When someone contemplates the roots of American television’s situation comedy, whether it be The Big Bang Theory or Community, they can often easily enough trace the influence back along television’s own history to the 1940s-50s, and such shows as The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy. These classic shows found their comedy in such tenets as oddball characters, awkward social divisions, and the snowballing of small misunderstandings. Television, of course, was simply building upon its own past: Hollywood films, which were themselves an evolution from vaudeville and other live performance art from the early 20th Century. Amongst this bulk of back-cataloged comedy, perhaps the simplest comparison and most straight-forward connection between the modern sitcom and classic film comedy is the sub-genre of the ‘screwball comedy’.

Bachelor Mother is one of the finest screwball comedies of the late 1930s, and yet has been overshadowed in recent times, partly because it is not directed by Frank Capra or written by Preston Sturges. It also stars Ginger Rogers, who is superficially remembered for her exquisite dancing rather than her subtle comic timing and strong character acting. The film centers on Rogers as Polly Parrish, a recently laid off department store clerk who, upon walking home after receiving her pink slip, witnesses a woman abandoning a newborn baby on the steps of an orphanage. And thus one of the situation comedy staples is upon us: the small misunderstanding that will soon snowball beyond exasperated explanation.

Having been misidentified as the child’s mother, Polly soon finds herself a) having her job restored (for who could lay off a single mother?), b) seeing her attempts at dating/romance undermined, and, naturally, c) becoming the recipient of curious sideways glances in regards to who the child’s father may be. Which is indisputably great comic fun for the viewer, if not for Polly.

Co-star David Niven, as playboy David Merlin, son of the department store owner, finds himself flawlessly transitioning from being shocked at this young mother’s apparent lack of care for her child, to ardent supporter of Polly’s delicate situation, even if he never quite accepts the truth that Polly frequently – and fruitlessly – relates to him. While any romance in a 90 minute film can’t help to be rushed, the sincerity in which David and Polly ground their relationship in the sudden “modern family” is a unique flavor not seen too often in films of this era under the Hollywood Production Code. And stealing the show for his all too few minutes of screen time is Charles Coburn as department store owner J. B. Merlin, who is determined to see and provide for the baby he is convinced is his grandchild.

Certainly, in reflecting back on the film, it is absurd to believe that the characters would just happen to forget one key element that throws a wrench into the film’s logic – that they never once in prior months saw Polly Parish pregnant. It’s a tribute to the fast paced wit of the writing that this never crosses the mind of the viewer. Rather, we’re much more involved with rooting for Polly and David to sort through the confusion, and we’re quick to side with them as they continue to dig themselves deeper into the tangled web of miscommunication. As the film progresses and the misunderstandings multiply, Polly and David eventually grow to depend upon this child that has inadvertently come to define them. This comes to a head when Polly and David are confronted in a public park by another young couple who boast incessantly about their child’s “talents”. David, persuaded by an increasingly annoyed Polly to verify her claims that their infant can speak, tops it off by relating that “his” newborn child “can recite the first line of Gunga Din.”

Bachelor Mother is available on DVD from Warner Home Video via warnerarchive.com