SCREWBALLS & ODDBALLS.("Twentieth Century")(Movie Review)

Wolcott Gibbs on the 1951 production of "Twentieth Century"

By 1934, when Howard Hawks's screwball comedy "Twentieth Century" was released, America had fallen victim to the twin catastrophes of the Depression and the Hays Office (the film industry's watchdog agency, inaugurated in the late twenties to prevent any exposure of female breasts, suggestion of cohabitation, or unconventional kissing from taking place onscreen). While F.D.R. was pioneering new ways to combat economic austerity, the screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, with their rapid-fire wisecracking wit, found a way around the erotic stringencies of the day by discovering a new erogenous ...