General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Awful Truth

The Awful Truth is a 1937 American screwball comedy directed by Leo McCarey for Columbia Pictures, starring Irene Dunne and Cary Grant as Jerry and Lucy Warriner, a married couple who file for divorce on unfounded suspicions of infidelity and then sabotage each other's new romances.¹^•² McCarey won the Academy Award for Best Director, and the film received four other nominations including Best Picture.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	21 October 1937, Columbia Pictures Corp. of California, Ltd.¹
Director	Leo McCarey, American, 1898–1969; also producer¹^•³
Stars	Irene Dunne (Lucy Warriner), Cary Grant (Jerry Warriner), Ralph Bellamy (Daniel Leeson)¹
Source	Screenplay by Viña Delmar, based on Arthur Richman's 1922 play⁴
Academy Awards	Won Best Director; nominated for Best Picture, Actress (Dunne), Supporting Actor (Bellamy), and Screenplay¹
Format	89–91 minutes, black and white, 1.37:1 aspect ratio, mono sound⁵^•²
Commercial result	Budget about $600,000; worldwide box office about $3 million, roughly five times its cost⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Jerry Warriner (Cary Grant) and Lucy Warriner (Irene Dunne) are a married couple who doubt each other's fidelity. Jerry suspects Lucy of spending an evening with her music teacher, Armand Duvalle (Alexander D'Arcy), and Lucy is convinced Jerry lied about a trip to Florida, where he claims to have been vacationing when he was actually tanning at the Gotham Athletic Club.²^•⁷ The jealous pair file for divorce and fight over custody of their dog, Mr. Smith.⁸

Before the final decree, Jerry decides he wants Lucy back, only to learn she is engaged to Daniel "Dan" Leeson (Ralph Bellamy), an Oklahoma businessman. Jerry counters with an engagement to Barbara Vance (Molly Lamont), and the two set about spoiling each other's chances at new romance.⁸^•⁵ In one recurring gag, Jerry tries to unload a failed mining venture on Lucy's new suitor, a detail McCarey took from his own failed mining business before he entered the film industry.⁹

Production

McCarey came to the project after Paramount dropped his contract following the box office failure of Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), his drama about old age. Columbia wanted a follow-up to Theodora Goes Wild (1936), which had revealed Irene Dunne's comic talents. McCarey ran into Cary Grant on a Hollywood street corner and found the actor had also just been dropped by Paramount.⁹

Improvisation shaped the film. According to modern sources cited by the AFI Catalog, much of the film was improvised by McCarey and the actors.¹ Grant nearly stormed off the set, frustrated by McCarey's insistence on improvisation, and sent producer Harry Cohn an eight-page memo headed "What's Wrong With This Picture" before settling into the new way of working.¹⁰ The film was shot between 21 June and 17 August 1937, with Joseph Walker as cinematographer and Al Clark as editor.¹

The wire-haired terrier playing Mr. Smith was Skippy, the same dog that played Asta in MGM's The Thin Man series, George in Bringing Up Baby (1938), and Mr. Atlas in Topper Takes a Trip (1939).¹^•¹¹

Reception and awards

The film received five Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Dunne, one of her five career nominations in the category), Best Supporting Actor (Bellamy), and Best Screenplay. McCarey won the directing award, the only Columbia directing Oscar in a five-year stretch that otherwise belonged to Frank Capra films.¹^•¹²^•⁸ Film Daily named it one of 1937's best films.¹

When accepting his Oscar, McCarey said the Academy had given him the award for the wrong film, preferring his own Make Way for Tomorrow, released the same year; he held that view for the rest of his life. Audiences disagreed: The Awful Truth became one of the critical and commercial hits of the decade while Make Way for Tomorrow failed at the box office.⁷

Grant was not among the nominees, likely because he was a freelancer, but the film's success sent him to the A list. The BFI's Sight and Sound describes his performance as the point at which he achieved the physical gracefulness he admired in Chaplin, and as the role that first defined the Cary Grant persona.¹⁰^•⁵ McCarey nonetheless held a lifelong grudge against Grant and believed the actor's debonair screen manner was modeled on his own rehearsal instructions.¹⁰

Modern aggregate scores remain high: 94 percent on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 31 reviews, and a Metacritic Metascore of 87, in the site's "universal acclaim" band.²^•¹³

Place in the screwball genre

The film is a central example of the screwball comedy, a Hollywood genre of the mid-1930s to early 1940s marked by unsentimental treatment of prominent romantic relationships, contemporary upper-class urban settings, defiant female leads, farcical plots, and a fast mix of physical and verbal gags.¹⁴ Critics have noted that McCarey's approach differs from the faster, louder style of Howard Hawks: where Twentieth Century (1934) and Bringing Up Baby (1938) accelerate, The Awful Truth slows down at its climax, ending on a quiet, realistically romantic note rather than a zany one.¹⁵ The philosopher Stanley Cavell placed it within his category of "comedies of remarriage," calling it "the best, or the deepest, of the comedies of remarriage" on certain screenings.⁷

It was the first of three films Grant and Dunne made together, followed by My Favorite Wife (1940) and Penny Serenade (1941); the final scene of My Favorite Wife mirrors the final scene of this film.¹⁶^•¹¹

Adaptations and legacy

Arthur Richman's 1922 play was filmed three times before the 1950s: a silent version in 1925 directed by Paul Powell with Agnes Ayres and Warner Baxter, a 1929 talkie directed by Marshall Neilan starring Ina Claire, who had also headed the Broadway cast, and McCarey's 1937 version.¹^•¹⁷ Columbia remade it in 1953 as the musical Let's Do It Again, directed by Alexander Hall and starring Jane Wyman and Ray Milland, without much success.¹^•¹¹

Ralph Bellamy's role as Lucy's hayseed suitor led to so many similar parts, including his performance in His Girl Friday (1940), that he found himself typecast and left Hollywood for a time.¹² A 1939 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation starred Grant and Claudette Colbert.⁵ Michael Moore later named his 1999–2000 satirical television series The Awful Truth after the film.¹¹ The Criterion Collection released the film on home video as spine number 917.⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1940s

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

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