression romantic comedy, the male half of the romance should be a "charming but psychologically underdeveloped young man." Wouldn't this rule out more of the films that Kendall discusses in depth? Is Godfrey in My Man Godfrey supposed to be "psychologically underdeveloped?" He clearly is not. And yet, I consider My Man Godfrey to be an outstanding exemplar of a "Depression romantic comedy." Shouldn't a Depression anything have something to do with the Depression? I believe that it clearly must. So that would include My Man Godfrey.
However, it would rule out not only The Lady Eve but also The Awful Truth and Love Affair. These are clearly what I think of as romantic comedies, and, with the exception of Eve, they are from the 1930's. But in what way are they Depression romantic comedies? Does anyone in these films even notice the Depression? (That would also rule out two other films that Kendall mentions but does not discuss in detail, The Philadelphia Story (which is actually from 1940) and Bringing Up Baby.)
I would have liked Kendall to have included some films that she just mentions briefly, especially Midnight and the two films of Holiday. I do understand that she certainly couldn't include every 1930's romantic comedy, though.
There is at least one semi-mistake in the book. Kendall lists a bunch of films that have "sophisticated scenes portraying strangers turning into lovers, or married couples turning into strangers." She then goes on to list a number of those scenes and includes "Lombard trying to put a drenched and bedraggled Gene Raymond at ease in Mr. And Mrs. Smith." Carole Lombard and Gene Raymond are a couple in that film only in the sense that Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy are "a couple" in The Awful Truth. In both films, the male suitor is there for comic purposes only, placeholders for husbands who are soon to be reunited with their wives.
I think that this is a badly flawed book which I would not recommend.
Hollywood Romantic Comedies of the 1930's. I will begin by discussing Elizabeth Kendall's choices for the main films cited in this book.
If people knowledgable about this subject were asked to name films that should be included in a consideration of this topic, they would probably mention many of the films about which Ms. Kendall writes in this book. Some of those people might include Kendall's pick Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, although I don't think most people would think of Deeds as primarily a "romantic" comedy. And what is the real difference between Deeds and the same director's somewhat similar film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Kendall says that Smith wasn't:
really [a] romantic [comedy. Its] suspense was generated not from the union of the lovers but from some extra melodramatic crisis grafted onto the story.
Does Kendall not think that Mr. Deeds's sanity hearing was a "melodramatic crisis?"
In a book subtitled Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930's, it is odd to include The Lady Eve or The Palm Beach Story for the obvious reason that neither of these is from the 1930's. I understand Ms. Kendall's explanation for including these films, that they close:
the circle of the romantic comedy that came out of the Depression, using the heroine to dramatize the plight of the country's nonwealthy.
Kendall goes on to say (but not explain):
Both of these movies belong as well to the late, decadent phase of Depression romantic comedy.
But in what way is The Lady Eve related to the Depression? It is about a rich man who falls in love with a very successful female con-artist. She is hardly the female version of Jean Valjean, stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family; she is a crook, partly because her father is also a crook and partly because she likes being a crook. The rich man does not originally reject her because she's poor (which she is not) but because she admits to him that she is a criminal who enticed him into falling in love with her.
Nobody except Ms. Kendall would be likely to include Stage Door, which doesn't have a romance in it, despite Ms. Kendall's stated reason for including that film. Kendall argues that the characters played by Ginger Rogers and Katherine Hepburn make up a romantic couple. But she means that they start of as enemies and end as friends, not that there is an actual romance. I think that this is an absurd stretch of the concept of "romantic."
I think that it also requires a stretch of the definition of "romantic comedy" so that it will include Alice Adams, which is basically not a comedy. Kendall herself says that "one could say" that Adams is "a romantic comedy without a love story." I think that it is also a romantic comedy without much comedy. And what does that leave?
Ladies of Leisure and Penny Serenade are both somber melodramas with touches of comedy. Ms. Kendall discusses all the ways in which these films are serious but still includes them both as comedies. I don't know how anyone can watch Irene Dunne's miscarriage, Cary Grant's tearful plea to the judge, or the child's death in Penny Serenade and still call it a comedy. Likewise, I can't find much humor in Ladies of Leisure, a movie in which the main character attempts suicide.
Ms. Kendall states in her preface that in a romantic comedy:
Two people have fallen for each other, and they're trying to communicate across all that new and confusing emotion. Both of them are struggling to be honest; but it's the woman who presides over the tone of their exchange, who lays out the psychic space they will dare to occupy and gives them both permission to open up and trust each other.
