Bookish Sturges wrote plays before moving to Hollywood
One dollar. That’s all the man asked for; that’s all he got. But it was his negotiated payment for the right to be the first person ever to do the job. At that point, nobody coveted the occupation. Soon it became the prized position among Hollywood creative types: the writer who also gets to direct the motion picture.
Preston Sturges sold his script for a buck on condition that he would direct it himself. “The Great McGinty” was the result, and that first film written by its director went on to establish Sturges as the force of Screwball Comedy. In nine years (1940-48), Sturges wrote and directed nine of the most articulated and ridiculously funny movies ever screened – before or since. They’re listed below, with links for your convenience. You may note that these films are still funny seventy-five years after they were made.
Nobody wrote like Preston Sturges. Nobody had the convolution of mind for it. Imagine a stage-frightened Robin Williams living and working in Hollywood after The Depression (not his personal one) and World War II, but being unable to act … he could muster the courage only to write. We might consider Robin’s an equivalent mind to that of Preston Sturges!
The bombast in his mind showed up in his working method: Sturges spoke his scripts during his heyday in Hollywood. He was too busy to actually sit down and “write” them up on paper. So he dictated them to a scribe who’d follow him around his house, trying to keep up. On his feet, Sturges “wrote” his scripts in his spare time. At night.
During the day, he was at the studio telling people what to do while turning his scripts into finished film out the gate and onto screens across America. His was the prime decade of The Film Industry as manufacturing facilities with lots of creative types working on the grounds. Like many early Hollywood writers, Sturges was originally a Broadway playwright who moved West.
“He was a kind of a late bloomer as a director. He’d been writing of course for years.” said Peter Bogdanovich, a director himself. Sturges’ success in the director’s chair allowed Hollywood to open up to others who could master the roles of writing and directing a studio picture – Billy Wilder, Joseph Mankiewicz, Samuel Fuller among the most prominent.
Bogdanovich points out: “The most noticeable hallmark of the Sturges style is his often very literate dialogue and on top of it you’ve got these very physical humor – slapstick, ya know!”
YouTube’s auto-generated “video discovery channel” dedicated to Sturges elaborates that point: “Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature and ahead of its time despite the farcical situations. It is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene. A tender love scene between Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in ‘The Lady Eve’ was enlivened by a horse, which repeatedly poked its nose into Fonda's head.”
Sturges’ screenwriting can be examined by scanning his films for their main character and plot points along with key lines of dialog, as we did for Mike Leigh’s films. As you look at these individual Sturges films, note tendencies of the works to see how they have withstood the passage of time.
Preston Sturges Films: the Short Reviews
“Some people is too lazy to vote, that’s all. They don’t like this kinda weather. Some of them is sick in bed and can’t vote! Maybe a couple of ‘em croaked recently. That ain’t no reason why Mayor Tillinghast should be cheated outta their support!”
Tough Chicago bum Dan McGinty (Brian Donlevy) is “big bull” who knows “you can’t get away from arithmetic.” So why not vote thirty-seven times for Mayor Wilfred T. Tillinghast (Arthur Hoyt)? Although he makes the rules, The Boss (Akim Tamiroff) likes McGinty’s street grit. “Fill him full of soup, and right away he don’t trust nobody!” Thus, McGinty joins The Boss’ protection racket. “You need somebody to cooperate all those guys and protect you from human greed.”
Then there’s Catherine McGinty (Muriel Angelus) who doesn’t want “to get married either” -- the perfect candidate for Mrs. Mayor! “Yesterday you was a hobo on a breadline. Today you got a thousand berries and a new suit. I wonder where you’ll be tomorrow.” Sturges’ debut as writer-director fumes through banana republic barroom brawl, soup kitchen, Bathhouse Jake, The Purity League and “one crazy minute”. (See “Christmas in July”) “They’re always talkin’ about graft, but they forget. If it wasn’t for graft, you’d get a very low type of people in politics. Men without ambition. Jellyfish!” (USA)
Original trailer (1:44):
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/203311/Great-McGinty-The-Original-Trailer-.html
“If it wasn't for graft ... ” scene (3:22)
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/490883/Great-McGinty-The-Movie-Clip-If-It-Wasn-t-For-Graft.html
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The-Bed-Of-The-Future in “Christmas in July”
Christmas in July (1940)
“Fine chance anybody’s got a winning anything with everybody going around yelling: ‘Coffee keeps you awake’.” With java-jingle jury deadlocked, Gotham coffee sales clerk Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell) believes he’s written prize-winning slogan in contest for his employer’s main competitor – Maxford House. “Word of mouth is all right, but only if you’ve got the right words.”
