When I hear the name Gary Cooper, I think of Sargent York, The Pride of the Yankees, or High Noon. I wasn’t fully aware of the large number of films in which he starred, and certainly don’t think of him for screwball comedies. But he’s a perfect fit as the innocent Professor Potts again Barbara Stanwyck’s Sugarpuss O’Shea.

I know even less about Stanwyck, having previously just seen Double Indemnity and bit and pieces of their previous collaboration, Meet John Doe. Mentally, I had pigeonholed her as being a dramatic actress, based on my ignorance, but she does an incredible job in this film, having beaten out a less well-known Lucille Ball for the role as a gangster’s slang-slinging nightclub performing gun moll.

The film is a bit different from many screwball comedies, involving gangsters rather than the wealthy elite. The premise of 8 nerdish professors spending years associating only with each other and their housekeeper to construct a new encyclopedia feels unique. The writers, including Billy Wilder, did a fine job of playing off the separate specialties of each of these academics, pulling off academic-sounding quips and quotes. I particularly love S. Z. Sakall as the physiology expert currently working on the encyclopedia article on sex, though Richard Haydn’s unique accent and delivery steals the show. The idea of having to marry a gangster to avoid testifying against a spouse is a cliché, but doesn’t damage that side of the story.

Screwball comedies as a genre predate many of the Reddit members. Yet somehow they don’t age as much as other 30s/40s genres - except perhaps for the more modern tendency to nitpick errors that earlier audiences were happy to let slide. We found this one on Kanopy (so free for many US people who’s libraries subscribe). While not the best known (for that, see It Happened One Night), I can strongly recommend this for people who enjoy the genre or wish to get a taste of it.