The Awful Truth (1937) is one of the classic, definitive screwball comedies of the thirties from Columbia Pictures, joining company with other classics including Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey (1936), George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story (1940), and Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941). Producer/director Leo McCarey's stylish light comedy is a witty battlefield of marital misadventures, mismatches and snappy dialogue, with physical scenes of slapstick, spontaneous and improvised acting, and hilarious romantic antagonism between its two stars - Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. They appear as a mistrusting couple who decide to separate and file for divorce, but then attempt to sabotage and ruin each other's new romances and affairs, and are ultimately reconciled to each other just before the divorce decree becomes final.

It was the first of the major stars' three films together - Grant and Dunne were reunited in the romantic screwball farce My Favorite Wife (1940) (also produced by Leo McCarey) and then in the classic tear-jerker Penny Serenade (1941). This film also starred an Airedale, Scottish fox terrier named Mr. Smith (known as Asta in The Thin Man (1934) series of films, and who was later to appear in Bringing Up Baby (1938)) to bank on the previous success of a husband-wife and dog combination.