Theodora Goes Wild
Theodora Goes Wild (1936) is one of the lesser-known screwball comedies, a fresh, funny and original one that has been unjustly overlooked. It was also pivotal to the careers of its stars, Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas, and to the screwball genre itself. In his book,
Romantic Comedy in Hollywood, James Harvey calls
Theodora Goes Wild "the precursor and paradigm of almost every important romantic comedy to follow it," and Sidney Buchman's script "one of the most brilliantly constructed in the screwball cycle."
Irene Dunne plays Theodora, a church organist in a small and stuffy Connecticut town, who secretly writes a racy best-selling novel. In New York for a meeting with her publisher, she gets involved with the illustrator of her book, played by Melvyn Douglas. Theodora then proceeds to scandalize hometown gossips, Douglas' politically prominent family, and even sophisticated New Yorkers, in her pursuit of true love.
Dunne had begun her career in musical theater, starring as Magnolia in the touring company of
Show Boat in 1929. With the advent of sound films, she was among the many theater actors signed to a film contract. But by the time she arrived in Hollywood in 1930, the craze for musicals was over, so she began making a string of romantic melodramas, including
Back Street (1932), and the Western epic
Cimarron (1931), which earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. A few years later, musicals made a comeback, and she starred in several, including
Roberta (1935), and the film version of
Show Boat (1936). Just before making the latter film, Dunne, dissatisfied with her RKO contract, decided to go freelance and signed a three-picture deal with Columbia. The studio chose
Theodora Goes Wild as her first film, to Dunne's dismay. "I'd never done a comedy before," she later recalled. "I'd done serious parts like
Back Street, and there was this little flipperty small town dummy, and I just didn't like her at all." Dunne took off for a two-month European vacation, hoping the studio would come up with something else when she returned. But by 1936, the screwball craze was in full swing, and all the dramatic stars, from Stanwyck to Davis to Crawford, were having a go at it. Columbia executives were adamant: either play Theodora, or go on suspension. Dunne acquiesced.
The director Columbia had chosen for
Theodora Goes Wild was just as unlikely as its star. Polish director Richard Boleslawski was a product of Konstantin Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater and New York's experimental Laboratory Theater. In Hollywood since 1930, he had been directing prestige epics like
Rasputin and the Empress (1932) and
Les Miserables (1935). Dunne felt that Boleslawski had no flair for comedy, although she got along well with him, and enjoyed making the film. And according to co-star Melvyn Douglas, the director had his own wild side. Dunne was supposed to make an entrance appearing excited, but Boleslawski wasn't satisfied with her reactions. So he had a crew member fire blanks from a pistol just below Dunne's backside. Her entrance was appropriately flustered. Dunne recalled that Boleslawski was ill during much of the production. He died the following year, at the age of 48.
Like Dunne, Douglas had come to Hollywood from Broadway in 1931, and spent several years as a dramatic leading man to high-powered actresses like Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, and Barbara Stanwyck.
Theodora Goes Wild, he said later, was the film that earned him "an international reputation for being one of the most debonair and witty farceurs in Hollywood...and a salable commodity." For the next 40 years, Douglas went back and forth between stage and screen, segueing easily into character parts as he aged.
Dunne and Douglas' expert playing, a superb group of character actors in supporting roles, Boleslawski's fast-paced direction, Sidney Buchman's witty script, and Bernard Newman's over-the-top costumes all contributed to making
Theodora Goes Wild a huge hit with audiences. Critics, surprisingly, were less enthusiastic. Several compared the film to Frank Capra's
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and found it lacking. "Theodora is no match for Longfellow Deeds in sound, honest, homespun humor," harrumphed Frank Nugent in the
New York Times, missing the point. "Although she goes wild, she also goes silly."
The
Variety critic, however, noted that Dunne "takes the hurdle into comedy that so many dramatic actresses have made in the last year or two with versatile grace." Oscar® voters agreed, nominating Dunne for her second Best Actress Academy Award. In later years, critic Pauline Kael noted that "Irene Dunne was better in comedy than in her smug, sacrificial roles, and in [
Theodora Goes Wild]...she was at her best. She's too bright - she's almost shrill in her brightness - and she does something clever with her teeth that makes one want to slap her, but she has energy, and this comedy...has a corny vitality that almost passes for wit."
Theodora Goes Wild also received an Oscar® nomination for editing. Although Dunne did not win (she would be nominated five times without winning),
Theodora Goes Wild changed her career direction. Over the next few years, Dunne would reach the height of her popularity with such comedy classics as
The Awful Truth (1937),
Love Affair (1939), and
My Favorite Wife (1940).
Director: Richard Boleslawski
Producer: Everett Riskin
Screenplay: Sidney Buchman, based on a story by Mary McCarthy
Cinematography: Joseph Walker
Editor: Otto Meyer
Costume Design: Bernard Newman
Art Direction: Stephen Goosson
Music: Morris Stoloff
Principal Cast: Irene Dunne (Theodora Lynn), Melvyn Douglas (Michael Grant), Thomas Mitchell (Jed Waterbury), Thurston Hall (Arthur Stevenson), Rosalind Keith (Adelaide Perry), Spring Byington (Rebecca Perry), Elisabeth Risdon (Aunt Mary), Margaret McWade (Aunt Elsie), Nana Bryant (Ethel Stephenson).
BW-94m.
by Margarita Landazuri
Theodora Goes Wild
Irene Dunne didn't want to make
Theodora Goes Wild (1936). The versatile actress had at this
point in her career never made a true comedy and had no interest in doing one. She was so against
the idea that she flew to Europe in the hope that Columbia would make the picture with someone else.
