September 10, 2019 (XXXIX: 3) : UNFAITHFULLY YOURS (1948, 105m) The version of this Goldenrod Handout sent out in our Monday mailing, and the one online, has hot links. Spelling and Style—use of italics, quotation marks or nothing at all for titles, e.g.—follows the form of the sources.

DIRECTOR Preston Sturges WRITER Preston Sturges PRODUCED BY Preston Sturges CINEMATOGRAPHY EDITING Robert Fritch, Stuart Gilmore

CAST ...Sir Alfred De Carter ...Daphne De Carter ...August Henshler Barbara Lawrence...Barbara Henshler Kurt Kreuger...Tony Windborn ...Hugo Standoff Edgar Kennedy...Detective Sweeney Al Bridge...House Detective (as Alan Bridge) ...O'Brien ...Dr. Schultz

PRESTON STURGES (b. August 29, 1898 in , —d. August 6, 1959 (age 60) in City, New York) was an American playwright, screenwriter (46 credits), and film director (14 credits). In 1941, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the about webs of social relationships,” a signature that is film The Great McGinty, his first of three nominations in “muted” in 1948’s Unfaithfully Yours, which he notes for the category. He was also nominated for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943) and delving into “a psychological subject with nightmare (1944). Prior to Sturges, other figures in Hollywood (such overtones: sexual jealousy, paranoiac daydreams, schemes as , D. W. Griffith, and ) had for domestic murder.” These are the other films he directed: Christmas in July (1940), (1941), directed films from their own scripts, however Sturges is Sullivan's Travels (1941), Safeguarding Military Information often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his (Documentary short) (1942), own scripts, at a time when those roles were separate. (1942), The Great Moment (1944), The Sin of Harold Writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly Diddlebock (1947), The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the (1949), Vendetta (1946 first version; fired by , uncredited) (1950), and The French, They Are a farcical situations, Sturges innovated the format of the 1930s. The novelist Jonathan Lethem notes Funny Race (1955). that Sturges was known for films that explore a “curiosity Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—2

VICTOR MILNER (b. December 15, 1893 in New York Royce (1964), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), Doctor City, New York—d. October 29, 1972 (age 78) in Los Dolittle (1967), A Time to Die (1982), and Anastasia: The Angeles, ) was an American cinematographer Mystery of Anna (TV Mini-Series) (1986). (136 credits). He was nominated for ten cinematography , winning once for 1934 Cleopatra. These are some other films he worked on: Hiawatha (Short) (1913), One Hour Before Dawn (1920), When We Were 21 (1921), The Love Letter (1923), The Red Lily (1924), You Never Know Women (1926), Blonde or Brunette (1927), Children of Divorce (1927), The Way of All Flesh (1927), Loves of an Actress (1928), The Wolf of Wall Street (1929), The Texan (1930), Monte Carlo (1930), I Take This Woman (1931), Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), All of Me (1934), Till We Meet Again (1936), The General Died at Dawn (1936), The Plainsman (1936), Artists & Models (1937), The Buccaneer (1938), LINDA DARNELL (b. October 16, 1923 in Dallas, Union Pacific (1939), What a Life (1939), North West —d. April 10, 1965 (age 41) in Glenview, Illinois) Mounted Police (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), The Monster was an American film actress (56 credits) who appeared and the Girl (1941), The Man Who Lost Himself (1941), films and television series, such as: Hotel for Women Reap the Wild Wind (1942), The Palm Beach Story (1942), (1939), Star Dust (1940), Brigham Young (1940), The The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), It's a Wonderful Mark of Zorro (1940), Chad Hanna (1940), Blood and Life (1946), You Were Meant for Me (1948), Unfaithfully Sand (1941), Rise and Shine (1941), The Loves of Edgar Yours (1948), The Furies (1950), (1951), Allan Poe (1942), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Buffalo Carrie (1952), and Jeopardy (1953). Bill (1944), The Great John L. (1945), Anna and the King of Siam (1946), My Darling Clementine (1946), Forever REX HARRISON (b. March 5, 1908 in Huyton, Amber (1947), The Walls of Jericho (1948), Unfaithfully Lancashire, England, UK [now Huyton, Knowsley, Yours (1948), A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Slattery's Merseyside, England, UK]—d. June 2, 1990 (age 82) in Hurricane (1949), Everybody Does It (1949), No Way Out , New York) was an English actor of stage (1950), Two Flags West (1950), The 13th Letter (1951), and screen. Harrison began his career on the stage in 1924. The Guy Who Came Back (1951), The Lady Pays Off He won his first Tony Award for his performance as Henry (1951), Blackbeard, the Pirate (1952), Angels of Darkness VIII in the play Anne of the Thousand Days in 1949. He (1954), This Is My Love (1954), It Happens in Roma won his second Tony for the role of Professor Henry (1955), Wagon Train (TV Series) (1958), Burke's Law (TV Higgins in the stage production of My Fair Lady in 1957. Series) (1964), and Black Spurs (1965). He reprised the role for the 1964 film version, which earned him both a Golden Globe Award and Academy RUDY VALLEE (b. July 28, 1901 in Island Pond, Award for Best Actor. He was also nominated for an Vermont—d. July 3, 1986 (age 84) in North Hollywood, Academy Award for his performance in Cleopatra (1963). California) was an American singer, film and television These are some other films he acted in: School for Scandal actor (58 credits), bandleader, and radio host. He was one (1930), Leave It to Blanche (1934), School for Husbands of the first modern pop stars to be what has become (1937), The Citadel (1938), Over the Moon (1939), known as a “teen idol.” He acted in films and television Continental Express (1939), Ten Days in (1940), series such as: Radio Rhythm (Short) (1929), Campus Night Train to Munich (1940), Major Barbara (1941), Sweethearts (Short) (1930), International House (1933), Blithe Spirit (1945), A Yank in (1945), Journey George White's Scandals (1934), Sweet Music (1935), Gold Together (1945), Notorious Gentleman (1945), Anna and Diggers in Paris (1938), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The the King of Siam (1946), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947), The Bachelor and the The Foxes of Harrow (1947), Escape (1948), Unfaithfully Bobby-Soxer (1947), I Remember Mama (1948), So This Is Yours (1948), The Long Dark Hall (1951), The Four Poster New York (1948), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), My Dear (1952), Main Street to Broadway (1953), King Richard and Secretary (1948), Mother Is a Freshman (1949), The the Crusaders (1954), Marriage a la Mode (1955), The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949), Gentlemen Reluctant Debutante (1958), Midnight Lace (1960), The Marry Brunettes (1955), The Night They Raided Minsky's Happy Thieves (1961), Cleopatra (1963), The Yellow Rolls- (1968), and Santa Barbara (TV Series) (1984). Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—3