So that is part of Kendall's definition of "romantic comedy." However, what she discusses in this book is more specifically what she calls "Depression romantic comedy." She goes on to say:
This genre used the heroine to articulate the good impulses at the bottom of the American soul, and it used the heroine's romance with a charming but psychologically underdeveloped young man to dramatize a rapprochement between the good and the more negligent impulses. Put another way, Depression romantic comedies responded to their audiences' loss of faith by making a virtue of personality traits usually thought of as feminine - a moral subtlety, an unashamed belief in the validity of emotions. And they did this with a light touch, in a spirit of good-natured, comradely, and even comical wisdom.
So in a Depression romantic comedy, the male half of the romance should be a "charming but psychologically underdeveloped young man." Wouldn't this rule out more of the films that Kendall discusses in depth? Is Godfrey in My Man Godfrey supposed to be "psychologically underdeveloped?" He clearly is not. And yet, I consider My Man Godfrey to be an outstanding exemplar of a "Depression romantic comedy." Shouldn't a Depression anything have something to do with the Depression? I believe that it clearly must. So that would include My Man Godfrey.
However, it would rule out not only The Lady Eve but also The Awful Truth and Love Affair. These are clearly what I think of as romantic comedies, and, with the exception of Eve, they are from the 1930's. But in what way are they Depression romantic comedies? Does anyone in these films even notice the Depression? (That would also rule out two other films that Kendall mentions but does not discuss in detail, The Philadelphia Story (which is actually from 1940) and Bringing Up Baby.)
I would have liked Kendall to have included some films that she just mentions briefly, especially Midnight and the two films of Holiday. I do understand that she certainly couldn't include every 1930's romantic comedy, though.
There is at least one semi-mistake in the book. Kendall lists a bunch of films that have "sophisticated scenes portraying strangers turning into lovers, or married couples turning into strangers." She then goes on to list a number of those scenes and includes "Lombard trying to put a drenched and bedraggled Gene Raymond at ease in Mr. And Mrs. Smith." Carole Lombard and Gene Raymond are a couple in that film only in the sense that Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy are "a couple" in The Awful Truth. In both films, the male suitor is there for comic purposes only, placeholders for husbands who are soon to be reunited with their wives.
I think that this is a badly flawed book which I would not recommend.
August 11, 2007
Forget Julia Roberts - read this book and learn about some classic romantic comedies that really stand the test of time.
July 15, 2018
Ever since the Battelle Film Club’s showing of Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story, I’ve been on a screwball kick. Screenplays, biographies, non-fiction, what-have-you about that lunatic genre of film greatly interest me. This book by Kendall isn’t solely about screwball, but rather an overview of the larger film genre that it falls under, the romantic comedy. Sturges is only the last chapter here. The majority of director coverage goes to Frank Capra and Leo McCarey, and the book goes even more into the lives of the major actresses of the period, Barbara Stanwyck, Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, and Claudette Colbert, who the author asserts were co-creaters of the classic romantic comedy films. The argument goes like this: due to the depression and the unusual success of particular directors (men, and I use the term correctly in this case, who were able to fulfill the cathartic needs of the public going through this rough period), these directors were given extremely free reign. They used it to explore collaborations with their favorite subjects, these independent women. Movies before and after delegated women more to the supporting roles (with notable exceptions, but only as exceptions), but in these romantic comedies of the 30s the women were the lead and often the most sympathetic and fleshed-out characters.
While the descriptions of the making of the movies was quite interesting, it is the concise biographies of the people involved–directors, actors, actresses, and writers–that help you understand this moment in cinema history. An excellent book on its subject.
While the descriptions of the making of the movies was quite interesting, it is the concise biographies of the people involved–directors, actors, actresses, and writers–that help you understand this moment in cinema history. An excellent book on its subject.
March 3, 2019
A lot of great insights into how the romantic comedy evolved in the 30s and why Depression-era audiences flocked to them beyond the simple explanation of "Escapism!" It also does a great job explaining how WWII killed the romantic comedy--the cultural focus switched from romantic partners to familial responsibilities. My only major complaint is that sometimes Kendall really stretches the definition of a "romantic comedy" at times (who considers Love Affair a comedy?), even if it's to make a grander point about the evolution of the genre.
May 20, 2017
Really more of a two and a half star book. I found parts of it interesting but the overly analytical tone of the book often sucked the joy out of the films it was discussing. Sometimes movies just need to be enjoyed without a deeper meaning laid onto every movement on screen and behind the scenes.
