My Man Godfrey (1936) Starring Carole Lombard, William Powell, Gail Patrick, Alice Brady, Alan Mowbray, Jean Dixon, Eugene Pallette, Mischa Auer, Franklin Pangborn, Jane Wyman.

Directed by Gregory LaCava.

Running time: 95 minutes

Rating: G

Based upon the Eric Hatch novel.

A flaky heiress (Lombard) on a scavenger hunt hires a homeless guy named Godfrey (Powell) whom she stumbles upon at the city dump because she needs to bring in a "forgotten man" to win the competition that she and other bored rich people are in. Despite the indignity of the situation he complies with the wishes of the Park Avenue brat. She then grows attached to her new pet and gets him hired as her family's' butler.

Godfrey puts up with the collective weirdness (and just plain drunkenness) and head games of the affluent people he works for just as low-income people have so often had to throughout history. But he has an unexpected secret to explain his temporarily homeless status. It is one that few people will be able to understand.

The collapse of the North American economy in 1929-30 did not quite wipe out everyone financially. A number of enterprising stock market speculators respectively had their best days ever when the market crashed. The luxury of their existence provided an even more stark contrast with that which most were living in than it usually does.

In many cases "the help" were the only connection the affluent had to reality in much the same way that being "the help" was the only real window the working poor had into the lives of the truly wealthy and powerful.

One window that was not real was the silver screen and Hollywood made a fair number of films around the time this was produced about "forgotten men" like The Great McGinty and Meet John Doe and this one about homeless guys taken for chumps and put into extraordinary circumstances. Sullivan's Travels has a similar but different theme. I think that the Hollywood of the time deserves more credit than it has gotten for exploring characters like this.

People forget that 1930s and early 1940s Hollywood did make some very biting statements about the Depression and poverty. If it hadn't then the House on un-American Activities Committee would not have gone after it for having expressed anti-capitalist sentiments later on culminating in the trials of the Hollywood Ten and the blacklist.

That said the depiction of New York homelessness here could hardly be a realistic one. Hollywood studios at

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