He wasn’t a good student, didn’t like to read and never went to college. Yet, by the time Preston Sturges (1898-1959) was in his 40s he had changed the course of Hollywood history and was hailed as a genius. Between 1940 to ’44 he was responsible for an incredible streak of hit films populated with zany characters, witty dialogue and a subversive sense of humor – along with a big dose of American energy. “Pep,” they used to call it.
And so on this holiday created to give thanks, I for one, am eternally grateful for Preston Sturges and his films.
Sturges, for whom luck and optimism were religion, came to screenwriting via the stage. At age 29, a product of an unstable, bohemian upbringing (his mother Mary ‘D’Este’ was a friend and cohort of the dancer, Isadora Duncan), he had no career, no job, no money and was convalescing from an emergency appendectomy. Bored, he came across a copy of A Study of the Drama by Brander Matthews and began to read. Inspired, he wrote a play, Strictly Dishonorable, which became a Broadway hit. This lead to an offer from Hollywood, which led to a highly successful screenwriting career throughout the 1930s. But Sturges didn’t like how little creative control the screenwriter had. He saw that the director was king on the set. “I want to be a ‘Prince of the Blood,’ and that’s what a director is,” he told his friends.
“The most incredible thing about my career is that I had one.”
~ Preston Sturges
So in 1939, at the age of 40, he changed the course of Hollywood history by striking a deal with Paramount Studios to be hired as both writer and director, two distinct positions at the time. He did so by offering his original screenplay, The Great McGinty, for just $1.00 with the stipulation that he could also direct (the actual amount was later changed to $10 for legal reasons). Friends and suits alike told him he was crazy. It had never been done before and he didn’t know what he was doing.
But he did.
Preston Sturges was the very first person to ever see his name proceeded by the words: WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY. Others, such as Billy Wilder, John Houston and Joseph Mankiewicz would soon follow in his footsteps. But, not before Sturges had the supreme satisfaction of seeing his movie, The Great McGinty, become a box office smash. It even went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay – and it was a comedy! Comedies were as rare then as they are now to be recognized for excellence by the Academy.
In the next four years Sturges wrote six more original comedies and directed all of them to box office and critical success. The industry, both suits and creatives alike, those who loved him and those who hated him, acknowledged he was a genius. But he was a genius with a temper and a temperament. Burnout had to be factor given how hard he was working. But, regardless, he rubbed the suits at Paramount the wrong way one too many times. In 1944, after one particularly explosive argument with Paramount executive Buddy DeSylva, Sturges was, shockingly, fired – despite being at the top of his game!
He tried to find a home with other studios but word had spread about how difficult he could be. When Sturges was able to find something, which was sporadic at best over the next 15 years, he could never match the successes of his earlier work. Like many other directors, actors and screenwriters of those earlier years, he found himself out-of-step with the sensibilities of the post-war public. Sadly, Preston Sturges died at the age of 60 of a fatal heart attack while staying at the Algonquin Hotel. In a final wink to his audience, he passed away while writing his autobiography, which he was calling: The Events Leading Up to My Death.
It was as if he had created his own perfect exit.
So this Thanksgiving, after you’ve eaten more than you should, treat yourself to any one of his films that I’ve listed below. Personally, I think The Lady Eve (1941) is the most appropriate selection for the day. One of the greatest of the era’s screwball comedies, it has Barbara Stanwyck playing Jean Harrington. She’s one of a trio of card sharks targeting ‘a mug,’ Charles ‘Hopsy’ Pike played by Henry Fonda, a naive, bookish, heir to a brewery fortune. But, when Jean and Hopsy unexpectedly fall in love, all bets are off for a conventional story or logical ending. And any film that has Stanwyck seething at an icy simmer for the ‘mug’ who’s done her wrong and deliciously dishes the line: “I need him like the axe needs the turkey,” well… it’s something we can all be thankful for!
MORE CLASSIC STURGES LINES
“If it wasn’t for graft, you’d get a very low type of people in politics.” – The Great McGinty (1940)
“Who wants to live cheaply? Everything that means happiness costs money.” – Christmas in July (1940)
“Let us be crooked but never common.” – The Lady Eve (1941)
“I say it with some embarrassment. I want to make a comedy.” – Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
“Nothing is permanent in this world, except Roosevelt.” – The Palm Beach Story (1942)
“One of the tragedies of this life is that the men who are most in need of beating up are always enormous.” – The Palm Beach Story (1942)
“Well, that’s the war for you. It’s always hard on women. Either they take your men away and never send them back at all; or they send them back unexpectedly just to embarrass you. No consideration at all.” – Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)
MY Personal Favorite Preston Sturges Films :
The Great McGinty (1940)
The Lady Eve (1941)
Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)
and…
American Masters (1990) Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer.
This documentary is hard to find but it’s included as a bonus feature in the Criterion Collection edition of Sullivan’s Travels released in 2001
RECOMMENDED READING:
Books About Sturges:
Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges; His Life in His Words by Preston Sturges, adapted and edited by Sandy Sturges, 1990
Christmas in July; The Life and Art of Preston Sturges by Diane Jacobs, 1992
Sturges’s Favorite Book: Two Lifetimes in One: How Never To Be Tired: How To Have Energy To Burn by Marie Beyond Rey, 1938
NOT LOST IN TRANSLATION
Sturges’ love of language extended to the colorful slang of his day. Here are some examples of that slang you’ll hear in his films:
beazle – a beautiful woman
get the dope on – get inside information
frail – a woman
no soap – no way
gink – a foolish or contemptible person
mug – a gullible guy; a man’s face; a hoodlum
piker – a gambler who only makes small bets
mickey – a knockout drug ‘slipped’ into a drink for the purpose of stealing from someone
take a powder – get lost; leave quickly
McGinty – a grift or grifter
go peel an eel – go jerk off
Interesting…
It’s common knowledge that under the Hollywood Production Code during the mid-1930s, 40s and 50s adult conversation and situations couldn’t be shown on the big screen. Unless, of course, you were Preston Sturges. Then you could get away with anything!
This scene is like something you’d see in a film or TV show today vs the 1940s. In an era when the word ‘sex’ was never uttered, it’s sure bandied about a lot in this clip from Sullivan’s Travels (1941).
ONE MORE INTERESTING THING…
You may already be aware that the Coen Brothers used O Brother, Where Art Thou? as the title of their movie made in 2000. That’s the name of the ‘serious’ movie that Hollywood Director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) wants to make in Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels. But, did you also know that a Disney cartoon, “Playful Pluto,” is featured in a pivotal scene near the end of Sullivan’s Travels?
When MGM requested Mickey Mouse for a dance scene with Gene Kelly in the musical, Anchors Aweigh (1945), Disney said, ‘No soap.’ But, when Preston Sturges asked the Disney Studios for a loan out, just a few years earlier, they had said ‘Yes.’ Disney agreeing to be part of a risqué movie? Seems unlikely that that would’ve been Walt’s perspective. More likely, Walt Disney agreed with what Sturges was trying to say in Sullivan’s Travels. After all, Uncle Walt did love to laugh.
