Pop Culture 101 - THE AWFUL TRUTH

The Arthur Richman play on which this was based had been filmed twice before, in 1925 with Agnes Ayres and Warner Baxter and in 1929 with Ina Claire and Henry Daniell. It was remade without much success as Let's Do It Again (1953), with Jane Wyman and Ray Milland.

The wire-haired terrier playing the Warriner's dog, Mr. Smith, is Asta, who appeared under his own name as Nick and Nora Charles' pet in several of the "Thin Man" movies. He also played George in Bringing Up Baby (1938) and Mr. Atlas (credited as Skippy) in Topper Takes a Trip (1939).

While parodying her husband's nightclub singer girlfriend doing the song "My Dreams Are Gone with the Wind," Irene Dunne does a few seconds of the shuffle dance step she performed in Showboat (1936).

In his comedy Part Time Wife (1930), McCarey had a scene in which a lawyer is telling his client how wonderful marriage is while the lawyer's wife storms in and tells him in a very surly way, "Your dinner's getting cold." McCarey used the same basic scene in The Awful Truth.

The last scene of Grant and Dunne's follow-up film, My Favorite Wife (1940), produced and with a story by Leo McCarey, mirrors the final scene of this movie. Dunne lies comfortably in bed teasing Grant with the thought of sleeping with her but holding him at bay by telling him they have to wait 60 days until his other marriage is annulled.

In an earlier romantic comedy, Mitchell Leisen's Hands Across the Table (1935), Fred MacMurray also has to resort to a fake suntan to pull off a lie to his sweetheart. The earlier movie was written in part by Vina Delmar.

Ads for Grant's later comedy His Girl Friday (1940) made reference to this picture: "The Awful Truth didn't tell half of what you gals can do to a guy!"

Political documentary filmmaker Michael Moore named his 1999-2000 TV series The Awful Truth.