The Awful Truth
Overview
 
The Awful Truth is a 1937 screwball comedy
Screwball Comedy
Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums.-Track listing:...

 film starring Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...

 and Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...

. The plot concerns the machinations of a soon-to-be-divorced couple, played by Dunne and Grant, who go to great lengths to try to ruin each other's romantic escapades. The film was directed by Leo McCarey
Leo McCarey
Thomas Leo McCarey was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. During his lifetime he was involved in nearly 200 movies, especially comedies...

, who won the Academy Award for Best Director, and was written by Viña Delmar
Viña Delmar
Viña Delmar was a twenteth century American author, playwright, and screenwriter. With the editorial assistance of her husband, Eugene, she wrote or adapted about twenty plays which were produced as films during her lifetime—a career that lasted from 1929 to 1956...

, with uncredited assistance from Sidney Buchman
Sidney Buchman
Sidney Robert Buchman was a screenwriter and producer who worked on 38 films from the late 1920s to the early 1970s. He is also sometimes credited as Sydney Buchman.-Career:...

 and Leo McCarey, from the 1922 play by Arthur Richman.

The Awful Truth marked the first appearance of the uniquely effective light comedy persona used by Cary Grant in almost all his subsequent films, catapulting his career.
Quotations

I've gotta get a deep Florida tan if it takes all afternoon...All aboard for Miami, Palm Beach and points south.

Well, I'm gonna be tanned and Lucy's not gonna be embarrassed. And what wives don't know won't hurt them.

I wish Lucy would go out and get some fun for herself now and again. It would do her good. That's the trouble with most marriages today. People are always imagining things. The road to Reno is paved with suspicions. And the first thing you know, they all end up in a divorce court.

Perhaps our marriage doesn't mean anything to you?...Perhaps you have no sentiment left for me.

So you two are gonna be married. I was glad to hear that. I said to myself, 'That Leeson's just the man for Lucy.'

[to Daniel] Take good care of her. Maybe you'll succeed where I failed. And I'm sure that the three of you will be very happy out where the West begins. If you ever think of me, send me a postcard. Just say, 'Having a wonderful time!' I'll understand.

Oh, I've heard everything. I'm going out to get some popcorn and pink lemonade. I've just seen a three-ring circus.

[to Lucy] I certainly acted like a prized lunatic and I'm sorry...Nothing except the most ridiculous and sickening exhibition mortal man ever made of himself. Oh, I don't know why I act like that....The main idea is, do you accept my apology? Aside from making a blue-ribbon sap of myself today, I must have embarrassed you beyond words. You took it fine, though.

[to Barbara] You can't have a happy married life if you're always suspicious. No. There can't be any doubts in marriage. Marriage is based on faith and if you've lost that, you've lost everything.

Well, if we haven't had the most terrible time. Armand's car broke down last night a million miles from nowhere and we had to stay at the nastiest little inn you ever saw. No modern conveniences at all. It was dreadful. We were on our way home from the Junior Prom. A pupil of Armand's invited us. And, oh well, it's a long story.

 
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