After spending nearly ten years writing for film makers, Preston Sturges, finally in 1940, achieved his goal of film directing. This resulted in the decade of 1940 through 1949 of eleven films some of which have come down as Classic's in the areas of dialogue and humor primarily based on dialogue but engaging visual incidents that add to a films hilarity quotient. It is a terrific collection of movies and one that led to adoption of similar writing and directing techniques still in use by directors, particularly those in humor. In this piece I will review evaluate ten Sturges films as typical of his best work. Only eight of the films will be from the 40's. I have decided to include two films that Sturges wrote dialogue for and which were products of the previous decade. Both of these film when I saw them were indicative of Sturgis's work just by listening to the dialogue of the actors playing roles in the films. The films will be discussed in order of their release dates. It might be worth noting that there is a lot of boyishness in Sturges pictures. By that I mean, two elements that are found in many of his pictures, are train trips and parades. These to me represent the preferences of young men, those still not in their teen years. I suspect their is some prejudice on my part since both miniature trains, and parades were a really likable part of my own youth.
THE FILMS
1. Thirty Day Princes (1934) This film was one of the items in a ten film DVD package of Cary Grant films. I had marked them as a package to consider buying, but my daughter surprised me by making it a Christmas gift. It included some of Grant's best films and also a couple that were not too impressive. Thirty Day Princess was an unknown product to me and started off rather interestingly with Edward Arnold and Henry Stephenson occupying adjacent tubs of a mud bath. From there we learn that Arnold is Richard Gresham a big time American banker from New York, that Stephenson is the King of one of those Ruritanian type countries that were usually placed in the Balkans, and that his daughter is the lovely Zizzi played by Sylvia Sidney. The rest of the film involves guaranteeing a loan to the King by Gresham's bank which will use Zizzi as the bait to get U.S. approval. The switch in this scenario is that Zizzi catches the Mumps when she arrives via ocean liner to the U.S. and Gresham is forced to find a substitute. The latter turns out to be a currently out of work small time actress who is called on to play the princess for 30 days. You can find a parallel to Barbara Stanwyck's apparent dual roles in the Lady Eve. Grant's role is pretty incidental in that he is a New York newspaper publisher who thinks the loan is a fraud, but unfortunately he also meets and falls in love with the Princess, actually Lane in Sidney's dual role. It takes just a short time to appreciate that this film bears the handprint of Sturgis's clever writing. Sidney is excellent and plays both of her roles very convincingly.
2. If I Were A King - 1938 I saw this film initially on TV a few years back, and again I didn't realize that this was also a Sturges effort. It's a period piece which is different from most of Sturges's work. The Beautiful Blond from Bashful Bend is the only other one I can think of, and it was set in the Wild West of about 125 years ago. If I Were a King is set in France in the middle to late 15th century and stars Ronald Colman as Francois Vallon. Much of the film has historical accuracy, or at least is based on events of the time. Vallon was indeed a poet of renown in France, but also he was a criminal, a thief and was also a noted murderer. He vanished from Paris after being banned because of some of his escapades when he was just 34, and was never heard from again. The film which is based on a historical novel develops the imaginary premise of his meeting with King Louis XI, Basis Rathbone, in a really out of character portrayal from him. The dialogue between Louis and Vallon is typical work by Sturges. Colman is his usual warm voiced self. Rathbone received a supporting actor nomination for his performance as Louis.
3. The Great McGinty -1940 This was Sturges's first effort under his own direction. Supposedly he offered the script to the studio for one dollar if they would allow him to direct it. How fortunate the studio agreed with this arrangement. I loved this film when I first saw it as a 13 year old in 1940. McGinty, Dan McGinty is played by Brian Donlevy. He is a down and outer in what I assumed was Chicago. He happens into an old time saloon where you could get a free lunch cold cuts, mustard, and bread for sandwiches. While there he is approached by a man who asks him if he would like to make a couple of bucks. This results in an introduction to the operations of a low level boss who pays men to show up at the poll and vote under someone else's name. McGinty likes this so well that he proceeds back and continues to pick up vouchers so that in the end he votes 21 times and earns $42.00. With that as a starting point it is the beginning of a career that eventually leads to his being elected governor, and after corruption is discovered he is forced to flee the city. Akim Tamiroff plays the corrupt boss. In what is the funniest scene to me, McGinty hauls off and socks Tamiroff and knocks him down. The latter surrounded by his henchmen gets up, mad, and finally says with humor this bum thinks he's me. This picture also has one of Sturges's parades and includes a train.
4. The Lady Eve This, in my book, is the greatest Sturges comedy of them all. As I mentioned earlier it involves Barbara Stanwyck playing two roles, card shark Jean Harrington, and fabulously wealthy English woman, Lady Eve Sidwich. Her opposite member in this love affair, which can only be cautiously called a love affair, is Charles "Hopsie" Pike, heir to the great Pikes' Ale fortune. There are so many humorous incidents in this film that it would take several pages to note just some of them. I will mention something typical of Sturges inventiveness. The Pikes Brewery is located in Connecticut and it's slogan is "Pikes Pale, the ale that won for Yale." There is no parade in the film but a wonderful sequence on board a train where Popsie learns the truth or rather some falsehoods from his bride Lady Eve. This culminates with his leaving the train in his pajama's and landing in a muddy pool or water. There are a couple of seduction scenes which are real classics in themselves, with the card shark Jean getting Hopsie all steamed up. This has to be seen to really appreciate both the acting and the dialog. The close is also terrific with Fonda apologizing for something while talking to Stanwyck in her cabin. He tells her he shouldn't be here, She asks why, and he responds since he's married. Her response, "But so am I, so am I."
