Irene Dunne shines as a screwy heiress out of her inheritance in Gregory La Cava’s final screwball comedy. Lady in a Jam follows a psychiatrist (Patric Knowles) who is instructed by a guardian of heiress Jane Palmer (Dunne) to treat her after her irrational high spending leaves her broke, and in denial. Dr. Enright (Knowles) reluctantly joins his patient out west to search for gold in her grandfather’s mines, to which her pursuit is misconstrued as a return home by grandmother (Queenie Vassar) and childhood sweetheart (Ralph Bellamy). Lady in a Jam contains most of La Cava’s sensibilities and interests, from psychiatry to the social class system, and acts as a quite wonderful farewell to the screwball comedies of the 1930s.
Presented and introduced by Gregory La Cava researcher Annabel Jessica Goldsmith.
