City Dump 32 and 1011 Fifth: Class in My Man Godfrey's New York City

"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."

Apr 30, 2025

Hello friends! It is the final day of April and while I have been working on a new review for you all, it isn’t quite finished yet. I did want to share with everyone some writing this month so here’s a little treat for everyone. About a year ago exactly I wrote my final film paper in undergrad about My Man Godfrey (1936) for my Cinema and the City: NY and LA class. Here is that paper which I hope you enjoy! Note: This surpasses the email length limit so be sure to read on a browser or in the app!

The opening credits of Gregory La Cava’s 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey are an art deco delight, signs of the film’s stars and technicians and and other people who worked to create the film blink on and off over a view of the East River. The camera pans to the right over the different signs and as the music reaches its conclusion and sobers from a brassy, dancing tune to something much more somber, we are shown a Hooverville located at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge. The juxtaposition between the glitzy art deco credits and the trash pile is not the only visual statement made by the film in its opening two minutes. The audience is quickly introduced to “Duke,” a bearded, decrepit-looking forgotten man living in the Hooverville, played by none other than “sophisticate of the parlor, bedroom and bath” William Powell, known for his pencil-thin mustache, a shocking departure from his normal look.1 These two immediate contrasts in the opening of My Man Godfrey highlight the way class is depicted in the film, particularly as it relates to Great Depression-era New York City. In comedy and imagery, My Man Godfrey creates a complex, often muddled view of class distinctions in a New York City environment by drawing attention to the excessiveness and lack thereof in two locations within the film, the Hooverville and Park and 5th Avenue.

Two juxtaposing images from the opening credits of My Man Godfrey (1936).

William Powell plays Godfrey “Smith,” a forgotten man living in a Hooverville in the city dump. He is spotted by Cornelia Bullock (Gail Patrick) of the wealthy Bullock family and asked to be one of the items in her high society scavenger hunt. In defiance, Godfrey pushes Cornelia into a pile of ashes and ends up going to the scavenger hunt with Cornelia’s sister, Irene (Carole Lombard), so the two can beat her. Irene ends up asking Godfrey to be the family’s new butler and does a surprisingly good job as he is not fired immediately. Godfrey soon learns about the chaotic mess that are the Bullocks, or in particular, the Bullock women. Despite being introduced as a forgotten man, the audience learns that Godfrey “Smith” is actually Godfrey Parke, one of the upper crust Boston Parkes. With money he earns from the market, he is able to turn the city dump into The Dump, a fancy nightclub that employs the forgotten men who once lived there. And as the film is a romantic comedy, the film ends with Godfrey dragged into marrying Irene, whom he learns he has feelings for. Both Powell and Lombard were some of the most beloved actors of the 1930s and had been briefly married several years earlier, with Powell insisting that Lombard be cast as the film’s lead.2 The Universal film itself was nominated for six Academy Awards, the first film to be nominated in all four acting categories, but did not win any awards, nor was it nominated for Best Film (it was, however, nominated for Directing and Screenwriting).3 Needless to say, the film did not slip by during a time when films were constantly churned out by studios in Hollywood, making its social message notable.

Graham Cassano in his book A New Kind of Public: Community, Solidarity, and Political Economy in New Deal Cinema, 1935-1948 makes the argument that in the beginning of the film, Godfrey is objectified, “controlled and manipulated” by feminine power through Irene, and is thus “gendered as a woman,” relating to a “crisis of masculinity” during the Great Depression through male unemployment and increased financial freedom for women.4 Godfrey is very clearly objectified as one of the “objects” Irene must show for the scavenger hunt. She explains the scavenger hunt to Godfrey as a game in which “you try to find something nobody wants.” “Like a forgotten man,” Godfrey replies, to which Irene agrees, explaining that all the money left over goes to charity, but there never is any money left. She quite literally calls Godfrey an object as she decides that she does not “want to play any more games with human beings as objects; it’s kind of sordid when you think of it.” Godfrey then decides to help Irene beat Cornelia in the scavenger hunt and go with her to the Waldorf-Ritz Hotel. Despite Cassano’s claim that Godfrey is controlled by the women, Godfrey’s decision to go with Irene is on his own accord as she does not ask him to go, at least not directly. When Cornelia tries to get Godfrey to go with her, he is the furthest thing from being feminized as he backs Cornelia into a pile of ashes, causing her to ask for assistance from a male figure. It is worth noting that Godfrey never actually touches Cornelia, despite her claiming otherwise as she shouts, “Don’t you touch me!” Even throughout the rest of the film, Godfrey never submits to the Bullock women, actively standing against their infatuation with him, not falling for Cornelia’s tricks or Irene’s love bombing. I argue against Cassano’s statement because the reality of the scene (and the film), with Godfrey as a clearly masculine figure, adds to the complicated politics the film is in conversation with. Godfrey is not the feminized forgotten man that Cassano describes (although there are moments where he takes on female tasks such as dishwashing), just as Godfrey is also not the forgotten man he pretends to be. He is not necessarily forgotten, as Sarah Resnick points out, but “merely opted out.”5 He has given away all of his money and belongings to a former lover, as he later explains. New York City, and this location that juxtaposes a prime spot (referenced as Sutton Place) with the piles of trash (referenced as City Dump 32), provides “relative anonymity” that allows Godfrey to become a forgotten man as he “class-passes downward.”6