Series) (1976-1977), and The Paper Chase (TV Series) BARBARA LAWRENCE (b. February 24, 1930 in (1978). Carnegie, Oklahoma—d. November 13, 2013 (age 83) in , California) was an American model and film LIONEL STANDER (b. January 11, 1908 in The Bronx, and television actress (46 credits). She played the role of New York City, New York—d. November 30, 1994 (age Gertie Cummings in the film version of Oklahoma!, in 86) in Los Angeles, California) was an American actor in which she gets into a famous screen fight with Gloria films and television (134 credits), as well as radio and Grahame ("Ado Annie"). Between 1958 and 1962, theater. Stander's acting career began in 1928, as Cop and Lawrence made four guest First Fairy in Him by poet E. E. appearances on Perry Mason. Cummings, at the Provincetown She also acted in films and Playhouse. He claimed that he got television series such as: the roles because one of them Diamond Horseshoe (1945), required shooting craps, which he Margie (1946), Captain from did well, and a friend in the Castile (1947), You Were company volunteered him. In Meant for Me (1948), Give My 1932, Stander landed his first Regards to Broadway (1948), credited film role in the Warner- The Street with No Name Vitaphone short feature In the (1948), Unfaithfully Yours Dough (1932). Strongly left- (1948), A Letter to Three Wives leaning and pro-labor, Stander (1949), Mother Is a Freshman espoused a variety of social and (1949), Thieves' Highway political causes and was a founding (1949), Peggy (1950), Here Come the Nelsons (1952), Jesse member of the Screen Actors Guild. Stander was among James vs. the Daltons (1954), Her Twelve Men (1954), Man the first group of Hollywood actors to be subpoenaed with the Gun (1955), Bonanza (TV Series) (1960), and The before the House Un-American Activities Committee Tall Man (TV Series) (1962). (HUAC) in 1940 for supposed Communist activities. Stander appeared in no films between 1944 and 1945. KURT KREUGER (b. July 23, 1916 in Michenberg, Then, with HUAC's attentions focused elsewhere due to —d. July 12, 2006 (age 89) in Los Angeles, World War II, he played in what some critics have California) was a Swiss-reared German film and television dismissed as mostly second-rate pictures from independent actor (59 credits). He attended the London School of studios through the late . These include Ben Hecht's Economics and enrolled in (New Specter of the Rose (1946); the Preston Sturges comedy The York City) to study medicine, but soon dropped out to Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) with ; and pursue a career in acting. Kreuger once was the third most Trouble Makers (1948) with The Bowery Boys. One classic requested male actor at 20th Century Fox. He starred emerged from this period of his career, the Preston Sturges with, among others, and Humphrey comedy Unfaithfully Yours (1948) with Rex Harrison. Bogart. He acted in films and television series such as: Finally, in May 1953, he testified at a HUAC hearing in Mystery Sea Raider (1940), The Deadly Game (1941), New York, where he made front-page headlines International Squadron (1941), A Yank in the R.A.F. nationwide by being uproariously uncooperative, (1941), The Purple V (1943), The Moon Is Down (1943), memorialized in the Eric Bentley play, Are You Now or Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Tonight We Raid Calais (1943), Have You Ever Been. headline was Edge of Darkness (1943), Action in the North Atlantic "Stander Lectures House Red Inquiry." In a dig at (1943), Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1943), Sahara bandleader Artie Shaw, who had tearfully claimed in a (1943), The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943), None Committee hearing that he had been "duped" by the Shall Escape (1944), The Hitler Gang (1944), Mademoiselle Communist Party, Stander testified, "I am not a dupe, or a Fifi (1944), (1945), Escape in the Desert dope, or a moe, or a schmoe...I was absolutely conscious of (1945), Paris Underground (1945), The Spider (1945), what I was doing, and I am not ashamed of anything I said Sentimental Journey (1946), The Dark Corner (1946), in public or private." An excerpt from that statement was Unfaithfully Yours (1948), Spy Hunt (1950), Fear (1954), engraved in stone for "The First Amendment Blacklist The Enemy Below (1957), Legion of the Doomed (1958), 12 Memorial" by Jenny Holzer at the University of Southern O'Clock High (TV Series) (1966), Wonder Woman (TV California. These are some of the films and television series he acted in: Where Men Are Men (Short) (1931), Pugs and Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—4

Kisses (Short) (1934), We're in the Money (1935), I Live My traveling salesman, and his wife, Mary Desti. After a year Life (1935), If You Could Only Cook (1935), The Milky of marriage Desti left her husband and went off with her Way (1936), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet Nero infant son to study music in Paris. There she met and Wolfe (1936), A Star Is Born (1937), The Last Gangster began her long friendship with the dancer . (1937), Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Guadalcanal Diary Short of money, she returned to Chicago, divorced Biden, (1943), (1946), In Old Sacramento and married Solomon Sturges, a wealthy broker who (1946), A Boy, a Girl and a Dog (1946), The Sin of Harold adopted her son in 1902. Diddlebock (1947), Call Northside 777 (1948), Texas, Preston Sturges idolized his stepfather, a Brooklyn & Heaven (1948), Wet Blanket Policy (Short) champion cyclist, amateur baseball player, and self-made (1948), Unfaithfully Yours (1948), Trouble Makers (1948), man who gave the boy what little stability and security his Wild and Woody! (Short) (1948), Two Gals and a Guy extraordinary childhood provided. Mary Desti, on the (1951), The Loved One (1965), Promise Her A Dandy in other hand, found her husband almost intolerably vulgar. Aspic (1968), Anything (1966), Beyond the Law (1968), For six months of every year, like some cosmopolitan Gates to Paradise (1968), Once Upon a Time in the West Persephone, she escaped from him and Chicago to Isadora (1968), It Takes a Thief (TV Series) (1969), Boot Hill and vie bohème in Paris. She took her son with her, (1969), Between Miracles (1971), The Gang That Couldn't dressing him in Greek