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Customer Reviews of The Awful Truth

A classic masterpiece with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.
Divorce is hardly a funny issue, but trying to mess up the ex-spouse's new relationship has hundreds of endless opportunities for laughs! Grant and Dunne are a perfect pair in this great comedy of separation and revenge. The scene of Irene Dunne's prospective husband and future mother in law seeing two men rushing out of her bedroom (her ex-husband Grant and also a current boyfriend) was a sidesplitting moment in itself! It's interesting to note there are two items in this movie that were used one year later in the Grant-Hepburn film "Bringing Up Baby". The dog in "Awful Truth" is the same one in "Bringing Up Baby". In front of Cary Grant's future wife, Irene Dunne claims he has a drinking problem and calls him Jerry the Nipper. Katherine Hepburn used the same nickname for him in "Bringing Up Baby". If you like classic comedies of distrust and/or paybacks, "The Awful Truth" is a film for you!

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A Screwball Gem
Arguably the greatest of the screwball comedies, The Awful Truth presents Irene Dunne and Cary Grant as soon-to-be-divorced wife and husband who occupy themselves with spoiling each other's prospective new romances. This is my favorite Dunne performance, probably one of Grant's top three comic performances, and the best Leo McCarey picture. This is also the film that first introduced Ralph Bellamy as the other man who always loses out in love (see His Girl Friday for a reprise). The film is chock-full of great comic scenes: my favorites are Grant, Dunne, and Bellamy watching the awful (and risque) performance of Grant's showgirl girlfriend; Grant making Dunne laugh at Bellamy's love poetry; Dunne trying to figure out how to hide another man's hat from Grant; and Dunne's pretense of being Grant's sister (doing the same number the showgirl did earlier). The film ranges from the broad slapstick of Grant becoming entangled in a chair to the subtle expressions of the threesome watching the floor show. What makes the film particularly work are the attractive performances by Grant and Dunne, who engage in skull-duggery to break up each other's love affairs, but who remain likable--partly because underneath the antics, The Awful Truth remains a love story. Even when bickering, Grant and Dunne clearly love each other; they seem to spur each other, make each other more attractive when together. Even Dunne's throw-away line on not having won any dance cups with

Grant has a sweet, nostalgic, longing tone. Grant has a comic sweetness in the final sequence, befuddled as he tries to resist his desire to return to his wife's bed. The film won Best Director for McCarey, who keeps the film on a delightfully fizzy keel and who encouraged his performers to be spontaneous. Dunne inexplicably lost Best Actress to Luise Rainer for The Good Earth; maybe she should have lost it to Garbo for Camille, but not to Rainer. And this is probably the first of the many years in which Grant gave a great comic performance, only to be forgotten when the Oscar nominations were announced. Sure Grant was always identifiable as himself in comedy-after-comedy, but notice the difference between his performance here and the following year's Holiday, and you can better measure his genuine versatility.

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Sheer Entertainment
One of several tremendously fun screwball comedies Grant made in the relatively early part of his career. In actuality, he had already been in nearly 30 movies before he made this one. In 1932, his debut year, he was in seven movies. He was in six in '33 and so on. I guess the idea was to be in as many movies as possible in hopes something would get noticed. Also, under the studio system, inexperienced or not particularly in demand actors were at the studio's mercy and the studio could work them to death if they felt like it. Only fame gave an actor enough power to call his own shots. That Grant was paired with Dunne is a happy coincidence. Their timing and chemistry are perfect. Talent makes all the difference. Dunne was more famous and accomplished at the time. She had already been nominated for an Academy Award for Cimarron. Grant was still perfecting his witty, offhand, debonair and slightly amoral screen persona. He had been in She Done Him Wrong w/ Mae West and that got him on the map but the late 30's were his breakout period with Topper and The Awful Truth.