Twentieth Century is a 1934 American pre-Code screwball comedy film[1][2][3] directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, and Roscoe Karns.

[5] Along with Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, also released in 1934 (which coincidentally has the same music over the opening titles), Twentieth Century is considered to be a prototype for the screwball comedy.

"Howard Hawks' rapid-fire romantic comedy established the essential ingredients of the screwball – a dizzy dame, a charming, but befuddled, hero, dazzling dialogue, and a dash of slapstick.

[7][8] Ebullient Broadway impresario Oscar Jaffe takes an unknown lingerie model named Mildred Plotka and makes her the star of his latest play, despite the grave misgivings of everyone else, including his two long-suffering assistants, accountant Oliver Webb and the consistently tipsy Owen O'Malley.

Instead, he secretly hires a private detective agency run by McGonigle to watch her every move, even to the point of tapping her telephone.

After one such disappointment, to avoid being imprisoned for his debts, he is forced to disguise himself to board the luxurious 20th Century Limited express train traveling from Chicago to New York City's Grand Central Terminal.

[9] His play was not produced, but it became the basis for the Hecht–MacArthur comedy, which lasted for 152 performances on Broadway, beginning on December 29, 1932,[4] and which they later adapted for the big screen.

[5] Before Lombard was cast, Columbia boss Harry Cohn negotiated with Eugenie Leontovich, who had played the part on Broadway, and then considered Gloria Swanson and Miriam Hopkins.

Other reports say that Ina Claire, Tallulah Bankhead, Ruth Chatterton, Constance Bennett, Ann Harding, Kay Francis, and Joan Crawford were also considered for the lead role by Cohn and Hawks.

For the remainder of her career—until her tragic death in an airplane crash in 1942 at age 33—before beginning a film, Lombard would always send a telegram to Hawks saying, "I'm going to kick him!

[citation needed] Preston Sturges was hired to write the screenplay around late November 1933, but was removed from the project a week later because he had not made sufficient progress.

[5] Twentieth Century—a title which Columbia considered changing because they feared that many westerners would not be familiar with the name of the train[5]—was in production from February 22 to March 24, 1934.

[16] In December 2011, Twentieth Century was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

[18] Its first full-scale Broadway revival officially began in March 2015, with Peter Gallagher and Kristin Chenoweth in the lead roles.