tunics, enrolling him in Shoot Straight (1971), We Are All in Temporary Liberty experimental schools, and immersing him inShakespeare, (1971), Caliber 9 (1972), The Eroticist (1972), Pulp Molière, Greek drama, music, and museums. “They did (1972), Treasure Island (1972), Sting of the West (1972), everything they could to make me an artist. I wanted to be The Adventures of Pinocchio (TV Mini-Series) (1972), Pete, a good businessman like my father.” Pearl & the Pole (1973), Dirty Weekend (1973), The Black When Preston Sturges was eleven this hopeless Hand (1973), The Sensuous Sicilian (1973), Innocence and marriage came to an end. The boy was now installed all Desire (1974), Red Coat (1975), Who's Afraid of Zorro year round in French schools while his mother and Isadora (1975), The Black Bird (1975), Sex for Sale (1976), The toured Europe. In due course Mary Desti married Vely Cassandra Crossing (1976), New York, New York (1977), Bey, son of a Turkish court physician whose preparations Matilda (1978), Cyclone (1978), The Squeeze (1978), 1941 for the beautification of the harem they began to market (1979), Hart to Hart (TV Series) (1979-1984), The through a cosmetics company, Maison Desti, with Transformers: The Movie (1986), Moonlighting (TV Series) branches in France and New York. With the outbreak of (1986), Bellifreschi (1987), Wicked Stepmother (1989), World War I in 1914, Preston Sturges was shipped back to Cookie (1989), Joey Takes a Cab (1991), The Last Good the United States (by this time speaking English with a Time (1994), and Hart to Hart: Secrets of the Hart (TV French accent). His mother, traveling again with Isadora, Movie) (1995). had turned Maison Desti over to Vely, in whose hands it was foundering. Seeing a chance to prove himself a businessman, Sturges, still in his teens, took charge. Living in great poverty in New York, he worked day and night to solicit famous customers and to market the new products he himself developed (including a “kiss-proof” lipstick), soon putting the business on its feet again. But the stock market was the arena in which he really wanted to succeed, and while continuing to direct Maison Desti he took a job as a runner with a New York brokerage house at seven dollars a week. His plans were thwarted in 1917 by America’s entry into the war. Sturges, then nineteen, tried to enlist in the air service but was turned down because of a minor sight defect. His mother, aggrieved by this rejection, Preston Sturges from World Film Directors Volume One. returned from Europe and pulled strings until he was Ed. John Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson Company NY accepted. Having served out stateside what remained of the 1987 war, Sturges returned to Maison Desti. The business was Sturges, (Edmund) Preston (August 29, 1898-August 6, once more in trouble, however, and this time even Sturges’ 1959), American film director, scenarist, and dramatist, energy and ingenuity couldn’t save it. At this point he was born in Chicago, the son of Edmund Biden, a made the first of his four marriages, to an heiress named Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—5

Estelle de Wolfe Mudge. For a time he settled down in the railroad tycoon, Tom Garner, who wins power and wealth country and devoted himself to developing a variety of at the cost of emotional tragedy. The film employs an inventions, including a ticker tape machine and a small original and interesting technique that the studio dubbed automobile with the engine in the rear. Sturges remained “narratage,” the story being told in a complex, an amateur inventor all his life, but none of the devices he nonchronological series of flashbacks purporting to be the designed in the postwar years found a market and he seems recollections of a narrator whose voice, on occasion, is for a while to have lost all his energy and ambition. His synchronized to the characters we see speaking on the marriage broke up and in December 1927 he became screen. Directed by William K. Howard and moodily desperately ill with acute appendicitis. photographed by James Wong Howe, it provided a meaty Sturges survived, but this encounter with death part for and has been seen as a precursor, in changed him—seems, indeed, to have been a “rebirth” like some respects, of . those experienced by characters in several of his films. For After working on several scripts that were the moment he put aside his hopes of a business career and subsequently much revised by others, or abandoned, turned to the world that his mother had tried so hard to Sturges wrote The Good Fairy (Universal, 1935), adapted prepare him for, the theatre. from Molnar’s cynical His first play, The Guinea Pig comedy (and considerably (1929), made no great stir. He sentimentalized in the followed it with another process). Sturges was already comedy, written in two weeks, recognized as one of called Strictly Dishonorable Hollywood’s more civilized (1929). It was immediately and cosmopolitan writers, accepted and produced on and on that account was Broadway by Antoinette Perry often assigned to adapt with immense success. It foreign classics. His next concerns a naive American girl script, however, was an choosing between her stuffy original one and very much fiancé and a sophisticated European (and preferring the in the American grain, (Universal, 1935). latter). This hit, which brought Sturges instant celebrity, Another study of the rise and fall of a tycoon, it gave was followed by two failures: the marital drama Edward Arnold one of his richest and most sympathetic (1920) and the operetta The Well of Romance (1930), for roles. There is a good deal of Solomon Sturges in his which he wrote the lyrics as well as the dialogue. Sturges, stepson’s portrait of Diamond Jim Brady, as there is in all who often invested in his own productions, lost a good the self-made captains of industry he drew. deal of money on these, and to recoup, wrote his first Sturges contributed to several other movies during screenplays. the mid-thirties, though how much is not clear. He also and Fast and Loose , both filmed by wrote the comedy Easy Living (Paramount, Paramount in 1930, were play adaptations, and both 1937), adapted Marcel Pagnol’s “Marseilles Trilogy” as credited Sturges only as author of the dialogue. In fact, the (MGM, 1938), and followed it with contributions of the so-called scenarists seem to have been another adaptation called (Paramount, slight, and both films follow Sturges’ original scripts very 1938) derived from a play about François Villon. After closely. The Big Pond, for example, seems in retrospect a Never Say Die (Paramount 1939), a vehicle highly characteristic work in its love-triangle theme, its somewhat mauled by Hope’s regular gag writers, came shameless