Best of
Comedy

1939

Uncle Fred in the Springtime


P.G. Wodehouse - 1939
    At the request of Lord Emsworth, Uncle Fred journeys to Blandings Castle to steal the Empress of Blandings before the ill-tempered, egg-throwing Duke of Dunstable can lay claim to her. Disguised as the eminent nerve specialist Sir Roderick Glossop, and with his distressed nephew Pongo in tow, Uncle Fred must not only steal a pig but also reunite a young couple and diagnose various members of the upper class with imaginary mental illnesses, all before his domineering wife realizes he’s escaped their country estate.

Lucia Victrix


E.F. Benson - 1939
    "Lucia's progress" first published 1935. "Trouble for Lucia" first published in 1939.

Arsenic and Old Lace


Joseph Kesselring - 1939
    

The Philadelphia Story


Philip Barry - 1939
    This Broadway hit starred Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord of the Philadelphia Lords, an inhibited and spoiled daughter of the privileged. Divorced from C.J. Dexter Haven, she is engaged to a successful young snob. A gossip weekly sends a reporter and a camera woman to report the wedding arrangements and they are injected into the house by Tracy's brother who hopes to divert their attention from father's romance with a Broadway dancer. Tracy finds herself growing int

The Man Who Came to Dinner


Moss Hart - 1939
    A tumultuous six weeks of confinement in their home follow.

How to Live in a Flat


W. Heath Robinson - 1939
    

The Unicorn in the Garden


James Thurber - 1939
    The fable has since been reprinted in The Thurber Carnival (Harper and Brothers, 1945), James Thurber: Writings and Drawings, The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, and other publications. It is taught in literature and rhetoric courses.