My Man Godfrey (1936)

  The movie begins with Godfrey (William Powell) living in the city dump over by the East River.  It is the middle of the Great Depression and he is scraping by as best he can when a pair of cars pulls up one night.

A socialite offers him $5 if he will accompnay her back to the Waldorf-Ritz as part of a scavenger hunt of unwanted things.  All she needs to win is a Forgotten Man.  Insulted, Powell tells her no and advances menacingly until she falls into an ash-heap and leaves.

Her sister (Carole Lombard) jumps in and asks Powell to be her Forgotten Man to keep the first girl from winning.  Curious to see this scavenger hunt and mollified by the ditzy blonde, he agrees.  After seeing the cream of New York dragging around broken spinning wheels and livestock in order to win a worthless trophy, he roundly denounces them and heads back towards the dump.

The ditzy blonde immediately hires him as a butler for her crazy-ass family which includes the put-upon Mr. Bulloch, a shrill vapid Mrs. Bulloch, a free-loading musical "protege" named Carlo, the bitchy sister Cornelia, and herself (Irene).

And really, if you have the name Godfrey Smith, your only choice in life is to be a butler.  Ditto for Alfred, Jarvis or Beale.  Just suck it up, put on a tux, grab a silver tray, and do what God and Nature intended for you to do.

There's no clear sense of how long Godfrey stays with the family but it's long enough for every unattached woman in the house to fall in love with him, a fact he is staunchly oblivious to, despite Irene following him around like a sick puppy and the maid bursting into tears every time he walks into a room.  Cornelia goes so far as to plant a piece of jewelry in his room out of spite, after he tells her what a spoiled entitled bitch she is, and then calls the cops.

Things could have gone very badly for Godfrey, if the necklace had been found.  But our man is no fool and we know why.  Instead of being a raised-from-the-gutter domestic servant, he is the Harvard-educated scion of a wealthy Boston family who absconded south after a bad break-up so his family wouldn't be tainted with scandal.  Intending to cast himself in the East River, he instead found acceptance amongst the Forgotten Men and discovered his own inherent dignity.

This is a great William Powell comedy with some fantastic dialogue...when Carole Lombard isn't crying like a six-year-old whose pony just died.  She was tied with Alice Brady, who played the mother, for Most Annoying Performance Ever.  Every time either of them was on screen I had to grit my teeth so I wouldn't punch a hole in my computer.  Overall, I really liked the film and I would definitely recommend it, just be prepared to really dislike those two.  Honestly, even though she was a borderline sociopath, I was kind of hoping Cornelia would end up with Godfrey just because she was at least stylish and entertaining, if evil.