Irene tells Godfrey about what a scavenger hunt is. Then Godfrey decides to go with Irene as her forgotten man in the scavenger hunt. The two now occupy opposite sides of the screen with smoke in between them.

Class disparities in Great Depression-era New York City are also represented visually in the opening scenes of the film where Godfrey is depicted as a derelict rather than as a butler in livery. Irene references Godfrey living in the shantytown “when there’s so many other nice places.” Trash can be seen in the background as Godfrey and Irene look at each other, Godfrey on the left of the image with whiskers and a wrinkled shirt and Irene on the right in a shimmering sequined gown. They occupy not only opposite sides of the screen but opposite ways of living. However, as the scene continues, Irene standing up and getting ready to leave the Hooverville with Godfrey following her, the two occupy the opposite sides of the screen, with smoke from burning trash creating a barrier between them. By swapping positions, the film hints at a lack of actual division between the two characters in terms of their status as Godfrey and Irene are both able to occupy the same space. The added element of the smoke implies a haziness to any supposed boundary they may have, as Godfrey never truly acts like someone impoverished, using “big words” and rarely acting “improperly.”

Mrs. Bullock and her goat, one of the items needed for the scavenger hunt and Irene and Godfrey, one of the items needed for the scavenger hunt.

The one time Godfrey acts seemingly “improperly” is in the following scene at the Waldorf-Ritz Hotel as he does not fit in with the people there. The hotel, although unclear where it exactly is located, can be inferred to be on Park Avenue. Although the dump is depicted as messy, considering the heaping piles of trash, the hotel is a much more chaotic scene, with characters commenting that it resembles an “insane asylum” and that all you need for an asylum are “an empty room and the right kind of people,” implying the scavenger hunters are the “right kind of people.” Mrs. Bullock (Alice Brady) is the first hunter seen clearly, dragging in a goat (and kid) alongside her. The imagery is parallel to Irene holding Godfrey’s hand next to her as they later enter the hotel; Godfrey, with his beard, is no different from a bearded goat in the eyes of the wealthy people of Park Avenue. Mrs. Bullock becomes just one of dozens of people clamoring and shouting around the judge (Franklin Pangborn) of the scavenger hunt, trying to hand him their items, the loudness of the scene reaching the point where her voice is hardly distinguishable. The extras in the scene (“over 300 and extras in dress clothes”) and immense amount of things (“so much junk that you wonder where even the property department managed to collect it”) speak to the surplus had by the wealthy that contrasts with the emptiness of the dump.7 Godfrey becomes one of these items shoved in front of the judge, the comparison to the goat furthered more as Godfrey is placed in the background of the shot with the goat in the foreground, passing behind the goat to get on the stand where he will be examined. Anna Siomopoulos astutely notes that as Godfrey gets on the platform like a slave to be sold, “the forgotten man is placed on a continuum with other non-citizens of U.S. history subjected to the violence of sovereign power, a comparison that continues throughout the film, as Godfrey is repeatedly mistaken for an American Indian by Mrs. Bullock.”8 It is here where Godfrey, as he is being questioned, gives his address as “City Dump 32. East River. Sutton Place.” When asked if that is his permanent address, Godfrey replies, “Well, the permanency is rather questionable, see, the place is being rapidly filled in.” This description, when contrasted with the excessiveness of the scavenger hunt and the judge’s lack of awareness (he then asks to feel Godfrey’s whiskers to make sure they are real), comments on how New York City encompasses two opposite societies: a poor yet civilized society and a wealthy yet uncivilized one. Christopher Beach claims that this one scene “captures better than any other in Depression-era comedy both the insane gap between rich and poor and the utter lack of social consciousness displayed by the wealthy few.”9

Godfrey, standing behind the goat before taking the stand, is placed in the same if not a lesser position than the animal he is consistently compared to.

Throughout the film, references are made to Hoover’s “prosperity is just around the corner” while at the city dump, lending itself to a critique of government policy in regards to how to handle the forgotten men of the Great Depression. When talking to his old friend from when he was one of the Boston Parkes Tommy Gray (Alan Mowbray) as he shows him his packing case, Godfrey says the men at the dump do not necessarily live at the dump so much as “go through the motions,” with Tommy hardly believing him. The city dump trucks are taking over the Hooverville, filling it in with trash, to the point where one of the forgotten men quips, “We oughta be in the river by early spring.” Godfrey also points out the physical inequalities of the layout of the city: “Over here, we have some very fashionable apartment houses. Over there is a very swanky nightclub. While down here, men starve for want of a job.” This is all in response to Tommy saying that this has been the way of living for some people for a long time and that they are not Godfrey’s responsibility. Whose responsibility, then, are they? Despite knowing that the men “have no choice” and “the only difference between a derelict and a man is a job,” Godfrey, who has placed himself in the same position as these men (at least one of them used to be very wealthy), has been able to get himself out of this situation through his job and his connections with the Bullock family. He then uses this to help the forgotten men, giving them beans. The film seems unsure of whose responsibility this is, and in particular this scene, as it comments on government interference or lack thereof as well as the responsibility of the wealthy to help the poor, which becomes even more noticeable by the end of the film. However, this scene, in which the dump can be seen in the daylight, despite its confusing message, highlights the disparities based on location in New York City, with the wealthy living on top of the poor but also having no awareness of them.

The city dump in the daylight as Godfrey takes Tommy to see where Godfrey Parke died and Godfrey Smith was born.

The end of the film is perhaps the film’s most complex and divisive moment, with one reviewer calling it, “a preposterous attempt to derive social significance from the nonsensical narrative.”10 Godfrey has used the pearls that Cornelia tried to frame him for stealing to invest in the stock market, helping to earn money for the Bullock family, money to get the pearls back, and to help turn what was once the city dump into a new, “swanky” nightclub called The Dump. Through his intelligence and work ethic, Godfrey has managed to become wealthy once again, in one way, turning himself into one of the “respectable poor” who got a job rather than be “lazy.” However, the film, in the same breath, wants the viewer to understand the importance of the rich helping the poor through the characters of Godfrey and Tommy, who helps to fund the club as well. Audiences, likewise, could get the best of both worlds by “explor[ing] what it might be like to be spoiled and rich while they simultaneously enjoyed laughing at and scorning the ridiculed upper classes.”11 The question remains as to how the audience is meant to understand the character of Godfrey’s class status: is he an example of New York City as a land of learning and opportunity or does he represent the duty the wealthy have to the poor that live in their city? The film seems to posit that Godfrey can do both, as the film “placed its faith with the good-natured rich” and “by clearing out the ‘messiness’ of a Manhattan landfill and giving them honest work, [Godfrey] guides the hobos toward success and capitalism.”12

Using the money he won in the stock market, and with the help of Tommy, Godfrey turns the city dump into The Dump, a swanky nightclub.

The film continues its complicated relationship with class, however, through what is essentially “gentrification” as Godfrey cleans up the poor area of the city and creates The Dump where “the rich walk through the doors” and “the poor hold them open.”13 The men, in fact, do not even seem to have housing yet, just jobs, as Godfrey later discusses building apartments with steam heat to house the forgotten men in the winter (who knows where they will go during the summer?). Two forgotten men who originally chided the government seem excited that the mayor and other famous elite guests are at the club. Siomopoulos notes that this actually reflects New Deal era relief programs that “retrench[] social and economic hierarchies” in which “the homeless men hav[e] traded unemployment for exploitation” while the dump has been “colonized by the New York elite.”14 Although most likely not a conscious act on the part of the writers of the film, the complicated depiction of class in New York City becomes notable itself as a reality of how class works within the city: it is in fact a blurry map that places the poor at the foot of the rich while also attempting to tackle mobility on both ends of the class spectrum.

In his review of My Man Godfrey, Graham Greene calls the “social conscience” of the film “a little confused.”15 As I have explored throughout this essay, through the juxtaposed images and descriptions of New York City and its wealthy dwellers, the film comments on the inequality of the city while also highlighting the blurriness and fluidity of class in the social world during a time of economic crisis for everyone. The film may not know exactly what it wants to say, but what it does say, and what it tells us about New York City in general in the 1930s, is worthy of examination. My Man Godfrey, with all its contradictions and confusions regarding how it wants to represent class, is a very accessible film with copies available to watch on YouTube to Archive.org to the Criterion Collection. When it comes to older films, accessibility remains a large issue and the accessibility of a smart, though sometimes confused, film like My Man Godfrey should be taken advantage of during our present moment as we reflect on the past.

City Dump 32 and 1011 Fifth: Class in My Man Godfrey's New York City

"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."

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