Screwball’s Pre-code Menage a Trois: Commentary on Design for Living (1933 film)

Legendary film critic and author Molly Haskell joins Aliece Pickett, founder of the Film Society of Screwball Comedy (FSOSC.org), to look at Pre-Code Screwball Comedy and how master filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch and writer Ben Hecht were able to use visual cues and dialog to get still-provocative and racy scenes past the censors in the 1933 film Design for Living.
Sources:
From Reverence to Rape, The Treatment of Women in the Movies, by Molly Haskell (Univ of Chicago, rev 2016).
Screwball by Ed Sikov, Foreword by Molly Haskell (Crown Publishers, 1989 added 12-30-24.
The American Cinema, Directors and Directions from 1929-1968, by Andrew Sarris (Da Capo Press Edition, 1996).
Frankly My Dear, Gone With The Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell (Yale Univ Press, 2009).
Pursuits of Happiness, The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage, by Stanley Cavell (Harvard 1981).
“Let’s Misbehave” (1927) music and lyrics by Cole Porter, performed by Irving Aaronson and his Commanders (1928).
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