MY MAN GODFREY (1936)

94 minutes

For our fall series, New York On Screen, the question has been about where to start. With so many aspects of the city having been depicted on film (many of which we won’t be able to cover) we decided to reach back to the “golden age” of cinema when Manhattan’s original skyscrapers were sprouting while its residents were reeling from the Great Depression.

My Man Godfrey is considered one of the best of the screwball comedies, a genre whose veiled social commentary often portrayed the super rich as ditzy wastrels oblivious to the day-to-day world.

In Godfrey the wastrels are the Bullock family, headed by Eugene Pallette, a self-made tycoon appalled by how decadent his family has become, having burned through a string of servants. But a mysterious new butler arrives to set them right, only to come under the scattershot charms of Carole Lombard, the flightiest of the Bullock daughters. William Powell plays Godfrey the all-knowing butler with a poignant charm and a few secrets of his own, as the hard winds of the Depression has some lessons for all of them.

BE ADVISED–– This film is unrated, but contains smoking, drinking, minor violence, mild sexual innuendo, and Hays Office editorializing.