When silent movies yielded to talkies, one great era of screen comedy ended and another one began. Sound meant dialogue, and what dialogue—the crackerjack patter is still a large part of what sets these films whose theme is the battle of the sexes. It didn’t hurt that this was also the era of great comediennes like Carole Lombard, Katharine Hepburn, and Barbara Stanwyck, playing off bemused straight men like John Barrymore, Cary Grant, and Henry Fonda. The true screwballs flourished in the years...more