Dr. Maxford (Raymond Walburn) may not “know a slogan if you slipped on one”, so he awards hoaxed Jimmy $25,000 first prize check. “There comes a time in everybody’s life when he’s just got to get on top of a desk and let ‘er rip!”
So Jimmy immediately spends winnings on Mom, family, neighbors and his best gal, Betty Casey (Ellen Drew). “They didn’t give you wrists like that and hands like that to spoil ‘em in a washtub for some sap like me.” Sturges’ second feature blends Irish cop and chintzy clerks, day-for-night Davenola and black cat. “It isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk.” (USA)
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“Hopsie” Pike (Henry Fonda) as rare specimen: Sucker sapiens
The Lady Eve (1941)
“They say a moonlit deck is a woman’s business office.” While every skirt aboard S.S. Southern Queen ogles Charles Poncefort “Hopsie” Pike (Henry Fonda), the shy young bachelor buries himself behind cover of “Are Snakes Necessary?”. However, as most eligible heir to Pike’s Pale Ale fortune, Hopsie can’t avoid alluring scent of Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) who parlays hand mirror and gorgeous gams to trip him head-over-heels. “You see, Hopsie, you don’t know very much about girls. The best ones aren’t as good as you probably think they are. And the bad ones aren’t … nearly as bad.”
But Jean isn’t only viper coiled for Pike. Her “father” -- “Colonel” Patrick Henry Harrington (Charles Coburn) aka “Handsome Harry” -- knows a fine “specimen of the Sucker sapiens” when he spots one. “Let us be crooked, but never common.” As professional cardsharps, Harringtons also grasp “the tragedy of the rich: they don’t need anything.” Sensing high-seas piracy, bodyguard Muggsy Murgatroyd (William Demarest) saves Hopsie’s skin.
But sea serpents do molt as Lady Eve Sidwich (Stanwyck also) writhes with vengeance into Bridge Belt social scene as Pikes’ “Connect-I-cut” family mansion. Muggsy: “You trying to tell me this ain’t the same rib what was on the boat? She even wears the same perfume!” Hopsie: “They look too much alike to be the same.”
While stretching limits of Stanwyck and Fonda, two Hollywood leads unaccustomed to comic turns, Sturges crafts elegantly erotic, truly seductive screwball masterpiece. “Men are more careful in choosing a tailor than they are in choosing a wife.” “That’s probably why they look so funny.” Lady Eve’s confessions of past indiscretions on honeymoon tunneled train is cinema montage marvel. “I need him like the ax needs the turkey!” (USA)
Peter Bogdanovich’s great analysis of the film (8:10)
Full feature (1:33:48)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22xsc6
Film with Doc Walker’s commentary:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTB1SpTpKJdzy0TMmpr57mG32SMEg7q-i
* * *
Hollywood director John L. Sullivan is tired of his fluff
Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
“Look: I’m trying to find trouble but I won’t find it with six acts of Vaudeville on my tail. At least not the kind I’m looking for.”Intrepid Hollywood director, John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) has grown tired of making light amusements full of “laughter and music and legs”. Instead, he wants to film “the greatest tragedy ever made” – “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” -- his somber tale of realism honoring Depression America which will “put Shakespeare back with the shipping news”.
But diverting him from his quest are studio publicity machine and relentless female pursuers. Wannabe starlet (Veronica Lake) thinks she knows “fifty times as much about trouble as you ever will”. Widow Zeffie Kornhauser (Esther Howard) wants Sullivan to succeed her husband because “men must work and women must weep, or however it goes.” And his gold-digger wife, “The Panther Woman” (Jan Buckingham), understands “you can’t get a divorce without collusion, and she won’t collude!”
Traveling by thumb, go-cart, rail and land-yacht, Sullivan cannot truly elude anyone on his voyage. “I don’t suffer and starve because I like it, you know.” Real trouble finally finds him when he starts handing out $1,000 in five-dollar-bills to any vagrant on the street.
