The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance (PDNA) invites you to "Meet Me at the Movies," Friday September 24, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Community Music School, Columbia College recital hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave.
One of the most popular and lauded screwball comedies of all time, My Man Godfrey helped define the genre itself. With its good-natured pokes at high-class society and its conventions, My Man Godfrey delighted depression-era movie audiences.
When a depressed aristocrat named Godfrey, (William Powell) who has been living in a New York City dump, is hired by a madcap heiress, Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) to be the family butler, life becomes a bit more complicated and a lot more fun.
Godfrey throws himself into his butler role with gusto, winning the affection and respect of most of the Bullock family. As fate would have it, Bullock daughters, Irene and Cornelia (Gail Patrick) are attracted to their debonair house servant. Irene, the younger sister has spent her life losing everything to her elder sibling and she fears Irene will win Godfrey’s affections as well.
Classic performances and situations have made My Man Godfrey one of the best film comedies ever made. My Man Godfrey was the first film to receive Academy Award nominations in all four major categories, including Best Actor and Best Actress for Powell and Lombard respectively. Film critic Roger Ebert in a review of the movie simply said, “God, but this film is beautiful” and it truly is. My Man Godfrey is ranked 44 in the American Film Institute’s (AFI) “America’s 100 Funniest Movies” compiled in 2002. Not bad for a movie first released in 1936. 
Carole Lombard was so identified with the screwball comedy genre that Life magazine dubbed her “the screwball girl” in a 1938 cover story. When paired with William Powell, no stranger to comedy himself, My Man Godfrey becomes a master class of screwball comedy technique. Admission to the movie is $5. Dinner afterward (not required) is $15 per person.
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