reliance on the intervention of fate, its another Leisen comedy, (Paramount, introduction of a tycoon character, and its delight in puns 1940), a celebration of small-town America. and verbal misunderstandings. Sturges’ own play, Strictly Ambitious as he was, Sturges had long been eager Dishonorable, was filmed at Universal in 1931 (the to direct the films he wrote, and had learned all he could adaptation being written by Gladys Lehmann) and Sturges by watching others. In 1940 he offered Paramount a then sold his 1932 play, Child of Manhattan, to Columbia promising script for ten dollars on condition that he direct for $40,000. After that, to quote his biographer James it himself. The studio agreed and the same year Sturges Ursini, he “moved to where the money and the creative went to work on The Great McGinty. He had a three-week opportunity lay—Hollywood.” shooting schedule and a budget of about $350,000. The Sturges’ first big success as a scenarist was The movie opens in a seedy Latin American bar, where the Power and the Glory (Fox, 1933), an original story about a bartender () begins the story of how he got Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—6 there. In 1920 he had been a bum in Chicago. Offered two Stanwyck who, exposed as a hustler, disguises herself as an dollars for his vote, he had ingeniously sold it thirty-seven English aristocrat to try again and eventually gets her times, thus earning the admiration of the local political sadder but wiser Adam: it is another example of the notion boss (Akim Tamaroff). Muscle and a talent for graft had of character rebirth which Sturges had used for the first taken McGinty rapidly up through the political ranks. He time in The Great McGinty. ... had become mayor and then Sullivan’s Travels (1941) governor, meanwhile acquiring a is Sturges’ most personal film. A wife and a fortune. comedy with dark undertones Unfortunately his wife had been about movie-making, about chronically honest and America and about Preston eventually she had infected Sturges, John L. Sullivan (Joel McGinty with the same disease. McCrea) is a successful Bucking the system, he had Hollywood comedy director wound up alongside his boss in who, inspired by conscience jail, whence they had escaped (and the example of filmmakers into exile. like Frank Capra) sells his As James Ursini writes, reluctant bosses on the idea of a the film shows Sturges’ socially “meaningful” movie— “budding visual sense” in scenes “a commentary on modern like one in which a suicide conditions...something that attempt is reflected in a dirty mirror that is shattered when would realize the potentialities of Film as the sociological the attempt is foiled, and in visual gags reminiscent of the and artistic medium that it is...with a little sex in it.”... silents. Sturges’ screenplay won an Oscar and the picture The film presents a remarkably honest and was a hit. In spite of its savage cynicism about American sometimes harrowing picture of poverty and injustice in politics and the American Dream, it established him at America, lightened though it is by witty lines, eccentric once as a comedy director of the first rank. In McGinty characterizations, and slapstick visual humor. Music (the Sturges used a number character actors for whom he had so-called Symphony) is effectively used in the written parts in earlier movies—men like William otherwise silent sequence where the principals experience Demarest, Harry Rosenthal, Frank C. Moran, Jimmy the routine degradations of poverty. called Conlin, and . Together with , the picture “a Swiftian glimpse of Hollywood and its , Edgar Kennedy, and one or two occasional flirtations with social conscience.” others, they became permanent members of Sturges’ “stock There are none of these uneasy undertones in the company,” appearing in film after film in the cameo parts “almost perfect comic masterpiece” that followed in 1942, he loved to write for them. Far more than employees, some The Palm Beach Story. An unremitting but lighthearted of them were among Sturges’ closest friends and favorite satire on ambition and greed, it has companions. reluctantly leaving her husband, an innocent and penniless Half a dozen of these old pros feature in Christmas inventor (Joel McCrea), and heading for Florida in search in July (Paramount, 1940), which stars as an of a man with money.... obsessive contest competitor who is tricked into believing Sturges was an inventor and he put several that he has won a fortune with a terrible coffee slogan. The examples of the breed into his movies—impractical ones unpredictable working of destiny is a recurrent theme in like the husband in The Palm Beach Story, or tragic like Sturges’ movies, and this film makes use of relevant images W.T. G. Morton, the real-life inventor of anesthesia, (a turning wheel, a black cat). The huge office where the whose life is the subject of The Great Moment. The director hero works before his “ludey break,” with row upon row of was fascinated by the story of this Boston dentist who, to identical desks, is almost as overwhelming a symbol of the spare a young servant girl pain, gave away the secret of his automation of human beings as the similar set in Billy discovery and died in poverty and ignominy...The picture Wilder’s (1960). ... was completed in 1942 but not released until 1944, after Sturges was given his first chance at a big-budget Paramount had edited it into hopeless confusion. production with The Lady Eve (Paramount, 1941), in Sturges followed this depressing excursion with which Charles, a naive millionaire snake collector (Henry two comedies about small-town America during Word Fonda), returns from an Amazonian Garden of Eden to War II. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek centers on Trudy the perils of civilization. He is hooked by Barbara Kockenlocker (), daughter of a local Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—7 constable (). One night she meets and is throughout his work, goes on to explain that “the impregnated by a soldier who then disappears. The cinematic device which ties Miracle irrevocably to Hail is solution seems to be marriage to the town dummy, Norval the long tracking shot. In this film as in its predecessor, Jones (), but a misunderstanding lands him there is an abundance of camera movements which follow in jail. However, Trudy’s union is blessed by not one but the characters through entire blocks of the town, thereby six babies, and Morgan’s Creek becomes worldwide front- giving us a feel for the people and their daily page news. Precisely where the town is located is not made surroundings.” However, what James Agee wrote of clear, but it is in the state governed by Dan McGinty Morgan’s Creek is even more applicable to this picture: “In (Brian Donleavy again). He finds it expedient to bend the the stylization of actions as well as language it seems to me law a little and “legalize” Trudy’s nonexistent marriage to clear that Sturges holds his characters, and the people they Norval, who is transformed from schnook to hero in the comically represent, and their predicament, and his process. The film’s astonishingly audience, and the best iconoclastic satire on marriage, potentialities of his own motherhood, the Nativity, the work, essentially in nuclear family, patriotism, and contempt.” American politics led it into a Hail the Conquering series of censorship battles from Hero, completed in 1943, which it emerged, apparently, was Sturges’ last film for almost unscathed. When it was Paramount. He wanted released in 1944, almost a year independence, and after its completion, James Agee Paramount, for its part, was concluded that the Hays Office increasingly bothered by his must have been “raped in its soaring budgets, his sleep.” Not surprisingly, arrogance, and his habit of perhaps, it was Sturges’ greatest writing most of the night so financial success, grossing over that shooting couldn’t begin ten millions dollars. until the afternoon. When Morgan’s Creek and Conquering Having built Morgan’s Creek in the studio and Hero were released in 1944, their enormous profits gave populated it with his gallery of character actors, Sturges Paramount second thoughts, but by that time Sturges had used the same resources again in Hail the Conquering Hero gone into partnership with Howard Hughes to form (1944), a much less extreme satire on small-town values. California Pictures Corporation, releasing through United Eddie Bracken stars again as the bumbling hero, now Artists. CPC was launched with a film that was intended as named Woodrow Truesmith. Like Norval he is rejected for a comeback of the silent movie comedian Harold Lloyd, military service on medical grounds (he has hay fever) but The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). this time the rejection is critical, since he is the son of a The picture opens with the last reel of The Marine hero, weaned on the glories of the Corps. Freshman (1925), in which Lloyd saves the day in a college Woodrow takes a job in a shipyard and pretends to be football game. Sturges added sound to dovetail this silent overseas, then enters into a conspiracy with some footage into the next sequence, in which Lloyd is offered a sympathetic leathernecks to masquerade as a hero like his job by an admiring local businessman....Before this picture father. Returning home in spurious triumph, he is feted by was released, Hughes and Sturges went to work on the whole town, rediscovered by his old girlfriend, and Vendetta, an adaptation of a Corsican revenge story by nominated to replace the venal mayor. Discovered, Prosper Mérimée. Max Ophuls was hired to direct, but Woodrow confesses all to the assembled populace with Hughes soon fired him and Sturges took over. He also such touching frankness that he is renominated. displeased Hughes and CPC was dissolved, Vendetta The frantic pace that builds throughout the last eventually being completed by a string of other directors.... half of Morgan’s Creek is redoubled in this movie. As James With the dissolution of CPC, Sturges went Ursini writes, “each medium shot is filled to the brim with looking for a new backer with a script written fifteen years characters naturally overlapping their lines and generally earlier, and landed Darryl F. Zanuck. He gave Sturges a under the excitement of the moment. One cannot help but suite of offices at 20th Century-Fox, a spectacularly be amazed at the perfect timing Sturges’ stock company generous contract, a two million dollar budget, and demonstrates in these bits of ensemble acting.” Ursini, who complete autonomy. Unfaithfully Yours concerns a famous elsewhere points out how frugal Sturges is with close-ups conductor (Rex Harrison) who suspects that his wife Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—8

(Linda Darnell) is having an affair with a younger man. In du Major Thompson (The French They Are a Funny Race, the course of a single concert he imagines himself killing 1956). Adapted from Pierre Danino’s best-seller, it became her, forgiving her, and challenging her lover to Russian in Sturges’ hands a “conjugal comedy” about a stuffy roulette, the nature of his fantasy reflecting the nature of Englishman (Jack Buchanan) in France, clumsily satirizing the music he is conducting.... French and British stereotypes. It had Sturges had once offered some success in Europe, none in America. the script to , who For three more years Sturges shuttled had turned it down on the between Europe and the United States in grounds that the public wanted search of backers for his manifold “corned beef and hash,” not schemes, but without success. In 1959 he caviar. Unfaithfully Yours is died of a heart attack. nevertheless a film very much in “No one made better dialogue the Lubitsch tradition, albeit comedies than Sturges,” wrote Gerald laced with Sturgesian slapstick. Mast, “primarily because no one wrote Lubitsch seems to have been better dialogue....The Sturges emphasis right, however—it had mixed on dialogue determines his film reviews and, perhaps because of technique, which relies on the the blackness of its humor, was not successful at the box conventional American two-shot to capture the faces and office. Seeking to redeem himself at Fox. Sturges them features while the characters talk, talk, talk. But it is such embarked on a spoof Western called The Beautiful Blonde good talk—incredibly rapid, brittle—that the film has From Bashful Bend (1949), a rickety vehicle for Betty plenty of life. Like Hawks, Sturges was a master of the Grable. She plays a pistol-packing singer who falls in love lightning pace. When Sturges uses special cinematic with a card sharp, is jailed for shooting a judge, escapes, devices, he inevitably turns them into self-conscious bits of impersonates a schoolmarm, and takes on the local baddies trickery and gimmickry that harmonize well with the in a final shoot-out. Sturges’ only film in color, it is one of parodic spirit of the film.” James Ursini has discussed the weakest and least imaginative of all his works. Sturges’ debt to Molière, Shakespeare, Congreve, and This second failure ended the director’s brief Feydeau, saying that he united “the sophistication of the career at Fox and branded him throughout the industry as stage with the visual slapstick that was so much a part of a bad risk. He stoically returned to his beginnings as a the .” writer for other directors. Over the next few years he wrote James Agee, who analyzed Sturges almost half-a-dozen screenplays, of