Once Again When The Golden Age Of
Screwball Comedy Ruled The Known World-Loretta Young And Tyrone Powers’ “Love
Is News” (Which We All Knew, Right) (1937)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Si Lannon
Love Is News, Tyrone Powers, Loretta
Young, Don Ameche, directed by legendary director Tay Garnett, 1937
Bang right out of the box-the late
1930s and early 1940s meaning before Pearl Harbor blew the smiles off of our
faces and that generation slogged through the ensuing wars were the halcyon
days of the screwball comedy. Names like Preston Sturgis, Frank Capra, Tay
Garnett the director of the film under review Love Is News, and Sam Stein could name their price, could take the
pick of the litter for story-lines and cast and for the producers it was like
finding money on the ground. That last name by the way is important, the Stein
name, since Sam’s son Abraham who went to school with my father having spent
what even he called his misbegotten childhood watching his father perform
miracles wrote what is still the definitive book on the genre, Sam Stein and the Heyday of Screwball Comedy.
A whole generation of film reviewers, cranky editors, erudite professors and
doctoral candidates feasted on his references and sometimes his ideas as well
although they now for the past half century or so seem to have been eclipsed by
a more serious strain of screwball comedy which may or may not make the viewer
laugh a week later thinking about some inane episode. That is the true mark of
a great screwball comedy.
Abe Stein’s major premise, kind of
counter-intuitive now perhaps, was not that the plotline was filled with period
piece jokes or skits which made people laugh but that people, people in the
late 1930s after the height of the Great Depression had brought many very low and
before the war cut funny-bones a bit could see themselves if somewhat obscurely
in those situations. Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s a whole generation
of screenwriters and directors made great films and lots of money based on that
single deep perception. Hell, Professor Logan over at the UCLA film school did
his dissertation on that single threaded idea-and his well-known students like
Marty Ames, Billy Williams and Sally Lyons learned that simple lesson
well.
To the plot as laid out by legendary
director Tay Garnett a man who should never have been in the shadow of Sturgis
and Capra. No, I just thought of something that will better explain what Abe
was presenting and which his father and the others were creating. This Love Is News, a classic look at the
newspaper business as well as boy meets girl love, starring darkly handsome
Tyrone Powers as the energetic newshound and winsome Loretta Young as the no
fool heiress to a big daddy fortune was remade in 1947 with Powers in the lead
and demur Gene Tierney in Loretta Young’s role as That Wonderful Urge. WTF. The thing couldn’t be flatter, was a flop
since while Ms. Tierney was alluring as hell in the film noir Laura she was wooden in this comedy
business and any retrospective of hers should avoid re-running that dog.
Now forward. Steve ace reporter for
some Gotham-type daily newspaper whose city editor is none other than Don
Ameche who was built for the role since he had started out life as a newspaper
reporter out in Lima, Ohio needs to keep up a head of steam to get back on top
after a couple of tumbles down the mountain having been scooped on the Lifton
and Hayworth cases. Tony, winsome Tony, is the much put upon heiress who is
utterly tired of having her name splashed all over the tabloids for no known
reason except that she is as rich as King Midas maybe more so. Here is where
Abe Stein’s observation gets a real workout, proves it mettle. Frankly nobody
in 1937, no serious movie-goer anyway, whose own lives were nothing but misery
and squalor at least according to my grandmother, would have given a tinker’s
damn about some stray debutante gone amok. Except this Tony beyond being
winsome liked to burst balloons like most of us do. Liked the idea of seeing a
meddling reporter take a fall.
Presto Ms. Tony turns the tables,
declares that she will go to the altar with our Steve. For an independent
reporter, hell, for an independent guy back then that was a badge of dishonor
despite the fact that he was being congratulated and hounded by everybody for
stepping onto easy street. A lot of ships would rise. Again, most people could
see themselves jumping at that prospect just as today people wish to the high
heavens that they would win some big take lottery. So Steve gets led by the nose
through most of the rest of the film as he and Tony keep sparring away, Don
Ameche gets crazy for lack of a story and Steve’s reporter buddies titter on the
sidelines. Naturally and this is part of screwball comedy, romantic version,
all their sparring is covering up a growing attraction for each other just like
any of the six million Hollywood films that have been salvaged by that trope.
So yes Tony and Steve get together but that too was a relief for 1930s
audiences. If you don’t believe me check out Professor Lawrence’s classic Boy Meets Girl In Hollywood. And don’t
bother with that dud The Wonderful Urge.
