The Hollywood Romantic Comedy: Conventions, History, Controversies

Though rarely explored in analytical detail, the romantic comedy remains a stalwart contributor to Hollywood entertainment. This book offers a comprehensive history of the Hollywood romantic comedy film, from the coming of sound to the twenty–first century, examining the conventions of the genre and surveying the controversies arising from the critical responses to these films. Hollywood′s romantic comedies can be seen as a series of productions whose form and meaning change in response to conditions in the film industry, courtship culture, and society at large. This book provides an essential overview of the continuities within the genre as well as its historical evolution. A full analysis is provided of the range of romantic comedy conventions, including dramatic conflicts, characters, plots, settings, and the function of humor. In doing so, Leger Grindon develops a survey of historical cycles and clusters and builds a canon of key films from Hollywood′s classical era right up to the present day, which are analyzed in detail in the second part of the book. Films analyzed include Trouble in Paradise, His Girl Friday, The Miracle of Morgan′s Creek, Adam′s Rib, Some Like It Hot, The Graduate, Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, There′s Something About Mary, and Waitress.

List of Plates. Acknowledgements. 1 Introduction. 2 History, Cycles, and Society. 3 Thinking Seriously About Laughter and Romance. 4 Trouble in Paradise (1932): What is the Trouble in Paradise? 5 His Girl Friday (1940): Jailbreak! 6 The Miracle of Morgan′s Creek (1944): The Home Front Romantic Comedy. 7 Adam′s Rib (1949): Anatomy Lesson. 8 Some Like It Hot (1959): Riding Sidesaddle. 9 The Graduate (1967): Counter–Conventions and Cultural Change. 10 Annie Hall (1977): The Trials of Partnership. 11 When Harry Met Sally (1989): Friendship, Sex, and Courtship. 12 There′s Something About Mary (1998): Parody and the Grotesque. 13 Waitress (2007): Women′s Ambivalence. A Chronology of Prominent Hollywood Romantic Comedies. References. Index.

Leger Grindon is Professor of Film and Media Culture at Middlebury College, USA. He has written widely on film and is the author of Shadows on the Past: Studies in the Historical Fiction Film (1994) and Knockout: The Boxer and Boxing in American Cinema (2011).

"The romantic comedy genre has rarely received the sort of academic recognition it deserves, but students, film scholars, romance scholars, and rom–com enthusiasts all over the world will find The Hollywood Romantic Comedy a fine introduction to this culturally and politically significant  film genre." ( Journal of Popular Romance Studies , 15 October 2012) "Summing Up: Recommended. Lower–division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers." ( Choice , 1 September 2011)