[at the city dump]
Irene: Could you tell me why you live in a place like this when there’s so many other nice places?
Godfrey: You really want to know?
Irene: Oh, I’m very curious.
Godfrey: It’s because my real estate agent felt that the altitude would be very good for my asthma.
This isn’t a movie blog and I’m not going to try to tie this into writing…I’m simply recommending that everyone watch this film.
Let’s all just take a second to appreciate the greatness of William Powell. For those of you who don’t watch old hollywood movies, here’s a good place to start. My Man Godfrey is my favorite black and white film. The plot is okay, I’ll admit, but the wit and cleverness in the dialogue has me laughing throughout most of the movie. In short, “A scatterbrained socialite hires a vagrant as a family butler…but there’s more to Godfrey than meets the eye.”
Other favorites of mine include the Thin Man series, also featuring the wonderful William Powell and It Happened One Night, which stars another favorite my mine, Clark Gable. I also tend to love anything with Cary Grant.
What black and white films do you love?
More favorite quotes:
Godfrey: Prosperity is just around the corner.
Mike Flaherty: Yeah, it’s been there a long time. I wish I knew which corner.
Godfrey: Do you think you could follow an intelligent conversation for a minute?
Irene: I’ll try.
Detective: Just a minute, sister!
Molly: If I thought that were true, I’d disown my parents.
Detective: [chuckles] So you got a passion for jewelry, huh?
Molly: Yes… I got a passion for socking cops.
Detective: Where are they?
Molly: Most of them are in cemeteries.
Godfrey: Tommy, there’s a very peculiar mental process called thinking – you wouldn’t know much about that – but when I was living here I did a lot of it.
Memoir of a Writer 
I’d be curious to know the contribution of directors, actors and writers to screenplays over the years. About how much did directors involve themselves in the script; same for actors, and when did pure writers show up? Imagine you’re Buster Keaton, and you’re there in the beginning, and it’s you, some people with money and equipment and a few other actors. Did everyone contribute to a script? Surely there were no screenwriters at first – it must have been the actual people making the movie at the time.
And to compare, how is it today?
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I don’t know much about the movie world, but what I have looked into it seems movies come out better if the director is involved in the script. And by involved I don’t mean they take over, but help it along to better fashion it to their vision.
What do you mean by there were no screenwriters? Haven’t there always been a written work before the visual representation? I really don’t know though 😂
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I think the tech kind of set the stage for what could be filmed and turned into entertainment. So, imagine the first users of the Web. They were the one’s who built it, and it probably stayed that way for years.
Film needed gear which needed investment. If you’ve watched the story of Disney and crew, they were the cartoonists who wrote their own stories.
I imagine early film had a similar start: “We’re gonna film a bank robbery, see? And yous three, you’re gonna be the robbers, see. And the rest a yous is gonna be the coppers, see. And Zonko here will run the camera, and you, dame, what’s your name again? Yeah, Darlene, you’re gonna be the robber’s hostage, see…”
“Gee, should I swoon like this?”
“Yeah, yeah, that’ll look real nice, like.”
No screenwriter there… Maybe later as stories became more complex. And that’s my question, when did the first “real” screenwriters show up on the scene?
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That’s interesting. My first thought was stage plays, so my head went to playwrights because movies evolved from the stage. I guess by real you mean set aside people with the actual title as screenwriter. I would still assume writer’s were hired in the beginning, but maybe more people had a say so.
Just think, Fitzgerald was a screenwriter a short amount of time and the script would often go through so many revisions that he wouldn’t even get credit.
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Good points. Playwrites vs screenwriters. And cool about Fitzgerald. I don’t know the answer, neat subject though.
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Rope – Alfred Hitchcock. I could explain it but it’s really one of those movies “you just have to watch”.
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I will say, Rope, like other old black and white movies, has a character about it, and an attention to detail that movies today lack.
The protagonists in Rope have done a very heinous thing, yet, the movie has a depth of character that you find yourself – though they’re basically just plain evil – rooting for them. It’s gripping.
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It sounds really good! I’m always looking for oldies to watch that I haven’t yet.
And I agree with the character thing. It’s the reason I love old movies so much.
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Keen on watching it now!
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Awesome! It won’t disappoint 😊
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I’ve been waiting to see this! Carole Lombard was a tragic story, but her films and acting are almost always spot on.
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Yes! It’s so good. It’s one of those I want to rewatch right after I watch it.
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