Fueled by the wit of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the ace timing of Howard Hawks, and no-holds-barred performances by John Barrymore and Carole Lombard (the Thirties' funniest comedienne), Twentieth Century heads faster than a speeding locomotive for screwball city. On a train from Chicago to New York, typically tyrannical Broadway producer Oscar Jaffe (Barrymore) discovers in the next compartment none other than actress Lilly Garland (Lombard), née Mildred Plotke, his one-time discovery and wife who left him after he bore her four flops. He connives to lure her back, enduring all the while a parade of characters both known - Walter Connolly and Roscoe Karns, as his theatrical sidekicks - and unknown: Etienne Giradot as a Twentieth Century religious fanatic plastering the train with Jesus stickers. Not to mention Lilly herself, supposedly en route to normality from the frenzy of theater life, but who meets Jaffe's challenge farce for farce, and then some. (JB)