Bringing Up Baby
Like farce, screwball comedies often involve masquerade and disguise in which a character or characters resort to secrecy. Sometimes screwball comedies feature male characters cross-dressing, further contributing to elements of masquerade ("Bringing Up Baby" (1938), "I Was a Male War Bride" (1949), and "Some Like It Hot" (1959)). At first, the couple seem mismatched and even hostile to each other but eventually overcome their differences in an amusing or entertaining way that leads to romance. Often this mismatch comes about when the man is of a lower social class than the woman ("Bringing Up Baby", "Holiday", both 1938). The final romantic union is often planned by the woman from the outset, and the man is seemingly oblivious to this. In "Bringing Up Baby," the woman says to a third party: "He's the man I'm going to marry. He doesn't know it, but I am."