Preston Sturges

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Preston Sturges
Born Edmund Preston Biden
August 29, 1898(1898-08-29)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
Died August 6, 1959 (aged 60)
New York City, New York, U.S.A.
Spouse(s) Estelle de Wolf Mudge (1923-1927)
Eleanor Post Hutton (1930-1932) (annulled)
Louise Sargeant Tevis (1938-1947)
Sandy Sturges (1951-1959)

Preston Sturges (August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959), originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated screenwriter and director born in Chicago.

Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. It is not uncommon for one of Sturges' actors to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene. A love scene between Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve was enlivened by a horse, which repeatedly poked its nose into Fonda's head.

He is often credited as the first writer to direct his own script, but this is demonstrably untrue: Charles Chaplin, for instance, was already writing and directing feature-length films by 1921. A few other major directors such as Frank Capra and Howard Hawks also preceded Sturges in making the leap from writing to directing, as did less celebrated figures such as Rowland Brown.

However, Sturges may have been the first celebrated Hollywood screenwriter to be promoted as having made the "leap" to directing for publicity purposes. Famously, he supposedly sold his screenplay for The Great McGinty to Paramount Pictures for $1, in exchange for the director's job.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

His parents were Mary Estelle Dempsey and travelling salesman Edmund C. Biden; his maternal grandparents, Catherine Campbell Smyth and Dominick d’Este Dempsey, were immigrants from Ireland.[1] When Sturges was three, his eccentric mother left America for Paris to pursue a singing career. There she annulled her marriage with Preston's father. Returning to America, Dempsey met her third husband, the wealthy stockbroker Solomon Sturges, who then adopted Preston in 1902. According to biographers, Solomon Sturges was "diametrically opposite to Mary and her bohemianism." His mother, ultimately known as Mary Desti through her fourth marriage, was famous for her friendship with Isadora Duncan, even giving her the very scarf that led to Duncan's freakish death. The young Sturges would sometimes travel from country to country with Duncan's dance company. Mary Desti also carried on a romantic affair with Aleister Crowley and collaborated with him on his magnum opus Magick (Book 4). In his memoirs Crowley described the young Sturges as "a most god-forsaken lout", and Sturges returned the favor with a vituperative mention of Crowley in his own memoirs.

As a young man, Preston Sturges bounced back and forth between Europe and the States. In 1916 he worked as a runner for New York stock brokers, a position available through Solomon Sturges. The next year Preston enlisted in the Air Service and graduated as a lieutenant from Camp Dick in Texas. While at camp Preston published "Three Hundred Words of Humor," his first work, in the camp newspaper. Returning from camp, Sturges picked up a managing position at the Desti Emporium in New York, a store owned by his mother's fourth husband. He spent eight years (1919-1927) there, until he married the first of his four wives, Estelle De Wolfe.

[edit] From Broadway to Hollywood

In 1928, Sturges' first produced play, The Guinea Pig, opened in Massachusetts. A success, it moved to Broadway the following year, a turning point in Sturges' career. 1929 also saw Sturges' second play, the smash Strictly Dishonorable. Written in just six days, it would earn Sturges over $300,000. This attracted interest from Hollywood, and Sturges had written his first screenplays for Paramount by the end of the year.

Several Sturges stage plays were produced from 1930-1932, but none were hits. By the end of the year, he was working more in Hollywood as a writer-for-hire, operating from short contract to short contract, for studios like Universal, MGM, and Columbia. He also sold his original screenplay for The Power and the Glory (1933) to Fox Film Corporation, where it was filmed as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy. The film told the story of a self-involved financier via a series of flashbacks and flashforwards, and was an acknowledged source of inspiration for the screenwriters of Citizen Kane. Fox producer Jesse Lasky paid Sturges $17,500 plus a percentage of the profits, a then-unprecedented deal for a screenwriter which instantly elevated Sturges' reputation in Hollywood. But the lucrative deal irritated as many as it impressed. Sturges later recalled, "The film made a lot of enemies. Writers at that time worked in teams, like piano movers. And my first solo script was considered a distinct menace to the profession."

For the remainder of the 1930s, Sturges operated under the strict auspices of the studio system, working on a string of scripts, some of which were shelved. While he was highly paid, earning $2500 a week, he was unhappy with the way directors were handling his dialogue. This experience built his resolve to take control of his own projects, which he finally accomplished in 1939 by trading his screenplay for The Great McGinty (written six years earlier) in exchange for the chance to direct it. Sturges' success quickly paved the way for similar deals for such writer-directors as Billy Wilder and John Huston. Sturges said, "It's taken me eight years to reach what I wanted. But now, if I don't run out of ideas — and I won't — we'll have some fun. There are some wonderful pictures to be made, and God willing, I will make some of them."

