Preston Sturges ranks as one of the American cinema's most gifted and talented screenwriters and directors. His writings featured astringent dialogue that was both cosmopolitan and jargonistic. Sturges also excelled in staging scenes with razor-sharp wit but was willing to include broad slapstick. As Terrence Rafferty put it, "he was one of the true wild men of movie comedy, a legitimate successor to the improvisatory gagmen of the silent era. ..."
Born on August 29, 1898, Edmund Preston Biden spent his early childhood shuttling between his native Chicago (where his adoptive father, Solomon Sturges, lived) and Europe. His iconoclastic mother, born Mary Dempsey but known as Mary Desti, would bring her son with her as she journeyed throughout the Continent with dancer Isadora Duncan. At her urging, Sturges would dress in a Greek tunic while attending school in Chicago. After she separated from her second husband, Desti enrolled her son in series of boarding schools in France, Germany and Switzerland. Having such a colorful figure as a mother affected him and how he viewed women and he clearly inherited her originality. As he was once quoted, "My mother was in no sense a liar, nor even intentionally unacquainted with the truth . . . as she knew it. She was, however, endowed with such a rich and powerful imagination that anything she had said three times, she believed fervently. Often, twice was enough." Sturges himself went on to demonstrate his own brand of inventiveness and often modeled characters in his scripts on both Solomon Sturges and Mary Desti.
By 1914, the teenaged Sturges was working at Maison Desti, his mother's cosmetics shop in Deauville, France. Sent back to America when World War I erupted, the youngster briefly worked back stage for one of Duncan's New York engagements and then assumed responsibilities for the New York branch of Maison Desti. When the USA joined the war, Sturges served in the US Army Signal Corps, although he never saw action. Following his discharge, he returned to the cosmetics business. An amateur inventor, Sturges developed a "kiss-proof" lipstick but he had to relinquish management of the business to his mother when she returned home.
After the failure of his first marriage and the break-up of a relationship with an actress who told him their relationship was merely fodder for her art, Sturges turned to playwriting, basing his first effort on his last romantic relationship. "The Guinea Pig" was produced at the Provincetown (MA) Playhouse and then transferred to Broadway in January 1929 where it ran for some 16 weeks. Although a modest success, it paled in comparison with his second play "Strictly Dishonorable" (1929) which proved to be a smash despite the stock market crash. His next three stage efforts, however, proved disappointing failures and took a financial toll as Sturges invested his own money in them. By then, he had made inroads in the motion picture business. In 1929, Paramount Pictures tapped him to write dialogue for the film version of two plays, one of which "The Big Pond" (1930), possesses traces of what would become Sturges' hallmarks: a love-triangle, a sense of fate, a character of a business tycoon and the use of puns and misunderstandings. Universal put him under contract to pen an adaptation of "The Invisible Man" in 1932. Changing the setting to Central Europe, he fashioned a highly-praised screenplay, but director James Whale wanted to remain more faithful to H G Wells and brought in another writer forcing Universal to drop the writer's option. Sturges subsequently sold to Fox (in a then-groundbreaking move of a mixture of cash and a percentage of the gross profit) an original screenplay based on stories told to him by his second wife about her grandfather, C W Post. "The Power and the Glory" (1933), directed by William K Howard, was the tale of a railroad tycoon (Spencer Tracy) told in a non-linear fashion dubbed "narratage". Sturges used flashbacks with narration in the film which was critically well-received but not a box-office success. Interestingly, "The Power and the Glory" has been seen as a precursor of what most feel is the greatest American film ever made, Orson Welles' 1941 masterpiece "Citizen Kane".
Having been allowed on the set during shooting, Sturges noted the treatment of the director by the studio, cast and crew. Coming from the theater where the writer was the most important figure, he was reluctant to give up that power. After finishing out the 1930s as a screenwriter, penning such interesting efforts as the biopic "Diamond Jim" (1935), the screwball comedy "Easy Living" (1937) and the period drama "If I Were King" (1938), he struck a deal with Paramount to direct an early original script of his, "The Great McGinty".
Sturges became one of the first writer-directors in the studio system, paving the way for John Huston and the multitudes that have followed. Much of his reputation rests on the eight films he made in the period between 1940 and 1944. Targeting a system that he felt stressed material success and moral hypocrisy, Sturges lobbed his comedic grenades by inverting the standards of popular romantic comedies, including mistaken identities, the fickleness of fate and the repetition of events. "The Great McGinty" (1940) satirized the American political system by showing how a disreputable type could rise to become mayor and then governor, only to be brought down by his truth-telling wife. The film, which brought Sturges an Oscar for its screenplay, made his reputation as a comedic director. He also began associations with several actors (e.g., William Demarest, Harry Rosenthal, Robert Warwick) who went on to form an unofficial "stock company", appearing in several of his films. Also in 1940, the studio released "Christmas in July", which skewered big business, advertising and the conspicuous consumer. "The Lady Eve" (1941) is perhaps Sturges' best picture, a complex romantic comedy about a bumbling snake hunter (Henry Fonda) who becomes the prey of a cool, sexy con artist (Barbara Stanwyck). Fonda and Stanwyck enjoy a shipboard romance but he rejects her when he learns of her unsavory past. In order to win her man, Stanwyck reinvents herself as a British noblewoman. In one of the most memorable set pieces in films, Stanwyck takes a moment on their honeymoon to regale her new husband with a list of every love affair she has ever had. As the scene progresses and Fonda's jealousy increases, Sturges skillfully employs the soundtrack as a counterpoint: the train enters tunnels with its wheels clacking and whistle blowing, a storm develops and the score swells. Marvelously acted, "The Lady Eve" was a hit for Paramount and boosted the stock of all involved.