January 4, 2022
I had a good time watching these movies and then reading Kendall's commentary about them, even though I didn't like all of the movies. It was really interesting to see the genesis of my favorite movie genre!
September 5, 2015
I love 1930s romantic comedies. Love them. They’re fun and ridiculous, which makes the dry academic tone of this book such an odd choice.
The Runaway Bride has some interesting details, but I felt like it focused on the wrong issues (no, I don’t want several pages of one person’s opinion on a movie, especially when her opinion is given as if fact), and some of the movies chosen were simply bizarre. I mean, Penny Serenade, really? I’ve seen it and found it a horribly overwrought melodrama. There’s no way I’d call it a romantic comedy. Yet it gets a chapter and Bringing Up Baby – widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made, let alone one of the greatest romantic comedies – only gets a few comments. Huh?
I half wonder if part of the problem is when this book was released. It was published in the early 1990s, just before the explosion of the Internet and the bigger resurgence of interest in older films and preserving them, digitizing them, etc. Channels like TCM and even websites like Wikipedia have made these movies and the details and background surrounding them more accessible.
But mostly, when you’re going to write a book about romantic comedies, which are all about fun and whimsy, the book should have a similar light-on-its-feet tone. Not recommended.
The Runaway Bride has some interesting details, but I felt like it focused on the wrong issues (no, I don’t want several pages of one person’s opinion on a movie, especially when her opinion is given as if fact), and some of the movies chosen were simply bizarre. I mean, Penny Serenade, really? I’ve seen it and found it a horribly overwrought melodrama. There’s no way I’d call it a romantic comedy. Yet it gets a chapter and Bringing Up Baby – widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made, let alone one of the greatest romantic comedies – only gets a few comments. Huh?
I half wonder if part of the problem is when this book was released. It was published in the early 1990s, just before the explosion of the Internet and the bigger resurgence of interest in older films and preserving them, digitizing them, etc. Channels like TCM and even websites like Wikipedia have made these movies and the details and background surrounding them more accessible.
But mostly, when you’re going to write a book about romantic comedies, which are all about fun and whimsy, the book should have a similar light-on-its-feet tone. Not recommended.
August 15, 2024
I like the writing style, research, and some of her conclusions here but as others have mentioned: 1. Mr. Deeds, Stage Door, and Penny Serenade are not exactly romantic comedies and 2. Palm Beach Story and The Lady Eve were both released in the early 40s. More importantly, the latter two movies don't have the feel of 30s films.
Also, Capra's Ladies of Leisure may have been a big hit in 1930, and my patience with the staginess of early 1930s films notwithstanding, my opinion of the film is not that high. The lack of chemistry between Stanwyck and Graves really bogs the film down. Disappointing that, as since I first read this book in the 90s I've been really looking forward to watching the film. IMO it doesn't deserve the hype.
I'm a huge fan of Lombard's screwball acting, and the analysis of her characterization of Irene Bullock is hugely enjoyable to read as well as spot-on.
Also, Capra's Ladies of Leisure may have been a big hit in 1930, and my patience with the staginess of early 1930s films notwithstanding, my opinion of the film is not that high. The lack of chemistry between Stanwyck and Graves really bogs the film down. Disappointing that, as since I first read this book in the 90s I've been really looking forward to watching the film. IMO it doesn't deserve the hype.
I'm a huge fan of Lombard's screwball acting, and the analysis of her characterization of Irene Bullock is hugely enjoyable to read as well as spot-on.
October 12, 2016
An overview of the actors and directors in the 1930's, especially independent women, using an analysis of 12 different movies. I watched them all again and agree with a lot of what the author says. This may come from my ignorance of how "Romantic Comedy" is defined, but I have one big quibble. She may have chosen these movies to illustrate her points, but two of the movies I don't consider comedies: 'Stage Door,", in which one of the characters commits suicide, and "Penny Serenade," in which two children die. Not Amusing. As a big fan of 1930's movies, I appreciated her referring to a lot of movies I never heard of. Even though she wrote this at the beginning of the VCR Eran, there are now DVD's of all the movies, except one (Ladies of Leisure), which I found on Youtube.
January 6, 2016
I remember really liking it. I don't recall specifics now. But, does a good job of examining film and social history. And increased my what I want to watch further.
January 11, 2013
Introduced me to the world of early Hollywood films. I still have my original copy with the running bride on the jacket.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews