Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) – a Broadway impresario whose posters proclaim “An Oscar Jaffe Production is a guarantee of genius and wit in the theater” – succeeds at transforming the lead actress in his latest play, a lingerie model with the handle Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into a star of the stage he renames Lily Garland.

The flamboyant theater manager romances his leading lady and three hit plays over three years results. But O.J. seeks to control every aspect of Lily’s life, and when he hires a private eye to tap her phone line, she walks out on him and heads to Hollywood.

Years later, O.J. has run off a string of theatrical failures. With his oft fired producer Arthur (Walter Connolly) and hatchet man Owen O’Malley (Roscoe Karns) in tow, Jaffe sneaks aboard the 20^th Century Limited one step ahead of his creditors in Chicago. Lily is now a big Hollywood star, and as luck would have it, is also on the New York bound train.

O.J. launches into a scheme to get Lily to sign a contract to appear in his next production, a ruse complicated by the presence of her high society fiancé, personal maid and a wingnut pasting “Repent! For the time is at hand!” stickers all over the train, who Arthur believes is a philanthropist willing to invest in their play.

Directed by Howard Hawks, from a screenplay Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur adapted from an unproduced play called Napoleon Of Broadway, Twentieth Century was the first of three classic screwball comedies the director would make in a six year span. While it lacks the star power of Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday, this is still madcap farce at its finest.

John Barrymore plays one of the great hams, a backstage Svengali far more outrageous than any of his actors. He threatens suicide every chance he gets and bellows lines like “What do you know about talent? What do you know about the theatre? What do you know about genius? What do you know about anything, you … bookkeeper!”

Carole Lombard has moments where she shines, but overall, I found her character underwritten and shrewish. She was also 26 years younger than Barrymore at the time, and even if this was not yet viewed as politically incorrect, her casting fails to generate much in the way of chemistry.

The film’s romantic quality comes from the decision to stage much of the action aboard a New York bound train, where Lily has no choice but succumb to O.J.’s dogged theatrics. And the dialogue by Hecht & MacArthur is among the sharpest and most sophisticated ever written, with outrageous characters flinging great lines back and forth at each other:

“It’s typical of my career that in the great crises of life, I should stand flanked by two incompetent alcoholics!”

“She loves me. I could tell that through her screaming.”

“Go on, tell her I’m dying. And don’t overact!”

The film inspired “On The Twentieth Century”, a Broadway musical in 1977 starring Madeline Kahn as Lily, John Callum as O.J. and featuring Kevin Kline as Lily’s fiancé.