Gregory La Cava | My Man Godfrey / 1936

the exemplary tramp

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eric Hatch, Morrie Ryskind and Gregory La Cava (screenplay, based on a story of Eric Hatch), Gregory La Cava (director) My Man Godfrey / 1936

 

Long ago I heard a commentator say that the difference between the Marx Brothers and the Beatles was that the former team created chaos in an orderly and uptight world, whereas the latter were cool and controlled in a world of chaos.

     You might say that a similar difference exists between Charlie Chaplin, for example, the little tramp who, although well-intentioned, sweet, and romantic, is constantly out of sorts with a priggish society; Chaplin, no matter how hard he tries, will never be anything but a tramp on the outskirts of society, and the humor of his films lies in that fact.

     In Gregory La Cava's screwball comedy, My Man Godfrey, however, it is the tramp who lives the exemplary ordered life of propriety, as opposed to the nut cases of the wealthy Bullock House, including the snippy and mean-spirited, "Park Avenue brat," Cornelia (Gail Patrick)—who rides horses into the family library—the befuddled and always slightly hung-over mother (Alice Brady), and the truly wacky Irene (wonderfully played by Carole Lombard) who takes on the tramp as a "responsibility," just has her mother has adopted as her protégé, Carlo (the absurdly funny Mischa Auer) who does little but play "Ochi chyornye" and mope. He can also cleverly imitate a chimpanzee.

     Encountered in a pile of ashes in the city dump, Godfrey (William Powell) is one of the requirements, a "forgotten man," for a society scavenger hunt, which—because of his agreement to participate—allows Irene to beat her sister for the first time in her life. Having just lost their recent butler (butlers evidently come in and go in the Bullock house with great regularity), she hires the penniless man, fighting her mother, sister, and even her bungling, forbearing businessman father for Godfrey's retention. And when Godfrey turns out to be the perfect butler, nearly all the family members, with the exception of Cornelia, are delighted, the maid, as well as Irene, falling in love with him.

      Godfrey appears to be not so very different from “the angel” who visits the bourgeois family in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s much later film Teorema (1968), who offers up his sexual favors to everyone in the family. Unlike Pasolini, however, La Cava was a comic genius (his drinking friend W. C. Fields deemed him “the second funniest man in America”) for whom serious attention, money, prestige, sage, fatherly advice, and even praise were just as important as the gifts Godfrey brings to this family as are Pasolini’s queer sexual and political satisfactions.

     Godfrey seems at home in his new position, even if it is only a bedroom. Without any social constrictions, Cornelia enters his room, imagines a love relationship with him, and competes for his attentions around other family members. In short, she behaves like a "tramp," while Godfrey is all restraint, bound to protocol. As he asks Irene, "Hasn't anyone ever told you about certain proprieties?" Irene answers, referring to her mother, "No she hasn't. She rambles on quite a bit, but then she never has anything to say."

       We soon perceive, moreover, that the chaos at the center of this family is similar to the lives of nearly all the well-to-do the film represents. The competitors of the scavenger search appear to be more out of some vast madhouse scene than working for a good cause. As Mr. Bullock quips: "All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."

      Similarly, a party in his own house is filled with empty-headed and self-admiring fools, including Godfrey's former friend, Tommy Gray (Alan Mowbray), whom Godfrey later admits, doesn't have the ability to think. Tommy almost spills the beans over Godfrey's true identity, and Cornelia smells a rat. Meanwhile, Irene, angry over Godfrey's lack of attention, declares she's gotten engaged. To whom, everyone wants to know? Irene tosses a name into the air, while the owner of that name, Charlie Van Rumple (actor Grady Sutton), becomes utterly flummoxed. Mrs. Bullock sums up her guests' mindsets through her confusion upon the arrival of her husband:

 

angelica bullock: Oh, Alexander, you missed all the excitement.

alexander bullock: What's going on?

angelica: Oh, let me see. I knew what it was I wanted to say, but somehow it slipped my mind.

alexander: What's the matter with Irene?

angelica: Oh, yes, that's it: Irene's got herself engaged!

alexander: To whom?

angelica: Oh, I don't know. Van something-or-other. I think

he's the boy with his arm around that girl in pink. He's got lots of

money.

alexander: Well, he'll need it.

 

      What doesn’t get said, interestingly enough, is that both Godfrey’s college friend Tommy and Irene’s spontaneously chosen beau Charlie are coded gay men, both actors Mowbray and, particularly, Sutton (who was gay), regularly playing prissy gay servants or, in Sutton’s case, a “Mama’s boy.” Cornelia becomes more than curious about Tommy and Godfrey’s relationship, and Godfrey, utterly exasperated by Irene's thoughtless behavior, temporarily loses his cool, carrying her into the shower fully dressed, before turning on the cold water, an act Irene immediately declares, because of his atypical behavior, means he loves her!

     Godfrey, we ultimately discover, as in many an 18th-century comedy, represents true wealth; a blueblood from Boston, he a man of even higher societal position than the Bullock family; having been jilted by his lover—we are never sure why or how—he began to feel sorry for himself, spinning out of his social realm, too proud, apparently to return to his snobbish family, and falling in with the homeless men on the edge of the river—another odd quirk of his behavior which is never fully elucidated. Although the film has little real political commentary, Godfrey's observation sums up the realities of day: "The only difference between a derelict and a man is a job."

    Meanwhile, Cornelia also unpropitiously enters Godfrey's room in order to plant her pearl necklace in his bed before she calls the police to announce it is missing. Discovering the necklace, Godfrey hides it away, and with sound business investments—the kind of good business practices in which Mr. Bullock evidently is unable to engage—makes enough money to invest in a restaurant near the river on the very location where he once lived as a vagrant. Hiring the "forgotten men" of his past, he has transformed the cafe into a hotspot for society regulars, giving him enough cash to buy back Cornelia's pearls, save Mr. Bullock's company, and award them their damaged self-respect. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that gay men gentrified formerly desolate neighborhoods.

      Yet Godfrey is also somewhat blind to the truth, as Irene visits him in his office/home behind the restaurant, bringing along a picnic dinner, and carefully inspecting her new quarters. Everyone but Godfrey has known of their love, Tommy notifies him. "Stand still, Godfrey. It'll all be over in a minute," orders Irene, as the mayor pronounces them man and wife. As in most Hollywood films of the day, it’s better to quickly marry off the sexually confused man before the script might be required to answer any logical questions that might arise.

      Irene, it is clear, is a necessary force if Godfrey is to escape propriety into the frenzy of everyday living; living with Irene for any length of time certainly might send the fussy Godfrey over the edge back into the good old days of living with “unwanted men” or even with a witless roommate like Tommy. But then moviegoers, I find, seldom question what might happen after the movie ends.

 

Los Angeles, April 25, 2011

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2011).