which some were optioned but obsessively in his Nation articles, said of his films: :“They none filmed. He also turned his attention to other seem to me wonderfully, uncontrollably, almost proudly interests. These included a factory, Sturges Engineering corrupt, vengeful, fearful of intactness and self- Company, which had helped to make him a millionaire commitment....Their mastering object, aside form success, during the war years, turning out diesel engines among seems to be to sail as steep into the wind as possible other items, and a Hollywood restaurant, The Players. In without for an instant incurring the disaster of becoming 1955 he added a theatre and a dance hall to the restaurant, seriously, wholly acceptable as art. They seem...the offering diners one-act plays and other entertainments elaborately counterpointed image of a neurosis.” Penelope which he produced, directed, designed, and sometimes Houston, rather similarly, wrote: “His defenses were built wrote himself, turning his troupe of old actors into a up in depth, and his favorite approach was the oblique and repertory company. In 1951 he added a theatre and a glancing one, with all the retreats into burlesque left open. dance hall to the restaurant, offering diners one-act plays The world of his comedy is self-contained and self- and other entertainments which he produced, directed, protected, and he becomes ill at ease when confronted with designed, and sometimes wrote himself, turning his troupe an idea to be followed straight through, or a situation that of old actors into a repertory company. This venture was can’t be resolved in an explosion of nervous energy.” The ahead of its time and failed, leaving Sturges near energy, which carries his plots over “chasms of bankruptcy, hounded for debts, taxes, and alimony. After a improbability,” and his crowded canvases, persuaded brief interlude in New York he went even further back into Andrew Sarris that he was “the Brueghel of American his past, settling in Paris, where he had spent his comedy directors.” childhood. Sturges’ fondness for pratfalls, slapstick and his Sturges’ last years, full of aborted plans and “seamy old character actors” no doubt reflects his lifelong projects, produced one more completed film, Les Carnets struggle to cast off his mother’s influence—the stubborn Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—9 pretense to philistinism” that his films conclusively refute. American movie director to wear his artist’s heart on his According to Alistair Cooke, he was “an accomplished sleeve. It was much more comforting to the bosses and to linguist. A canny art critic... an epicure of extravagant the typical moviegoer to play it a little dumb. And so tastes.” Hollywood he once described as “a comic opera in Sturges alleged that he shared none of his mother’s high which fat businessmen, good fathers, are condemned to aspirations, that all he wanted to do was make funny, conjugal existence with a heap of drunkards, madmen, knockabout comedies that turned a tidy profit—the goal divorcees, sloths, epileptics, and morphinomaniacs who to which Daddy had taught him all real American men are—in the considered opinion of the management— must aspire. Never a man to prune back his best artists. Another wit, Alexander King, said of Sturges inventions, Sturges permitted this tale to grow lush and himself that he was actuated by a genuine affection for purple in the retelling, though it appears that one aspect of people, which rose naturally from a well of deep sympathy it—the fact that it was his mother who presented Isadora for anyone who must go through life without being Duncan with the scarf that killed her when it became Preston Sturges.” He was married four times—to Estelle entangled in the spokes of a car wheel—was a true believe- Mudge, Eleanor Post Hutton, Louise Sargent Tervis, and it-or-not. Anne Margaret Nagle—and has three sons. Courtly in In any case, all this glorious Technicolor served manner, he had friends at every level of society. Agee especially well. He as emotionally committed to a different kind of comedy—silent comedy, the values of which (obviously) were kinetic, not verbal, the air of which was more austere (to put it mildly) than anything Sturges was doing. The tale was used by the critic to explain why Sturges’s films, which he seems to have admired more than he could bring himself to admit openly, so often failed to meet the formal standards he felt obliged to apply to comedy. Sturges’s work appeared to Agee less well made than that of Agee’s childhood idols, the silent comedians. Moreover, this prefabrication permitted the critic to fit the “Preston Sturges Elegy for the Wiene King” Schickel on director into the preexistent, overarching, and apparently Film. Richard Schickel. Wm. R. Morrow & Co., NY, permanent Hollywood myth in which the man of talent 1989. goes west and is corrupted by the vulgar values present It is time to set aside all those pop Freudian there. Sturges, it seemed, was a prime candidate for yet explanations of the life and art of Preston Sturges. Enough another reenactment of this cautionary yarn, even gave about the giddy aesthete mother dragging him around the evidence that he welcomed the casting. galleries and theaters of Europe, thereby instilling in him a Since Agee is for some reason Agee, a “great” critic lifelong distrust of high, formal culture. Enough about the who never got round to creating a great or even sustained down-to-earth stepfather in Chicago, the athlete-inventor- body of critical work (he had a silky, confidential style, businessman whose values—principally his definition of approachably middlebrow tastes and the good sense to die success in purely economic terms—Sturges so desperately young, with several promises unfulfilled), everyone who tried to emulate. Enough about how little Preston’s psyche has written about Sturges has had to contend with his fly- was split down the middle by their conflicting demands by-the-slicks psychologizing. Even if one were disputing it, and how that split affected his movies, mostly adversely. as, variously, , Andrew Sarris, and Richard How did we get off on that sidetrack anyway? Corliss somewhat have, some of Agee’s theory has stuck to Brian Henderson, in his introduction to a collection of their revisionisms. Not that Henderson, having done his some of the master’s best screenplays, says it’s all James best to strike down Agee on Sturges, offers anything useful Agee’s fault. By the time Sturges became Hollywood’s by way of a replacement. Indeed, Henderson’s hottest director—the first and at that time the only one performance both in his introduction and in his essays on who wrote all his own pictures single-handedly—and the each script in his collection (The Great McGinty, Christmas interviewers from the popular magazines were coming in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, Hail the around to do their standard eccentric movie genius Conquering Hero) is exceedingly strange. He seems to have numbers, Sturges realized that there was good copy for mislaid whatever critical sensibility he has among the them in his admittedly curious background. It would be reams of Sturges’s papers to which he had access. It is diverting for their readers and diversionary for him. As interesting, to be sure, to learn that the seemingly Henderson says, it did not do in those days for an profligate Sturges never really abandoned even his half- Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—10 developed ideas. He was always hauling them out of his For four years from 1940 to 1944, Preston Sturges trunk, refurbishing them, and using them as the basis for exploded over Hollywood like a fireworks display. In that new projects. On the other hand, it is not at all interesting, short period he wrote and directed for Paramount seven or profitable, to follow his progress on a script from one pungently exuberant comedies, and tossed in a biopic as stage of revision to the next. The main thing we learn from makeweight. The first of the writer-directors, he pioneered Henderson’s dogged pursuit of the way for , Billy variously expanding and Wilder and a host of others. contracting ideas from draft to Then, only in his mid 40s and draft (with the final polish seemingly at the height of his occurring when Sturges was on powers, he abruptly fizzled, his feet, directing) is that he was sputtered and plummeted to a very craftsmanlike writer, an earth. Over the next 15 years he intelligent and reasonably made just four more films, in ruthless self-editor, as, given the which his erstwhile brilliance overall quality of his work, one flared up only fitfully, before suspected. In any event, this dying bankrupt and forgotten in information, presented in mind- that graveyard of burnt-out wits, bending detail, argues neither New York's Algonquin Hotel. for nor against Agee’s reading of It's an extravagant, even barely Sturges’s character. But then Henderson appears to be a plausible trajectory, and one that might well have come scholar in pursuit of an “edition,” not a critic in pursuit of from one of Sturges' own films. But then, Sturges' life and an insight. his films were constantly leaking into each other and few He therefore misses a timely opportunity to start writers about him have been able to resist tracing the cross- fresh on Sturges, unburdened by preconceptions….I can connections. The reviews of James Agee, one of Sturges' sum up my view of Sturges very simply. Sturges was not, earliest admirers, tended to talk less about the films than and never intended to be, the social critic, the satirist that (as Penelope Houston put it) to "subject the film-maker to Agee and the rest wanted him to be. James Curtis’s a curious brand of sustained psychoanalysis." Subsequent biography Between Flops, a straightforward, well- critics have frequently followed suit. researched, and admiring volume, makes it clear that The temptation is understandable. The son of a Sturges was an utterly apolitical character without an culture-deranged mother who dragged him round every ideological bone in his body; which explains why his museum and art gallery in Europe and sent him to school politician characters (in McGinty and Hero) are so in a frilly Greek tunic; an engineer, songwriter, tirelessly enduringly funny. He saw the typical American pol for eccentric inventor and failed restaurant proprietor; a what he timelessly is—a venal windbag—and was utterly flamboyant socialite, four times married - few lives offer undistracted by by the thought that a true liberal (or such rich pickings. But attempts to get a fix on Sturges the conservative) commitment might cure that condition. In man often stem from the near impossibility of pinning other words, Sturges was not, and never meant to be, a down the films. His comedies—or at least the great run of politicized social critic. He was, rather. an uncommitted seven he produced in the glory years—lurch breathlessly in observer, bemused and compassionate, but without any every direction, at once sophisticated and raucous, urbane cures in mind for the conditions he observed. These were, and philistine, careering headlong through slapstick, satire, he seemed to say, specifically American adjustments to, farce, elegant verbal wit and shameless sentimentality with and evasions of, dull reality. The best we could hope for unstoppable momentum and not the least care for was the temporary palliative of a good laugh; that is, of incongruity. Had his upbringing not instilled in him a course, the entire point of Sullivan’s Travels, a movie I take fixed loathing of culture, Sturges might have quoted to be emotionally autobiographical, in its gentle contempt Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I for the social-critical aspirations of his Hollywood contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." contemporaries, but not a statement about any frustrated Sturges has sometimes been pigeonholed as a ambitions of his own. satirist, and he certainly relished taking potshots at most of American society's sacred cows. In his first film as director, Ants in his Pants (Sight & Sound May 2000) The Great McGinty (1940), it is proposed that corruption Light-hearted irreverence was Preston Sturges' isn't a disease of the political system, but the very fuel on forte but his comedies also have a serious edge.… which it runs. Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—11

"They're always talkin' about graft," says a character, "but as a credo, it's more than a touch glib; but given Sturges' they forget if it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type love of self-cancelling paradox we should probably be wary of people in politics—men without ambition—jellyfish." of taking it at face value. The film offers a parody of Horatio Alger-ish inspirational Satire, in any case, requires an edge of genuine parables. The hero is a bum offered $2 for his vote. Seeing scorn if not outright venom, and Sturges is usually having his chance, he sells it 37 times and through this laudable too much fun with his characters' antics to get round to show of initiative rises to be governor of the state. He's disliking them. The rich are mocked, but good- brought down not by righteous exposure but through an humouredly. 