From the Source

Asked which Hollywood screwball comedies influenced or inspired The Marriage of Miss Hollywood and King Neptune or that he just liked, Robert Schenkkan listed the following:

His Girl Friday (1940) D: Howard Hawks; screenplay by Charles Lederer, from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's The Front Page; with Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant

It Happened One Night (1934) D: Frank Capra; scr: by Robert Riskin; with Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable

The Lady Eve (1941) D, scr: Preston Sturges; with Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda.

Holiday (1938) D: George Cukor; scr: Donald Ogden Stewart, Sidney Buchman, from Philip Barry's play; with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant

Bringing Up Baby* (1938) D: Howard Hawks; scr: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde; with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant

* Schenkkan's very favorite

Asked what films he used to give his actors a sense of the style of old Hollywood, director Lucien Douglas mentioned the following: For physical comedy:

Bringing Up Baby (1938) and Charlie Chaplin's comedies – e.g., The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), all directed by, written by, and starring Chaplin.

For character types and for John Barrymore, who serves as inspiration for Schenkkan's "Whip" McCord character: Dinner at Eight (1936) D: George Cukor; scr: Frances Marion, Herman Mankiewicz, from George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber's play; with John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, Jean Harlow.

For romance as portrayed in silent film and how the silents "were all about faces": Flesh and the Devil (1926) D: Clarence Brown; with Greta Garbo, John Gilbert.

For an example of a Western of the silent era of the type that "Whip" McCord stars in: The Toll Gate (1920) D: Lambert Hillyer; with William S. Hart, Anna Q. Nilsson.