Mad Miss Manton | Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda

Mad Miss Manton | Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda | Brava! Bravissima!

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Mad Miss Manton

	Mad Miss Manton Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda Turner Home Entertainment, 1990 average customer review:based on 5 reviews
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highly recommended

The Mad Miss Manton

This is a wonderful screwball comedy that stars Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. They showed that they had a nack for comedy as well as drama which really up to this time, that's all they had done. The film starts out with Melson Manson coming home to her 5th Ave highrise after a costume charity ball to walk her dogs at 3am. While she's tending to one little dog, she see's her high society friend Ronny leaving the Lane Mansion. She goes into the mansion that's been closed up for awhile only to discover a dead body. She calls for the police and when they get there the body is missing and the police figure it's just another one of her tricks. A sociaty dame that had too much time on her hands. She gets a very unkind write up in the paper by the editor Peter (Fonda) and takes an instant dislike to him. He on the other hand takes an instant liking to her. She gathers her group of sociaty girl debutants (A bunch of unknown starletts that never did another thing in movies, except Penny Singleton who went on to be Blondie in the Blondie series) to investigate the murder in the Lane Mansion. As they are going around the crime scene, Peter joins them. They tie him up and leave him there to go on to Ronnie's place so he can explain why he was at the mansion. Well, the group finds another dead body that the police once again thinks is a hoax, so they leave the body on Peter's office couch. This time the police round the girls up in the middle of the night to question them. (this is a funny scene the way the police are questioning them.) Peter helps the girls get out of the questioning only to put them back in the hand of police once more. As they were leaving the station, the police put two of the girls in the rumble seat of a car, where one of the debs discovers the body of Mr Lane. Melsa and Peter keep going back and fourth with the I love you, I hate you routine. The girls continue to investigate the murders. They are so good at investigating that they give one of the suspects an alibi and leave the police at square one again. But did they give the wrong man the alibi and leave a killer on the loose to kill again? I'm lucky enough to have taped it off of AMC when AMC was actually good. Before they changed the format and really cared about movies like this one. Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck are so good together. They made three movies all told. The Lady Eve was another one that is a screwball comedy where Barbara Stanwyck demanded and got Henry for her leading man. She knew how well they worked together. Hattie McDaniel once again plays a maid, but a maid you love. She is strong in her role and is just as much a screen presence as the two stars. She also gets some of the funniest lines in the movie. One note about the women who play the Debutantes. One woman billed herself as Vicki Lester, I guess trying to bring herself luck. You might remember a year before this movie, Vicki Lester was the character from A Star Is Born. The movie keeps moving and I don't recall a dull moment in it. Also you don't know who done it until the end of the film. Good chemistry, a good script, don't let this one pass you up. Oh Yeh, the fashions are great to see too.

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Brava! Bravissima!

I, too, disagree with scotsladdie - this movie is an absolute gem, and I've been hoping for several years to see this one come out on DVD! This is one of my favorite B&W comedies, with an enchantingly headstrong heroine and her equally (and charmingly) stubborn suitor. And, oh, yes - it's a mystery, too. I must say, I greatly prefer it to movies such as Bringing Up Baby (much as I like Cary Grant and K. Hepburn), in which the so-called hero is too muddled to attempt to hold his ground against a female as featherheaded as himself.
You know, I heard somewhere that Mad Miss Manton was the first "screwball comedy" to use regular actors/actresses instead of those that specialized in comic performance. If so, it was an absolute stroke of genius! Should you have an appreciation for quick wit and the eternal battle of the sexes, might I recommend Mad Miss Manton?

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Screwball delight

I beg to differ with Scotsladdy. This is silliness carried to a delicious extreme. Stanwyck as a sleuthing debutante gets to be fearless, witty and gorgeous at the same time as she carries on a Taming of the Shrew-type class-war romance with youthful class warrior Fonda. There are no profound depths here, but many laughs(including quite a few by Hattie McDaniels), and the feminist slant of the plot--maligned Junior Leaguers aim to show up scoffing police--is great fun.

A couple of pros save the movie

Barbara Stanwyck plays the rich socialite Miss Manton who discovers a murdered man one night in a deserted building, and Henry Fonda is the newspaperman who doesn't believe her at first but then falls in love with her; together they capture the killer. Not as great as other screwball comedies from this period, and rather silly in spots, yet the script does offer up a number of funny lines. The plot isn't unique by any means (Hitchcock plowed a deep furrow in the unbelieving-couple-who-succumb-to-love field), but Stanwyck and Fonda give it their professional all and the result is a decent enough comedy.

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MEDIOCRE SCREWBALL.

Definitely a mixed bag. This is a good example of something which was ground out by film studio people in a desperate mood. Miscast, Barbara Stanwyck plays a dizzy debutante who's one of a covey of Junior League girls in fox capes; she walks her dog at three in the morning after a costume ball, and encounters a corpse in a deserted house. Inspired by the spectacle, she immediately corrals her flighty friends - in their best party dresses - and they scurry around the scene of the crime, looking for clues and squealing much of the time...A great example of the kind of idiotic films which helped kill the screwball genre. Hank Fonda is the hero; he and Hattie McDaniel are likewise wasted in this unfortunate attempt at humour.

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