Icons of Screwball Comedy, Vols 1 & 2 (2009)

Image credit: Everett Collection

WISE CRACKS Fred MacMurray, Jean Arthur, and Melvyn Douglas in Too Many Husbands

In the 1930s and '40s, stars like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn turned rat-a tat patter, clinking highballs, and dizzy misunderstandings into a glorious genre called screwball comedy. If you've ever seen Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, or anything by Preston Sturges, you've tasted the best of the bunch. Now, in Icons of Screwball Comedy: Vols. 1 & 2, a no-frills four-disc, eight-film set, Columbia de-mothballs some of the lesser titles from its vault, like 1936's once-censored Theodora Goes Wild, with Irene Dunne as a proto–Carrie Bradshaw single-girl author, and 1940's Too Many Husbands, with Jean Arthur as a blond beauty who's accidentally married to both Fred MacMurray and perennial sap Melvyn Douglas. They may not be classics, but they are breezy, boozy fun. EXTRAS include trailers and old shorts like the Rhapsody cartoon ''Mad Hatter.'' B+

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