Paramount gave Sturges free rein with his next films. "Sullivan's Travels" (1941) is perhaps his most personal, focusing on a comedy film director (Joel McCrea) who wants to make more meaningful motion pictures. Determined to experience poverty first-hand, he sets off as a hobo with an aspiring actress (Veronica Lake) in tow. For a comic piece, this film has a dark undertone but the ultimate moral is that people don't want to be reminded of their situations, they want escapism. As Sullivan says near the end of the picture, "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh." In 1942, Sturges wrote and directed "The Palm Beach Story", a satire of business and greed about a woman (Claudette Colbert) who leaves her inventor husband (McCrea) for a millionaire (Rudy Vallee). When McCrea arrives in Florida, he is pursued by Vallee's sister (Mary Astor) with unpredictable results. The film owes much to the French farces that captivated a youthful Sturges.
After stumbling somewhat with "The Great Moment" (lensed in 1942; released in 1944), a somber biography of the inventor of anesthesia that employed some of the flashback techniques of "The Power and the Glory", Sturges hit his stride with two comedies set in small-town America: "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and "Hail the Conquering Hero" (both 1944). The former took on marriage, motherhood, religion, patriotism and politics as it focused on Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), the daughter of a local constable who finds herself pregnant after a rowdy evening and later gives birth to sextuplets. The latter satirizes the American need for hero worship as a reject from the Marines fakes war service and is welcomed home in triumph, only to be later unmasked. Sturges received two 1944 Academy Award nominations in the same category (Best Original Screenplay) for these films.
In retrospect, it seems foolish but Sturges terminated his contract with Paramount partly because he craved more independence, The studio relented, despite the fact his films were successful. Sturges then entered into an ill-advised partnership with Howard Hughes, forming the California Pictures Corporation. His first film under this new agreement was to be a comeback for silent screen star Harold Lloyd. "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock/Mad Wednesday" (1947) attempted to present Lloyd's character from 1925's "The Freshman" as a bookkeeper who loses his job and embarks on a series of adventures. A mixed bag, there are moments of brilliance (usually featuring Lloyd) but there are also dull spots. Even before the film was released, problems between Hughes and Sturges ensued. Max Ophuls had originally been hired to direct "Vendetta" but Hughes was displeased with his work and handed the film over to Sturges who in turn failed to make Hughes happy. Sturges was fired from "Vendetta" (which went through a string of directors with Mel Ferrer finally ending up with the credit in its 1950 release) and their partnership was dissolved. Hughes released "The Sin of Harold Diddlebock" briefly in 1947 but quickly withdrew it. A revised, recut version, now titled "Mad Wednesday" was released in 1950 but met with a mixed reception.
Daryl F Zanuck offered a haven to Sturges at 20th Century Fox and the writer-director responded with his last major film "Unfaithfully Yours" (1948), a black comedy about a famous conductor who suspects his wife of adultery. Sturges employed a technique of telling the same story in a multiple manner, using two fantasy sequences in which the conductor (Rex Harrison) plots revenge on his cheating wife before the same events unfold in reality, with the maestro contemplating murder. "Unfaithfully Yours" was not appreciated in its time but has since acquired a following. Hoping to fashion a hit for Fox, Sturges undertook the Western spoof "The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend" (1949), featuring Betty Grable as a saloon singer mistaken for a schoolmarm. His only film made in color, it was a box-office failure in its initial release and all but ended Sturges' Hollywood career.
Over the next decade, Sturges wrote several scripts that went unproduced, acted in "Paris Holiday" (1958) and made one last film, 1956's "The French They Are a Funny Race/Les Carnets du Major Thompson", a marital comedy about a stuffy British military officer and the repercussions of wedding to a Frenchwoman. Despite several abortive attempts, he was unable to get a film project made. In 1958, he was hired to direct the Broadway play "The Golden Fleece" but was fired when one of the producers announced he was taking over the show. Sturges had struck a deal with a publisher for his memoirs and settled into NYC's Algonquin Hotel to write but the project was left unfinished by his death on August 6, 1956 of a heart attack. His widow subsequently assembled the material and published the book under the title "Preston Sturges on Preston Sturges" in 1990. In 1998, MGM announced that it was polishing one of Sturges' unproduced screenplays, "Mr. Big and Littleville", with Michael Douglas attached as star.