Sturges “8½” drops out of comedy into dark neo-realistic portrait of poverty, homelessness, “troublous times” and the very nature of laughter itself. (see “Unfaithfully Yours”). “Don’t you think with the world in its present condition, with death snarling at you from every street corner, that people are a little allergic of comedies?” Certainly not Preston Sturges. (USA)
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The Palm Beach Story (1942)
“Sentiment and business don’t belong in the same bed. After all, Grandfather loathed oil, you know; it made his eyes water. But that didn’t stop him from making millions out of it.” Park Avenue couple finds lien times on Easy Street when wife Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Colbert) realizes she can’t afford the lifestyle to which she has not yet become accustomed.
Although her luckless inventor husband Tom (Joel McCrea) believes “everybody’s a flop until he’s a success”, he can’t muster $99,000 for his “suspended” wire-mesh airport “stretched like a tennis racquet” high above city streets. Their bills will stay unpaid, despite impetuous cash infusion of $700 from The Wienie King (Robert Dudley). “Lay off of ‘em, you’ll live longer.” Gerry knows their options are limited, since she “can’t cook or sew or whip up a little dress out of last year’s window curtains”. So she bolts for Florida divorce court on Atlantic Coast Line – with no suitcase, no cash and only merciful spirits of Ale and Quail Club.
Much to her good fortune, Gerry retreats in Pullman to trod on pince-nez of richest man on earth, John D. “Snoodles” Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee). “I write things down, but I never add them up.” He buys her breakfast and packs her off yachting to Palm Beach palace of thrice-divorced, twice-annulled sister Maude, aka Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor), most available woman on earth.
Sturges’ sing-along melodies of Isn’t-It-Romantic and Good-Night-Sweetheart can’t free Gerry’s stuck dress latches (see “The Lady Eve”). “Chivalry is not only dead, it’s decomposed!” Silly Shakespearean double-whammy faux-Feydeau ending illuminates strange beginning: Tom and Gerry are not only not alone, they’re sudden clones! “You have no idea what a long-legged gal can do without doing anything!” (USA)
Silly trailer (2:15): https://archive.org/details/ThePalmBeachStoryTrailer
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Trudy Kockenlocker has hands full in Morgan’s Creek
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)
“Our homes full of lonely young women are surrounded by camps full of lonely young men. This is war!” After night-long “victory lemonade” party with Our Boys headed overseas next morning to WWII, music-store clerk Trudy Kockenlocker (terrific Betty Hutton) asks Musical Question: “Can you imagine getting hitched up in the middle of the night with a curtain ring to somebody that’s going away that you might never see again?”
No news is not good news for oldest daughter of small-town constable Edmund Kockenlocker (William Demarest) who has “a mind like a swamp”. And Trudy’s sister Emmy (Diana Lynn) just wonders “whether I was gonna be an aunt or an uncle.” But opportunity knocks when bank teller and Trudy’s childhood sweetheart Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) stumbles into rash proposal. “He’s perfect. He could do all the housework!”
Excused from active duty due to The Spots, Norval must stay home from War but still finds trouble. “So he gets charged with abduction, imitating a soldier, repairing the morals of a minor, resisting arrest, perjury … he’ll be lucky if he gets life! Then when your little surprise package happens, he’ll probably get some more.” Sturges’ surreal, conniption-fit of family wartime sentiment has probably the funniest proposal and marriage scenes ever filmed (see “Hail the Conquering Hero” and “The Great McGinty”). “Some kinda fun last longer than others, if you get what I mean.” (USA)
Full feature (98 minutes): https://youtu.be/F7lBnBPu3F0
* * *
Marines drink with Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith
Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
“They say opportunity’s only got one hair on its head and you gotta … dog it down or you mightn’t get another chance.” Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) was born at moment his Dad, Marine war hero Hinky Dinky Truesmith, died in battle of Belleau Wood. Now slumped at end of long bar in San Francisco’s foggy Dogwatch Cafe & Cabaret, civilian Woodrow drinks alone while waiters sing “Home to the Arms of Mother”.
Woeful young Truesmith knows he’s no hero. Back home in “the little white house at the end of Oak Street, Woodrow’s Ma (Georgia Caine) believes her son is still at war, unaware the Marines have discharged him for “chronic hay fever”. Rushing to his rescue are six furloughed Marines led by Sgt. Julius Heffelfinger (William Demarest). “A Marine never hides in the Gents Room. That’s what Semper Fidelis means. It means face the music.”
So Sarge and the boys haul Woodrow home to Oakridge which erupts with “parades, statues, burning mortgages”. Sensing doom in Truesmith homecoming is Hon. Everett J. Nobel (Raymond Walburn), eternal mayor and owner of Noble Chair Co. (“Seats of all descriptions”). “In a few years, if this war goes on, heaven forbid, you won’t be able to swing a cat without knocking down a couple of heroes.”
