The Mad Miss Manton **** (1938, Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene) – Classic Movie Review 5203

Henry Fonda is battling miscasting in screwball comedy as newspaper editor Peter Ames, but Barbara Stanwyck is perfect, throwing herself delightfully into the part of The Mad Miss Manton (1938).

Director Leigh Jason’s short (just 79 minutes) and sweet 1938 RKO Radio Pictures comedy The Mad Miss Manton is a fast-paced, engagingly frivolous entertainment with a well-concocted The Thin Man style mixture of screwball comedy and murder mystery.

The essentially serious-minded Henry Fonda is battling miscasting in screwball comedy as newspaper editor Peter Ames, but Barbara Stanwyck is perfect, throwing herself delightfully into the part of the decorative débutante, vivacious socialite Melsa Manton.

Stanwyck’s Miss Manton plays at amateur detective when she discovers a murdered body in the street which promptly disappears. She enlists the help of seven fellow wisecracking young debutantes to help her investigation. She then accuses Fonda’s character Ames of libel after he files a front page editorial story saying that she has invented finding the corpse as a prank.

The Mad Miss Manton is delightful vintage entertainment, vivaciously done, and Stanwyck and Fonda are good together, as they showed to even better advantage when they were teamed together again in The Lady Eve (1941). Their third screen pairing is the much less well known You Belong to Me (1941).

Also in the cast are Sam Levene, Frances Mercer, Stanley Ridges, Vicki Lester, Hattie McDaniel, Penny Singleton, Grady Sutton, Whitney Bourne, Miles Mander, Catherine O’Quinn, Linda Terry, Eleanor Hansen, James Burke, Paul Guilfoyle, John Qualen, Olin Howland, Emory Parnell, Irving Bacon and Jack Rice.

The screenplay is beautifully written by Philip G Epstein, based on a story by Wilson Collison.

The film cost $383,000, earned $716,000 and made a profit of $88,000.

The cast are Barbara Stanwyck as Melsa Manton, Henry Fonda as Peter Ames, Sam Levene as Lieutenant Mike Brent, Frances Mercer as Helen Frayne, Stanley Ridges as Edward Norris, Whitney Bourne as Pat James, Vickie Lester as Kit Beverly, Ann Evers as Lee Wilson, Catherine O’Quinn as Dora Fenton, Linda Perry as Myra Frost, Eleanor Hansen as Jane, Hattie McDaniel as housekeeper Hilda, James Burke as Sullivan, Paul Guilfoyle as Bat Regan, Penny Singleton as Frances Glesk, Leona Maricle as Sheila Lane, Kay Sutton as Gloria Hamilton, Miles Mander as Mr Thomas, Grady Sutton as D.A.’s Secretary, John Qualen as Subway Watchman, Olin Howland as Mr X, George Chandler as Newspaper Man and Byron Foulger as Assistant Editor.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5203

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