5. Sullivan's Travels - 1941 Sturges followed up The Lady Eve with this film about the movie business. It features many of the standard supporting players used by Sturges in his previous films. These include William Demarest, and such lesser knowns as Franklin Pangborn playing way out of character and the similarly used Porter Hall. The stars are Joel McCrea playing Hollywood Director John L. "Sully" Sullivan who previously directed such light material as "So Long Sarong," and "Hey Hey in the Hayloft." Sullivan is scheduled to direct "Ants in Your Pants in 1939," and frankly refuses. He wants to do a film on poverty in the U.S. titled "Oh Brother, Where Art Though." Yes, the same film that the Coen Brothers produced in 2000. Sullivan starts his investigation of poverty and after an initial pitfall starts out a second time with "The Girl," Veronica Lake in her second film. On this occasion he loses his shoes from a thief while riding on a freight train. The latter is killed in a fall from the train and Sullivan is picked up as a vagrant, put in a southern chain gang where he is eventually rescued after being assumed to have been deceased. The film is far too involved to describe all the humor. It's really one that has to be seen to be believed.
6. Palm Beach Story - 1942 Sturges takes on a train ride again, this time from New York's Grand Central station to Miami. He followed up his successful production of the previous year with Joel McCrea again playing the lead role as inventor Tom Jeffers also known as Capt. McGlew. Jeffers has invented a new airport concept where an airfield is built right over the top of a city. Besides this ridiculous concept we have Jeffers being sued for divorce by his wife Geraldine "Gerry" Jeffers. On the trip south Jeffers is accompanied by some of the familiar Sturges supporting players including Jack Norton and William Demarest who are a couple of the members of the "Ale and Quail Club" who are traveling on the same train. Eventually Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor a wealthy brother and sister get involved in the story. Ultimately, there is a wedding scene that really defies description.
7. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek - 1944 This is the story of a young lady who gets drunk at a dance for service personnel, is accidentally knocked out and discovers in a few weeks that she is pregnant. The person who did the deed is apparently named RatzkySkatzky, but that's all she knows. The young lady known in the film as Trudy Kockenlocker is played very humorously by Betty Hutton. Trudy has a boy friend, Norval Jones, Eddie Bracken in his usual befuddled style. She also has kind of a smart aleck younger sister, Diana Lynn, and a father played by Sturges's most often used supporting player, William Demarest. To add to the improbability is a bit with Akim Tamiroff and Bryan Donlevy playing McGinty and the Boss from the "Great McGinty" film Add it all together it proves confusing, but the film is delightfully funny and well worth viewing. Perhaps it should be reminded that films depicting a fallen woman were never presented with such logical sympathy for Trudy's condition in those years.
8. Hail the Conquering Hero - 1944 Sturges returned to Eddie Bracken in this hilarious story about a 4F in World War II remade into a hero by a small group of marines led by William Demarest. Bracken's role name is a mouthful in itself, Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith. Several of Sturges's other supporting players are in this including Jack Norton, for a change not playing a drunk, but rather as a brass band conductor. Franklin Pangborn runs and schedules the parade for Truesmith when the latter arrives by train with his new found Marine buddies. The female lead Libby is played by the largely forgotten Ella Raines. Per usual there is a lot of Sturges's usual clever dialogue.
9. Unfaithfully Yours - 1948 Some consider this to be Sturges's last great film. Rex Harrison plays famed conductor Sir Alfred De Carter. He is a man thoroughly impressed with himself but also very jealous of any attention shown to his beautiful wife, Daphne, a very different role for Linda Darnell. He suspects her of infidelity as revealed to him by Rudy Vallee in the role of August Heshler, his brother-in-law and has hired a private detective, Edgar Kennedy in one of his right on performances, to spy on Daphne to try to catch her in an infidelity. He thinks he has and the main core of the film rests in Harrison imagining how he is going to take care of the matter while conducting three classical works for orchestra. Finally trying to put his plan into action results in a whole series of screw ups. The film was not as popular as it could have been. At the time, though married, Harrison was having an affair with Carole Landis, who committed suicide about the time the film was released. This resulted in some negative publicity for Harrison and affected the film at the box office.
10. The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend - 1949 Betty Grable is the beautiful Blond Winifred Jones a dancehall girl back in the 19th century. Her boy friend is gambler, Blackie Jobero, played by Cesar Romero. Rudy Vallee in his third Sturges picture plays a wealthy mine owner. Finally, Olga San Juan is the final member of the cast leads. She is kind of an assistant to Jones but later in the film changes herself into Conchita, an Indian girl complete with faux Indian outfit including a pigtail and a feather in her hair. She is very funny. Porter Hall, one of the Sturges regulars plays a judge in the film and unfortunately for him is shot in the fanny by Jones forcing her to get out of town. This provides an opportunity for a Sturges train scene this time in a vintage layout. The two girls arrive in Bashful Bend where they are mistaken for the new school teacher and her assistant due to arrive about the same time. The film is not great Sturges work but includes some funny lines and features one of the greatest outlaw shoot-outs of all time. Thousands of shots are fired but no one is hit from either side. There are of course several other Sturges films, but these are the ones I enjoyed the most. Sturges seemed to lose his touch after this film and his productivity decidedly declined. In sum though he provided more laughs per capita than any other writer or director in Hollywood during those years, he seemed to burn out early.
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