[edit] Screenwriting heights

He won the first Academy Award ever given for Writing Original Screenplay for the McGinty script. Perhaps more impressively, Sturges received two screenwriting Oscar nominations in the same year, for 1944's Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Sturges' rich writing style has been described as that of "a lowbrow aristocrat, a melancholy wiseguy."

Sturges liked to reuse many of the same character actors, such as William Demarest, Byron Foulger, Victor Potel, Robert Grieg, Jimmy Conlin, Charles R. Moore, Robert Warwick, or Franklin Pangborn, giving him what amounted to a regular troupe even within the studio system.

Though he enjoyed a 30-year Hollywood career, the greatest of Sturges' comedies were filmed in a furious 5-year burst of activity. One of them, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, was literally being written by Sturges at night even as the production was being filmed in the daytime; Sturges the screenwriter was rarely more than 10 pages ahead of the cast and crew.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek ended up being Sturges' most successful at the box office, amid an unbroken string of financial hits. Half a century later, that movie was one of four Sturges' films to be chosen among the American Film Institute's 100 funniest, along with The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels and The Palm Beach Story. Their inimitable combination of sentiment and cynicism has kept them fresh for today's audiences.

[edit] Independence and decline

Sturges was a temperamental talent who fully recognized his own worth. He had also invested in entrepreneurial projects such as an engineering company and The Players, a popular restaurant and nightclub, and thus Sturges did not have the same financial worries as most studio system employees. Despite the financial and critical success of his films, he continued to clash with Paramount brass over scripts and budgets. An entire film, The Great Moment, was shot but shelved by the studio, causing further friction.

Millionaire Howard Hughes, who'd struck up a friendship with Sturges, offered to bankroll him as an independent filmmaker. In early 1944, Sturges and Hughes formed a partnership called California Pictures. The deal represented a major pay cut for Sturges, but it established him as a writer-producer-director, the only one in Hollywood and one of only three in the world (along with England's Noel Coward and France's Rene Clair). The status led to widespread admiration and envy among his Hollywood peers.

However, this career peak also marked the beginning of Sturges' professional decline. While the startup California Pictures was being created and structured, it was three years until Sturges' next release. That film, a Harold Lloyd vehicle entitled The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947), went over budget and far over schedule, and was poorly received. Hughes, who had promised not to interfere in the film's production, stepped in. But his reedited version, retitled Mad Wednesday, was no more successful. The deal between the two iconoclasts had fallen apart after just one picture. As Sturges later recalled, "When Mr. Hughes made suggestions with which I disagreed, as he had a perfect right to do, I rejected them. When I rejected the last one, he remembered he had an option to take control of the company and he took over. So I left."

The holdover project from Paramount, The Great Moment, was also released after two years in storage, and also failed to attract audiences. After two flops and losing the contractual showdown, the golden boy of Hollywood screenwriting had been tarnished.

Sturges was left professionally adrift. Accepting an offer from Darryl Zanuck, he landed at Fox where he wrote, directed, and produced two films. The first of these, Unfaithfully Yours (1948), was not well received upon release by either reviewers or the public, though its critical reputation has since improved. However, his second Fox film, The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949), was the first serious flop in star Betty Grable's career, and Sturges was again on his own. He built a theater at his Players restaurant, but the project did not pan out.

Over the next several years, Sturges continued to write, but many of the projects were underfunded or stillborn, and those that emerged did not approach the same success as his earlier triumphs. Sturges' 1951 Broadway musical, Make a Wish, underwent extensive rewriting by Abe Burrows. In 1956, Carnival in Flanders, a Broadway musical for which Sturges wrote the book and directed, closed after six performances. A 1953 lien by the IRS, with whom he'd been having tax problems, cost him the Players and other assets.

Sturges put a brave public face on the situation, writing, "I had so very much for so very long, it is quite natural for the pendulum to swing the other way for a while, and I really cannot and will not complain." However, his drinking became heavy, and many of his marriages and relationships continued to deteriorate.

Sturges himself made three brief film cameos, in two of his own films and in the Bob Hope comedy Paris Holiday. Two decades earlier, Sturges had written one of Hope's earliest film successes, Never Say Die.

[edit] Home Life

Sturges was married four times. His wives were: Estelle deWolfe Mudge, married 1923, divorced 1927; Eleanor Close (a daughter of Marjorie Merriweather (Post) Close Hutton Davies May), eloped 1930, annulled 1932; Louise Sargent Tevis, married 1938, divorced 1947; Anne Nagle (Sandy), married 1951 - 1959.

Sturges died of a heart attack at the Algonquin Hotel while writing his autobiography (which, ironically, he'd intended to title The Events Leading Up to My Death), and was interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. His book "Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges: His Life in His Words" was published in 1990 by Simon & Schuster. (ISBN 0-671-67929-5) In 1975, he became the first writer to be given the Screen Writers Guild's Laurel Award posthumously.

