General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

It's a Wonderful World

It's a Wonderful World is a 1939 American screwball comedy directed by W. S. Van Dyke II for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, starring Claudette Colbert as the poet Edwina Corday and James Stewart as the private detective Guy Johnson, released on May 19, 1939¹. Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay from an original story he developed with Herman J. Mankiewicz². The film has no connection to Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) beyond the similar title and Stewart's presence in both³.

Key fact	Detail
Release	May 19, 1939 (United States), MGM (Loew's Inc.); black and white, 9 reels, 84 or 86 minutes¹
Director	W. S. Van Dyke II, nicknamed "One Take Woody" for his fast shooting style²
Writers	Ben Hecht (screenplay and original story) with Herman J. Mankiewicz (original story)¹
Stars	Claudette Colbert (Edwina Corday), James Stewart (Guy Johnson), Guy Kibbee (Cap Streeter)¹
Shooting schedule	A record twelve days, six fewer than Van Dyke took on The Thin Man²
Production dates	Began February 22, 1939; retakes and additional scenes from March 30, 1939¹
Later release	Video release November 10, 1993, by MGM Video⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Novice private detective Guy Johnson is hired by Willie Heyward (Ernest Truex), a millionaire with a penchant for trouble, to extricate him from a murder charge after Heyward is found holding a smoking gun over the body of his girlfriend¹^•⁵. Guy is implicated in the crime when he is arrested and sentenced to prison for concealing his client; Heyward is sentenced to death¹^•².

Armed with the case's single clue, a half dime whose other half is in the murderer's possession, Guy escapes from the train bound for Sing Sing, kidnaps the freelance poet Edwina Corday, and hijacks her car¹. The trail leads to upstate New York, where the real murderer is performing in an amateur theater group. Edwina falls in love with her captor and joins the chase, helping Guy as he disguises himself as a Boy Scout leader, a chauffeur, and an actor to elude the police. With his half dime, Guy flushes out the killer and wins exoneration for himself and his client¹.

Production

Casting. According to Hollywood Reporter news items, Myrna Loy was originally slated for the role of Edwina Corday but withdrew because of prior commitments; MGM then considered Frances Drake for the lead before Claudette Colbert was cast. The picture was Colbert's first for MGM, and it was filmed on location in San Diego, California¹. Colbert, used to the more leisurely pace of her home studio Paramount, was appalled at how quickly Van Dyke threw the film together, and she was unhappy when the road-trip plot drew comparisons to her earlier hit It Happened One Night (1934)³.

Speed. Van Dyke, who had helped create the screwball genre with The Thin Man (1934) and was valued by studio head Louis B. Mayer mainly because he worked quickly, shot the film in a record twelve days. The film critic James Harvey, author of Romantic Comedy in Hollywood: From Lubitsch to Sturges, wrote that the speed shows on screen mostly in good ways, in "crackle and verve and spontaneity"².

Writing. Hecht and Mankiewicz built the farce around a private eye on the run who takes an eccentric lady poet hostage, with gags including Stewart posing as an actor named Ernest Hemingway and impersonating a gangling scout leader in short pants and inch-thick glasses. Hecht added private jokes, naming the client Willie Heyward after his agent Leland Hayward and a boy Herman Plotka, a combination of his co-writer's name and Mildred Plotka, the real name of the actress in his farce Twentieth Century. With the script finished, Hecht moved on to an uncredited job doctoring the script for Gone with the Wind (1939)³.

The credited crew includes Oliver T. Marsh as cinematographer, Cedric Gibbons as art director, Harold F. Kress as editor, Edward Ward as composer, Edwin B. Willis as set decorator, and Adrian for gowns¹.

Reception and legacy

Contemporary reaction was decidedly mixed. The film benefited from the star power of Colbert and Stewart and Hecht's gags, but most critics at the time found it a strained attempt to revive a genre they were tired of. Otis Ferguson, a Hecht admirer writing in The New Republic, gave it a good review, while Frank Nugent of The New York Times complained that "the comedy is almost too strenuous for relaxation." Stewart's fans were horrified to see him playing a cynical, chauvinistic private eye who at one point slugs his leading lady³.

Producer Frank Davis left producing after three years at MGM to return to writing, scoring later successes with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) and The Train (1964). Before leaving, he offered a prescient assessment of the production: "The studio should have known that Jimmy Stewart would never do any of those unconvincing things. However, I predict that his next film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939], will more than make up."

Over time the film has developed a devoted cult following, and modern assessments are favorable: Leonard Maltin calls it "very, very funny, with Stewart having a field day," while other commentators praise the chemistry between the stars and call it "a little-known treasure"². On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 78% Tomatometer from two reviews, with over 500 audience ratings⁶. It continues to draw viewers intrigued by the title's similarity to It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Stewart's far better-known Christmas film made seven years later, though the two films are unrelated³^•⁶.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026