Standing fast amid civic chaos is Truesmith’s sweetheart Libby (Ella Raines). “How can you despise anybody you love, even if you're engaged to another man?” Sturges’ astounding All-American small-town farce ran counter to prevailing World War II ballyhoo of the day (see “Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”). “Politics is a very peculiar thing, Woodrow. If they want you, they want you. They don’t need reasons any more, they find their own reasons. It’s just like when a girl wants a man.” (USA)
“Home To The Arms of Mother” scene (3:26) https://youtu.be/nKRWF1emmO0
The “Who’s Counting” scene (2:02): https://youtu.be/NKXDCuuPzSU
* * *
Harold Diddlebock in slow-moving slapstick
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)
“Certainly the last thing I ever expected was to have an alcoholic refreshment named after me.” Tee-totaling football hero Diddlebock (Harold Lloyd) single-handedly may beat Union State, but he can’t find promotion as ad-biz bookkeeper, although he believes “success is just around the corner.”
Advertising magnate E.J. Waggleberry (Raymond Walburn) knows “I may not look just like him, but I am Opportunity.” Opportunity knocks Diddlebock aside not once but seven times as he confesses his adoration of Miss Otis (Frances Ramsden), yet another “Miss America” from the same womb. “I know, she told me.”
Sent to streets with life savings of $2,946.12, Diddlebock unfortunately runs into bartender Jake who cuts his losses. “The Professor” (Edgar “Slow-Burn” Kennedy) knows “the artist does not weigh his clay,” and “the cocktail should approach us on tip-toe.” Streetwise Wormy (Jimmy Conlin) knows a Sucker sapiens when he sees one, too. “When Ringling Brothers don’t like something, they really don’t like it.” Sturges’ swan-song for Silent genius Lloyd relies on Jackie the Lion, Demon Rum, Texas Tornado and “a foolproof plan” only to collapse into a soggy mess after one great opening promise. “Prosperity is just around the corner.” (USA)
Full film (89 minutes): https://archive.org/details/harolddiddlebock
* * *
Rex Harrison lathers up as The Jealous Husband
Unfaithfully Yours (1948)
“For me, there’s nobody handles Handel like you handle Handel!” Transatlantic classical conductor and inanely jealous hothead Sir Alfred de Cartier (Rex Harrison) believes his young trophy wife Lady Daphne (Linda Darnell) renders them world-class couple in public eye. “You see, some women just naturally make you think of brut champagne. With others you think of prune juice.”
But dissonance squawks when Sir Alfred suggest brother-in-law August Henshler (Rudy Vallee) “keep an eye on” his bride. “You dare to inform me you had vulgar footpads in snap-brim fedoras sleuthing my beautiful wife?!?” August’s private eye forces Sir Alfred to doubt both Lady Daphne and his handsome young private secretary Tony (Kurt Kreuger).
While leading orchestra, Sir Alfred’s thoughts sketch dark Hitchcock shades in dazzling daydream movements of Rossini, Wagner and Tchaikovsky. “What did you have in your head? What visions of eternity … to bring music like that, from that bunch of cat-scratchers!?!”
While Sir Alfred’s imagination chases razors, six-figure checks and Russian Roulette -- in reality he merely faces dull blades, splattered ink and one empty pistol. “Maybe I shouldn’t be saying it, but if it was me, I’d never have ‘em tailed. I’d never try to find out nothin’. I’d just be grateful for whatever they was willing to give me: A year. A week. An hour.” Sturges’ silly somber ballad marks dark turning point for classic screwball era. “There is one very reassuring thing about airplanes. They always come down.” (USA)
* * *
Furthermore:
Sturges clips on the auto-generated “video discovery” bot on You Tube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIe1v0QKGVkUBSzHwaQqJuA/featured
https://www.criterion.com/people/6876-preston-sturges
http://dvd.netflix.com/RoleDisplay/Preston_Sturges/20014639?lnkce=mdp-director
https://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1303-Summer-2013/DVD-Classics-Preston-Sturges.aspx
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/person/186418%7C126069/Preston-Sturges/
http://www.vulture.com/2015/01/film-nerd-bill-hader-on-preston-sturges.html
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDreviews26/preston_sturges_the_filmmaker_collection.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Preston-Sturges-His-Life-Words/dp/0671747274
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/sturges.html
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