Figure 2-1: The unmotivated overhead shot of the fur coat falling

 What do we make of this uncanny moment appearing unexpectedly in a screwball

comedy? Of the madcap comedies released during the mid-1930s, Mitchell Leisen's Easy

Living was hardly the most ingenious. It was neither as fresh as Frank Capra's It

Happened One Night (1934) nor as lively as Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey (1936).

Although Paramount marketed it as a Preston Sturges comedy, trying to capitalize on the

sensation he had created in Hollywood with scripts like The Power and the Glory (1933)

and Diamond Jim (1935), the film was not a commercial or critical success.' Still, as

James Harvey reminds us, everyone remembers the moment when "the fur coat falls on

the heroine's head" (354). That is ironic because Sturges himself did not believe the

moment could even be filmed. In the script, he suggests that once the coat is hurled over

the parapet, "the falling will probably not pick up" (Horton Three More 169). But the

moment did make it to the screen. What intrigues me about it is that it is unmotivated.