Screwball Comedy: A Genre of Madcap Romance (Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture)

Review?According to Gehring, screwball comedy is a film genre much different from traditional comedic forms--e.g., the antiestablishmentarian antics of the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields. Gehring places much emphasis on the origins and evolution of the comic anti-hero, and provocatively presents and analyzes the relation between comedy and the anti-hero comedian. The change from the capable to the incompetent comic hero, the author contends, was due to relevance: in a world that is more irrational, the anti-hero faces perpetual frustration. Frank Capra receives much attention.... Among those directors Gehring discusses are Hawks, McCarey, Sturges, and LaCava; among the performers, Grant, Lombard, Dunne, Hepburn, Arthur, Douglas, and MacMurrary.... Public libraries and university collections.?-Choice"According to Gehring, screwball comedy is a film genre much different from traditional comedic forms--e.g., the antiestablishmentarian antics of the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields. Gehring places much emphasis on the origins and evolution of the comic anti-hero, and provocatively presents and analyzes the relation between comedy and the anti-hero comedian. The change from the capable to the incompetent comic hero, the author contends, was due to relevance: in a world that is more irrational, the anti-hero faces perpetual frustration. Frank Capra receives much attention.... Among those directors Gehring discusses are Hawks, McCarey, Sturges, and LaCava; among the performers, Grant, Lombard, Dunne, Hepburn, Arthur, Douglas, and MacMurrary.... Public libraries and university collections."-Choice