In Brief: With Twentieth Century (1934), director Howard Hawks — with a lot of help from writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and stars John Barrymore and Carole Lombard — invented something new: ...

A new era is born.

There s overacting and there s over-Acting. John Barrymore provides the latter as a gloriously manic, egocentric Broadway producer in Howard Hawks priceless 1934 screwball comedy Twentieth Century.