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Like farce, screwball comedies often involve mistaken identities or other circumstances in which a character or characters try to keep some important fact a secret.

Sometimes screwball comedies feature male characters cross-dressing, further contributing to the misunderstandings ( Bringing Up Baby, I Was a Male War Bride, Some Like It Hot ).

They also involve a central romantic story, usually in which the couple seem mismatched and even hostile to each other at first, but eventually overcome their differences in an amusing or entertaining way that leads to romance.

Often this mismatch comes about because the man is much further down the economic scale than the woman ( Bringing Up Baby, Holiday ).

The final romantic union is often planned by the woman from the outset, while the man doesn ’ t know at all.

In Bringing Up Baby we find a rare statement on that, when the leading woman says, once speaking to someone other than her future husband: " He's the man I ’ m going to marry, he doesn ’ t know it, but I am.