The Awful Truth scene

My favorite scene in the movie. It's towards the end. Lucy and Jerry Warriner's (Irene Dunne and Cary Grant) divorce is almost settled. It will be completed at 12midnight tonight. Jerry is engaged to an heiress and is just waiting for the divorce to be finished. He arrives at his fiance's house to enjoy some cocktails with her family. Lucy Warriner pretends to be his sister and crashes the party. Making a mess out of everything.

This movie is said to have been mostly adlibbed and both Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are masters at it. Irene Dunne is hysterical and if what they say is true than these words are mainly her own and were not written for her. When she dances to the song "Gone With the Wind" it has been confirmed that her "i never could do that" is an adlib.

• Category

  Film & Animation

[elliottmajor]

anyone wanna give me help on my film studies essay?

the question is "compare and contrast how 'The Awful Truth' and 'It Happened One Night' create the romantic couple"

any help would be hugely appreciated! I need to analyse this scene in terms of that question :)

[Victoria Mentz]

I'll help you as much as I can. Both of the movies you mention can be catogorized as a Screwball Comedy. I'll message you for the rest of my analysis.

[thefantastikmrbone]

"Nobody move! I've lost my Purse".

Best. Line. Ever.

[dezinator]

This is my all-time favorite scene of one of my all-time favorite movies!!!! :)

[diabolo menthe]

Dunne & Grant are superb !

[jeanesingsjazz]

"i've seen your pictures in the paper, and i wondered what you looked like" is this line just funny to only me?

[tallpaul521]

Many thanks for the info. Dowson -- in the film "Laura" in the final scene, Waldo Lydecker is quoting lines from Dowson on his radio broadcast -- he quotes Dowson's poem "Days of Wine and Roses".

[Rebekah Maccaby]

Thank you. I keep telling people that, and they say "The Awful what?" You made my day.

[Rebekah Maccaby]

I'm in love with the line "Ours you just wind," for some reason. The first time I saw this was in a theater, around 1987. I couldn't stop laughing when she said that, and nobody else in the theater was, which made me laugh harder, and I just got hysterics. I was falling out of my seat. I was only 20, but I owned a wind-up record player that was my grandmother's, and a whole bunch of old 78s, so maybe I just "got" it.

[Rebekah Maccaby]

I would love to be able to use "Ours you just wind."

[Rebekah Maccaby]

Margaret Mitchell got the phrase from the third stanza of a poem written in 1894 by Ernest Dowson, which is in English despite the title "Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae" (I am not what I was under the rule of [ie, in a relationship with] Cynara).

I think Dowson coined the line exactly as it is, but phrases such as "went the way of the wind," for "completely gone and not coming back," had been around for a while. Don't quote me, though.

[Rebekah Maccaby]

I don't know why, but it took about four watchings before I realized that in this scene, Irene Dunne's hair is fixed exactly (plus bow) like Joyce Compton's in the earlier "Dixie Belle Lee" scene.

[tallpaul521]

My favorite scene, from one of my favorite films...thanks!

[TheDudezer]

Irene Dunne: beauty, brains, classy, and funny as hell. Plus I heard she loved beer in real life. Every guy's dream girl.