The movie was in production from February 22 to March 24, 1934. Consideration was given to changing the title because Columbia feared that many in the country would not understand its reference to the train, a Chicago-New York express. But Twentieth Century the film remained. The train itself becomes an important visual motif, standing for modernity, speed and change, hurtling forward as the movie's plot does the same.

As Barrymore settled in to work on his scenes with Lombard, he would look askance at director Hawks as if to say, "This isn't working out." Occasionally, in reaction to Lombard's competent but rather stilted work, he would even hold his nose. So Hawks took his actress for a little walk and asked her how much she was being paid to make the film. When she told him her salary was $2,000 he said, "What would you say if I told you you'd earned your whole salary this morning and don't have to act anymore?" She was stunned, and began to realize that what he wanted from her was her own free-wheeling spontaneity, not something studied and prepared.

According to legend, Hawks then asked Lombard what she would do if someone in real life said something awful about her, offering her an inflammatory example of such scandalous talk. Lombard's response: "Why, I'd kick him where it hurts the most!" "Well, Barrymore said that about you," Hawks replied. "So why don't you kick him?" They returned to the set and Lombard and Barrymore began to play the scene, with Hawks training three cameras on them. She took a hard kick at him, and as he continued in his lines she sat down but continued kicking. Barrymore stalked out in character to end the scene but quickly came back in to say, "That was magnificent! Have you been kidding me?"

Sound man Edward Bernds later confirmed that Lombard grasped Hawks' intent right away and "was great from the first day." Once she had let loose there was no stopping her, and she went on to become the "screwball bombshell" of 1930s comedy - sexy and beautiful and uniquely spirited. For the rest of her career, before beginning work on a film, Lombard would always send a wire to Hawks saying, "I'm going to kick him!"

As filming progressed, Barrymore grew ever more appreciative of Lombard's quicksilver talent, and the two became good friends. He was very supportive of her work and, at the end of filming, gave her an autographed photo that read, "To the finest actress I have worked with, bar none." Barrymore's career was going into decline as Lombard's was rising; Twentieth Century was his final big star vehicle in films, and the last movie in which she was relegated to costar billing. In the fall of 1937, after Lombard had become one of filmdom's leading players, with salary and clout to match, she would demand that Paramount hire Barrymore for a supporting role in her film True Confession, and that he be given third billing behind her and Fred MacMurray.

Howard Hawks had signed a three-picture deal with MGM in 1933 and claimed that he made Twentieth Century at Columbia while on a "paid vacation" from the other studio. "I got Barrymore and Lombard and made the picture in three weeks' time," Hawks boasted to an interviewer. In truth, however, shooting continued through another week due to the director's habit of drilling his cast in their lines and demanding retakes to get the rapid-fire delivery he wanted. Twentieth Century was the first film in which Hawks pushed this technique to its limit - and a prime example of its effect, though it certainly can be seen in his later comedies.

This was something new in the handling of a movie's dialogue, and Hawks acknowledged that it created "a completely high-pressure picture. It isn't done with cutting or anything. It's done by deliberately writing dialogue like real conversation... It's just a trick. It's also a trick getting people to do it - it takes two or three days to get them accustomed to it, and then they're off... You have to hear just the essential things. You have to tell the sound man what lines he must hear and he must let you know if he does. This also allows you to do throwaways - it keeps an actor from hitting a line too hard and it sounds much funnier." Hawks sometimes found that, in throwing themselves into this technique, his actors spoke so quickly that even he couldn't understand what they were saying!

Hawks allowed Barrymore and Lombard to improvise freely during filming. "When people are as good as those two, the idea of just sticking to lines is rather ridiculous," he told Peter Bogdanovich in an interview. "Because if Barrymore gets going, and he had the ability to do it, I'd just say, 'Go do it.' And Lombard would answer him; she was such a character, just marvelous." Hawks then told a story about Lombard coming to him one day to complain about studio head Harry Cohn making passes at her. Between them, director and star worked out a plan to embarrass their boss. Hawks was in Cohn's office, having a serious discussion with him, when Lombard burst in to exclaim, "I've decided to say yes!" As Cohn watched in shock, she made as if to begin removing her clothes. Hawks said self-righteously, "I'd better get out of here if this is the kind of studio you run." A shaken Cohn asked Lombard to leave, and she never had any further problems with him.

Hawks said later that he lost one day of shooting because of Barrymore's drinking - but the actor volunteered to work two days for free to make up for his delinquency. He was generally a model of cooperation, taking direction well while also making suggestions of his own about adding to the comedy of the film. He devised the Kentucky Colonel disguise Jaffe uses to sneak aboard the train, and invented comic bits of business involving the nose putty he used.

There were some problems with the censors during the filming of Twentieth Century, with industry watchdogs made nervous about religious angles in the film's humor. Joseph Breen, who ran the Hays Office, predicted "serious difficulty in inducing an anti-Semitic public to accept a [motion picture] play produced by an industry believed to be Jewish in which the Passion Play is used for comedy purposes." One line from this sequence was removed at Breen's request, and the Office also requested that it be made "less clear" exactly where Oscar jabs Lily with a pin during one of their skirmishes.

Twentieth Century was given its premiere in New York City on May 3, 1934, and went into general release on May 11. Although critical evaluation was generally positive, Variety's prediction that the film was "probably too smart for general consumption" proved all too true. Box office at Radio City Music Hall was so lackluster that the film lasted only one week there, and business was slow throughout the country, although it did build with time. "The public wasn't ready for seeing two stars act like comedians the way those two did," Hawks acknowledged. Even so, Lombard so impressed those in the industry with her work that the movie turned her into a top comedienne and major star.

By Roger Fristoe