It didn't work; she was placed on suspension until she relented. We can be thankful that she did
relent, for
Theodora Goes Wild is a thoroughly winning screwball comedy and was just the tip
of the comedy iceberg for Dunne, who went on to star in more classic screwballs like
The Awful
Truth (1937) and
My Favorite Wife (1940).
She is excellent here, in
Theodora, and interestingly the film has her start out playing
things straight, only to undertake a dramatic shift halfway through the proceedings and become a
zany screwball heroine. The movie itself, then, eases Dunne into her new persona. She plays
Theodora Lynn of the small conservative town of Lynnfield, Conn. Little do her two spinsterly
aunts, neighbors or anyone else know that she is also the author "Caroline Adams," whose racy
bestseller
The Sinner is being serialized in the local paper much to the outrage of the
Lynnfield literary circle - of which Theodora is a member. The little old literary ladies condemn
the book -- while enthusiastically reading it, of course -- and demand that the newspaper editor
(Thomas Mitchell) cease publication.
Meanwhile, Theodora goes to New York to meet with her own publisher and ends up unwillingly charming
her book's illustrator, Michael (Melvyn Douglas), who tries and fails to seduce her. Michael senses
something fishy going on and tracks her back to Lynnfield, where upon threatening to expose her he
moves into her shed and pretends to her aunts and everyone else to be a gardener. He encourages her
to cut Lynnfield loose and liberate herself - in short, to "go wild." When she does just that, he
gets more than he bargained for and the comedy is taken to a whole new level; the film itself is
"liberated," becoming breathless and madcap.
Theodora Goes Wild has its moments of clowning
and is filled with hilarious dialogue, but beneath the surface there lurks a truly funny story, with
comic situations building in scene upon scene with great precision and care.
The expertly constructed screenplay by Mary McCarthy and Sidney Buchman presents varying
combinations of the main theme. Dunne hides her true self while pretending to be something she's
not, and in the course of things "switches," by "going wild." Douglas goes in the opposite
direction. That both characters go through their own ruses ends up uniting them for the audience and
is why we see them as right for each other. All the while,
Theodora Goes Wild works as a
social satire with tremendous relevance even today. Hypocrisy on the part of those who would
suppress or condemn on moral grounds is with our society as much as ever, if not more so, and it
doubtless always will be.
Theodora has a fine supporting cast including Robert Greig, refreshingly seen playing
something other than a butler, as well as Spring Byington and a most entertaining dog and cat, all
three of whom are given one of the movie's funniest slapstick scenes.
Irene Dunne, in a 1978 interview with author James Harvey, said she found this film
"unsophisticated" and professed amazement that it became such a success. Dunne thought Theodora was
a "little small-town dummy... She's supposed to have gone wild, but she didn't go very wild
really." Imagine the amazement Dunne must have felt when she received an Oscar nod for this role,
her second of five Best Actress nominations. (She never did win the award.)
Theodora Goes Wild is in the new "Icons of Screwball Comedy, Volume Two" DVD collection from
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. There's also a "Volume One," of course, sold separately, and each
volume contains four films on two discs apiece - for a total of four discs and eight films. You'd
never know it from the packaging, but the two titles on each disc star the same leading lady.
There's Irene Dunne, with
Theodora Goes Wild and
Together Again (1944), Loretta Young
with
The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940) and
A Night to Remember (1943), Jean Arthur with
If You Could Only Cook (1935) and
Too Many Husbands (1940), and Rosalind Russell with
My Sister Eileen (1942) and
She Wouldn't Say Yes (1945). For some bizarre reason,
not even the names of these actresses are on the DVDs' front covers, and there is no indication of
the themed pairings. Furthermore, the cover art is unappealing in its color and design. Why Sony
didn't just do something with the films' original poster art is puzzling.
The lack of audio commentaries is sadly de rigueur these days, as studios cut way back on their
production expenses, but these discs have no extras of any sort save for one cartoon in each volume
and some trailers. All this being said, one hesitates to criticize Sony, as the studio
is at
long last finally starting to put more of its catalogue titles on DVD. Coming in the months ahead
are of volumes of film noir, horror, Sam Fuller, and Rita Hayworth. To see these eight, relatively
"unimportant" screwball comedies being released is a real delight, and Sony deserves credit for
digging a little deeper into its vaults. Picture and sound quality are pretty good throughout these
discs, though none of the films has received a true restoration.
Of the other seven films here,
If You Could Only Cook and
Together Again make
especially strong impressions. The latter is an excellent showcase for Irene Dunne and Charles
Boyer, who made a superb co-starring team in three films including the classic
Love Affair
(1939). Here, Boyer plays a Manhattan sculptor who comes to Dunne's Vermont town to build a new
statue, in a story that's somewhat similar to
Theodora. It's also low-key, well-crafted and
utterly charming.
For more information about
Theodora Goes Wild (only available as part of the Icons of
Screwball Comedy, Vol.2), visit
Sony Pictures. To order
Theodora Goes Wild, go to
TCM Shopping.
by Jeremy Arnold
![Irene Dunne, Theodora Lynn [alias Caroline Adams]](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/IreneDunne.jpg?w=200)
![Melvyn Douglas, Michael Grant [also known as Dubarry]](https://prod-images.tcm.com/Master-Profile-Images/MelvynDouglas.jpg?w=200)