's near-catatonic beer-fortune unwonted moment of honesty. heir and his overgrown baby of a father (Eugene Pallette) Likewise in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943) in The Lady Eve are pathetic, incapable creatures, fornication, illegitimacy and bigamy can be quietly hamstrung by their wealth and all the better for being overlooked when a girl glorifies her country by giving birth jolted by some silky female chicanery. The same goes to sextuplets. ("Hitler for Rudy Vallee's emotionally Demands Recount" reads a stunted millionaire in The briefly glimpsed headline.) Palm Beach Story, while Patriotism comes in for a Sturges regards with further drubbing in Hail the unconcealed delight the bunch Conquering Hero (1944) in of elderly moneyed reprobates which a smalltown booby, in the same film who call rejected by the marines for themselves the Ale and Quail hay fever, is hailed by his Club and rampage view duped townsfolk as a hallooing through Pullman returning war hero and is cars with dog and gun. To elected mayor. As for borrow a phrase from Arsenic "Topic A", as Sturges liked and Old Lace, eccentricity to call sex: energy and doesn't run in Sturges' films, it ingenuity excuse pretty well gallops. anything, especially on the The prevailing mode in part of attractive young Sturgesian comedy - not that women. The heroines of The Lady Eve (1941) and The anything is allowed to prevail for long - is less satire than Palm Beach Story (1942) are both out-and-out gold-diggers burlesque, not least for the stock company of gargoylish pursuing rich men for the most mercenary motives. Both character actors who infest his films, grimacing in end up with the men they want and the cash. exasperation or alarm. Franklin Pangborn, jowls wobbling But in all these cases the cross-currents of comic energy in prim outrage; Raymond Walburn, with his boot-button swirling through the films deflect any sustained satirical eyes and caterpillar moustache; , the thrust. In Conquering Hero the hero is greeted at the quintessence of butlerly hauteur; and Sturges' favourite of railroad station by four brass bands all playing different all, the irascible William Demarest, primed to explode at tunes; it's an apt metaphor for Sturges' tumultuous brand any second - these and their like expostulate their way of comedy. through the hubbub, usually tagged with absurd Sullivan's Travels (1941), which tilts at mittelEuropeanish names. They work best when serving as Hollywood, is often reckoned to be nearest to an chorus to straight actors in the leads, a garish backdrop to expression of Sturges' own beliefs, but it's not easy to tell the subtler comic talents of or Joel just who is being satirised or for what: the studio bosses, McCrea; less well when, as Sturges increasingly came to demanding another mindless trifle (Ants in Your Pants of prefer, the leads are also cast for caricature. Agee 1941); the director Sullivan, wanting to make a socially considered Sturges "the smartest man for casting in significant movie "with a little sex in it" (O Brother, Hollywood", a judgement belied by the director's Where Art Thou?); or the condescension of the rich trying preference for the charmless mugging of Eddie Bracken a little social slumming for research purposes? At the end, and Betty Hutton over McCrea, Stanwyck, Henry Fonda having seen chain-gang convicts distracted from their or Claudette Colbert. misery by a Disney cartoon, Sullivan concludes: "There's a In the 30s, before he became a director, Sturges lot to be said for making people laugh... It isn't much but scripted one of the wittiest screwball comedies, Easy Living it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan." Viewed (1937) for Mitchell Leisen. His own style of comedy Sturges—UNFAITHFULLY YOURS—12 unmistakably developed - or perhaps erupted - out of the inconsistent, to attract disciples, and almost certainly classic screwball conventions, but laced with elements of wouldn't have wanted them. But every film-maker who has silent-movie pratfall and overwound to his own breakneck set out to push the envelope of comedy, from Frank pace. One of his loopy inventions was for "a device for Tashlin to Todd Solondz and the , owes making water flow uphill", and there's something of that him a debt. desperate Sisyphean contrivance about his movies: the contraption rackets along, high on its own velocity, Paulene Kael: Unfaithfully Yours (New Yorker): somehow managing not quite to trip over its own manic One of the most sophisticated slapstick comedies ever contortions. Yet now and then Sturges will suddenly made, this classic, written and directed by Preston Sturges, apply the brakes to savour a morsel of near-baroque got terrible reviews and failed at the box office. The hero, a eloquence from an incongruous source. A barman, faced symphony conductor (a parody of Sir Thomas Beecham), with a first-time-ever drinker, responds, "Sir, you arouse is played by Rex Harrison, who is at one of his comic the artist in me"; in Sullivan's Travels Joel McCrea, peaks. During a concert, the conductor, convinced that his preparing for his down-and-out safari, is warned by his wife (Linda Darnell) has been unfaithful to him, fantasizes butler: "Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive about how he will handle the situation in three different plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera... It is to be ways, according to the style of the music on the program— stayed away from, even for the purposes of study. It is to Rossini’s “Overture to Semiramide,” the “Pilgrim’s be shunned." Chorus” from Wagner’s “Tannhäuser,” and Tchaikovsky’s It's for these unexpected moments of solemnity, “Francesca da Rimini.” After the concert, he tries to carry even of poetry, that Sturges deserves to be treasured as them out, scrambling hopelessly. There are so many great much as for the high-octane fizz and riot of his careening lines and situations in this movie that writers and directors humour. His movies, for all their neurotic overspill, have been stealing from it for years, but no one has ever lastingly loosened the stays of filmed comedy; after him, come close to replicating the wild-man devilry of the best anything went. He was too sui generis, too flailingly Preston Sturges comedies.

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2019 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS (SERIES 39) Sept 17 John Huston The Asphalt Jungle 1950 Sept 24 Vittorio De Sica Umberto D. 1952 Oct 1 Charles Laughton The Night of the Hunter 1955 Oct 8 Masaki Kobayashi Harakiri 1962 Oct 15 Nicholas Roeg Don’t Look Now 1973 Oct 22 Blazing Saddles 1974 Oct 29 Larisa Shepitko The Ascent 1977 Nov 5 Louis Malle Au revoir les enfants 1987 Nov 12 Charles Burnett To Sleep With Anger 1990 Nov 19 Steve James, Frederick Marks & Peter Gilbert Hoop Dreams 1994 Nov 26 Alfonso Cuarón Roma 2018 Dec 3 Baz Luhrmann Moulin Rouge 2001

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