Mad Mad World

I've seen The Mad Miss Manton (1938) a few times, although I often fall asleep (no shade, it happens). It stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, later to appear together in another screwball, The Lady Eve.

It starts in New York, at 3 AM. Stanwyck as Miss Manton pulls up to her apartment in a taxi, and the doorman has her little doggies ready for a walk. As they are passing by a subway under construction, Stanwyck sees an acquaintance rush out of a building and drive off without acknowledging her. She goes into the building, which has a "For Rent" sign up. It is unlocked. She finds a diamond broach and a corpse. She rushes out, dropping the cloak and broach.

When the police arrive, wouldn't you know it? No corpse, no cloak, no broach. The police lieutenant is played by Sam Levene, a very New York cynical type. He knows Stanwyck as famous practical joker, who has toyed wiyh the police before, and dismisses her.

Worse, the papers get ahold of the story, and print an article about women with more money than sense wasting the city's time and budget. So she marches into the paper and slaps the editor with a million-dollar suit for defamation. The editor is Henry Fonda, and first she slaps his face. Of course, he slaps her back. I think he fell in love with her right there.

Stanwyck runs with a crew of seven or eight socialites, who love pulling pranks for charity. This group is a little amorphous: one is sensible, one is man hungry, one is food hungry, and one calls everything communist. They decide that they need to solve this murder, especially because the murderer may come after Stanwyck. In fact, when Fonda shows up at her apartment, they assume he is the killer and jump him. They have him tied up before they recognize him, and when they do, they leave him like that. It won't be the first time this group ties him up.

The rest of the movie is this group of madcaps investigating, followed by Fonda and Levine. Fonda likes to tell Stanwyck things like, "You're a nasty piece of work, but don't worry. I'll beat it out of you." Levene mostly demands bicarb from his assistant, and tell him "Quit crawling up on me" when he follows too close. He's one of our favorite character actors, playing an inspector in the Thin Man series, for instance. 

The mystery is pretty twisty - I think I finally gt it all on this rewatch. I can never remember whether the subway is involved or a red herring. But it's also pretty much beside the point. Stanwyck is of course wonderful. I'm not a big fan of Fonda, and here he's pretty obnoxious. But that only makes it more fun when Stanwyck humiliates him. Come to think of it, that's what I like about The Lady Eve.