Directed by Gregory La Cava

Starring William Powell and Carole Lombard

It must be difficult being a butler. Not so much the cooking and cleaning and ironing and serving, but look at the standard they have to uphold; there’s P.G. Wodehouse’s iconic Jeeves, for example.

“Sir?” said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they want them.

Jeeves is a tough act to follow, but there’s also Lord Peter Wimsey’s right-hand man, the miraculously competent Bunter, invented by mystery novelist Dorothy L. Sayers. From chemistry to photography to tide schedules, Bunter’s know-how never ceases to impress the no-less brilliant Lord Peter.

Godfrey Smith (William Powell) belongs to this noble class of manservant, without whom the aristocracy would have long ago perished. He is discovered atop an ash pile in the local garbage dump by a pair of sister socialites, Irene and Cornelia Bullock (Carole Lombard and Gail Patrick), who require a “forgotten man” for their upper-crust scavenger hunt. Irene takes a shine to the rumpled but unruffled Godfrey and in a drunken impulse hires him on as the Bullock family butler. The mother agrees since Godfrey is the “first thing she’s shown any affection for since her pomeranian died last summer.”

Naturally, one doesn’t go from being a dumpster-diving vagrant to a cocktail-carrying servant overnight. There’s more to Godfrey than meets the eye, and his mysterious past holds the secret to his current incarnation as suave butler extraordinaire. In time he becomes the moral compass for the seriously batty Bullock family, weathering their eccentricities and profound silliness to teach them a hard-earned lesson about the meaning of true prosperity.

Like Frank Capra’s Depression-era comedies, My Man Godfrey deftly mixes humor and social criticism (even covering some of the same thematic ground as Preston Sturges’ classic Sullivan’s Travels). Catholic social teaching had an impact on Capra’s films and the sympathies in Godfrey unquestionably lie with the homeless rather than with the wealthy. That said, “rich people doing stupid things” is an easier sell than a work of social realism about the sufferings of a noble homeless man.

With his trim moustache and ironical air, William Powell was a debonair leading man who didn’t so much act a part as embody a fantasy of effortless wit and composure. Carole Lombard, whom Powell was married to for a time, matches him for energy and charm as the smitten younger sister, Irene. (It is not, however, the equal partnership that Powell enjoyed with Myrna Loy in the Thin Man franchise—theirs was a one-of-a-kind chemistry.)

The supporting actors are uniformly excellent, especially Alice Brady as the muddle-headed matriarch—a woman who apparently speaks about ten times faster than she thinks. Russian actor Mischa Auer steals scenes as the Continental Carlo, a moody moocher often seen lurking in the background, frozen in dramatic poses redolent of soul-crushing despair and ennui. I am pleased to report that Auer was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, one of six Oscar nods the movie earned in 1936.

Posted by John Murphy on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 2:07 pm.