Preston Sturges: Master of Comical Mayhem

Critic James Agee called him “the most gifted American working in film.” A 1940s Vogue article claimed that his name was more familiar to moviegoers than Lubitsch or Hitchcock. Yet today, everyone knows Hitchcock but far fewer remember the man who, in only four years, wrote and directed seven of Hollywood’s most sparkling and original comedies: Preston Sturges. His genius lit up Hollywood like a shooting star in the night sky and burned out almost as quickly.

He was born Edmund Preston Biden in 1898, becoming Sturges after his stepfather, a Chicago stockbroker, adopted him. His mother, Mary, took little Preston with her to Europe where she knew many artists and celebrities, or dropped him off at a series of fancy boarding schools—an upbringing that, along with his 1930 marriage to General Foods heiress Eleanor Hutton, familiarized him with the millionaires, foreigners, and eccentrics who would later populate his films. (Eleanor grew up in her family’s 126-room Palm Beach mansion, Mar-a-Lago, which would eventually be purchased by Donald Trump.)

After a stint in the Army, Sturges tried a number of jobs before settling on playwriting. He had one hit play on Broadway, but the ones that followed flopped. He was discouraged and going broke.

When a Hollywood offer came in 1932, Sturges was ready to leave New York.

Film director Preston Sturges. Public Domain

Hollywood Calls

The movie business lured him—as it did F. Scott Fitzgerald, Nathanael West, Dorothy Parker, and many other East Coast writers—with the promise of a steady, Depression-proof paycheck.

Producer Jesse Lasky called Sturges’s first screenplay “the most perfect script I’d ever seen” and shot it without changing a word. “The Power and the Glory” (1933) tells the life story of a powerful tycoon (Spencer Tracy) with voice-over narration and nonchronological flashbacks. Sound familiar? In the 1970s, critic Pauline Kael popularized the idea that “Citizen Kane” owed much to the earlier film, but Orson Welles said in a late interview that he never even saw it. However “Kane” co-writer Herman Mankiewicz was a friend of Sturges, so it may have been an influence after all.

A publicity shot of Spencer Tracy and Colleen Moore for "The Power and the Glory," Preston Sturges's first screenplay. MovieStillsDB

During the 1930s, 10 of Sturges’s scripts were filmed and he worked on many others. His favorite themes emerged: success, luck, high society, and fascinating women with minds of their own. Politically, Sturges leaned conservative, but he kept political preaching out of his scripts, except when he made fun of it.

Irked at what directors did with his screenplays, Sturges became the first Hollywood writer to become a director himself, paving the way for John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Joseph Mankiewicz to make the same leap. He did it by selling a script to Paramount for $10 on the condition that he would direct it. “The Great McGinty,” a satire about a nobody who becomes a mayor, then a governor by accident, was a hit and won an Oscar. Its cast was the beginning of what became known as the Sturges stock company—actors like the pugnacious William Demarest, whom he would use in film after film.

Golden Movies

So began Sturges’s golden years. Between 1940 and 1944, he created seven startlingly inventive comedies in a row. In the superb “The Lady Eve” (1941) a card sharp (Barbara Stanwyck) cons the naive heir to a brewery fortune (Henry Fonda). Falling in love with him, she resolves to go straight. But when Fonda’s character learns about her past and breaks off the romance, she takes revenge by posing as a British aristocrat, marrying him, and raking him over the coals on their honeymoon. The ploy works but she soon regrets it, drops the deception, and all ends happily.

Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in "The Lady Eve" (1941). Public Domain

Sturges always claimed that he hated high culture since his mother had dragged him through every museum and concert hall in Europe. But his early years and lifelong reading gave him a knowledge of history, literature, and music that distinguishes his dialog as much as his love of American idioms and slang. He wore his literacy lightly and would follow the most sophisticated repartee with ridiculous pratfalls. This way, he pleased viewers who enjoyed witty dialog as well as those who preferred slapstick.

Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea in “Sullivan's Travels” (1941). Public Domain

Then came “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941). A rich Hollywood director of silly comedies (Joel McCrea) poses as a hobo to learn about poverty so he can make a serious, socially conscious film. A young actress (Veronica Lake) accompanies him as he gets into more trouble than he anticipated, realizing finally that comedy may have more value than pretentious, preachy films that win Oscars. The movie daringly mixes genres: satire, melodrama, gritty realism, and farce.

The stars of “The Palm Beach Story” (1942), (L–R) Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Claudette Colbert, and Rudy Vallée. Public Domain

In “The Palm Beach Story” (1942), my favorite Sturges film, a beautiful young woman (Claudette Colbert) races to Florida to find a millionaire who will underwrite her inventor husband’s latest brainchild. When her husband (McCrea again) follows her, she passes him off as her brother and both become mixed up with a wealthy oddball (Rudy Vallée) and his man-hungry sister (Mary Astor). In between a mystifying prologue and epilogue involving identical twins, the film has more laughs per square inch than any screwball comedy this side of “Bringing Up Baby.”

The miracle of “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” (1944) is that Sturges got his crazy story past the censors. A girl (Betty Hutton) passes out at a wild party, marries a departing serviceman in her stupor, and the next morning can’t remember his name. Farcical complications mount until she gives birth to sextuplets, becomes a national heroine, and ends up with a pure-hearted nebbish who’s loved her since childhood. The premise is cheeky but, as The New York Times noted, the film is “so innocently amusing, so full of candor, that no one could take offense.”

Sturges directed six more movies of declining quality and died in 1959, working on his autobiography. McCrea’s final speech in “Sullivan’s Travels” tells us what the director learned, and what we continue to learn from his marvelous films:

“There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”