[edit] Examples of Sturges dialogue

[edit] From Remember the Night (1940)

Fred MacMurray: "You know, that's called arson."
Barbara Stanwyck: "I thought that was when you bit somebody?"

[edit] From The Great McGinty (1940)

William Demarest: "If it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics. Men without ambition. Jellyfish!"
Muriel Angelus: "Especially since you can't rob the people anyway."
William Demarest: "Sure! ...How was that?"
Muriel Angelus: "What you rob, you spend, and what you spend goes back to the people, so where's the robbery? I read that in one of my father's books."
William Demarest: "That book should be in every home!"

(riding inside the political boss' bulletproof car)

Brian Donlevy: "What makes this bus so quiet?"
Akim Tamiroff: "Armor!"
Brian Donlevy: "Armored for what?"
Akim Tamiroff: "So people shouldn't interrupt me!"

[edit] From The Lady Eve (1941)

Barbara Stanwyck: "I need him like the axe needs the turkey."
Charles Coburn: "Don't be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked, but never common."
Henry Fonda: "Nice fella, your father."
Barbara Stanwyck: "He's a good card player, too."
Henry Fonda: "You think so? I don't want to be rude, but I thought he seemed a little uneven."
Barbara Stanwyck: "He's more uneven some times than others."
Henry Fonda: "Well, that's what makes him uneven, of course."
Barbara Stanwyck: "Are you always going to be interested in snakes?"
Henry Fonda: "Snakes are my life, in a way."
Barbara Stanwyck: "What a life."
Henry Fonda: "I suppose it does sound sort of silly. I mean, I suppose I should have married and settled down. I imagine my father always wanted me to. As a matter of fact, he's told me so rather plainly. I just never cared for the brewing business."
Barbara Stanwyck: "Oh, you say that's why you've never married?"
Henry Fonda: "Oh no. It's just I've never met her. I suppose she's around somewhere in the world."
Barbara Stanwyck: "It would be too bad if you never bumped into each other."
Henry Fonda: "Well..."
Barbara Stanwyck: "I suppose you know what she looks like and everything."
Henry Fonda: "I... I think so."
Barbara Stanwyck: "I'll bet she looks like Marguerite in Faust."
Henry Fonda: "Oh no, she isn't, I mean, she hasn't, she's not as bulky as an opera singer."
Barbara Stanwyck: "Oh. How are her teeth?"
Henry Fonda: "Huh?"
Barbara Stanwyck: "Well, you should always pick one out with good teeth. It saves expense later."
Charles Coburn: "That's the tragedy of the rich. They don't need anything."
Barbara Stanwyck: "I'm terribly in love, and you seem to be too, so one of us has to think and try and keep things clear. And maybe I can do that better than you can. They say a moonlit deck is a woman's business office."
Barbara Stanwyck: "Do you know Charles?"
Eric Blore: "Oh, is he the tall backward boy who's always toying with toads and things? Yes, I think I've seen him skulking about."
Barbara Stanwyck: "He isn't backward, he's a scientist!"
Eric Blore: "Oh, is that what it is? Oh well, I knew he was...peculiar."

[edit] From Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Joel McCrea: "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."

(studio executives, arguing over a movie)

Robert Warwick: "It died in Pittsburgh."
Porter Hall: "Like a dog!"
Joel McCrea: "Aw, what do they know in Pittsburgh?"
Porter Hall: "They know what they like."
Joel McCrea: "If they knew what they liked, they wouldn't live in Pittsburgh!"
Joel McCrea: "This picture is an ANSWER to Communists. It shows we're awake and not dunking our heads in the sand, like a bunch of ostriches. I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions, stark realism, the problems that confront the average man."
Robert Warwick: "But with a little sex."
Joel McCrea: "A little, but I don't want to stress it. I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity, a true canvas of the suffering of humanity."
Robert Warwick: "But with a little sex."
Joel McCrea (resigned): "With a little sex in it."
Robert Warwick: "O Brother, Where Art Thou? is going to be the greatest tragedy ever made! The world will weep! Humanity will sob!"
Willam Demarest: "It'll put Shakespeare back with the shipping news."
Veronica Lake: "You know, the nice thing about buying food for a man is that you don't have to laugh at his jokes."

(questioned by a policeman)

J. Farrell MacDonald: "How does the girl fit in this picture?"
Joel McCrea: "There's always a girl in the picture. Haven't you ever been to the movies?"

[edit] From The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Claudette Colbert (looking at a yacht): "Is all this yours?"
Rudy Vallee: "Actually, it was my grandfather's, but he didn't like it. He only used it once. This is his hat."
Rudy Vallee: "There is a name for such reptiles, but I won't sully this fair ocean breeze by mentioning it. I suppose he's large?"
Claudette Colbert: "Well, he's not small."
Rudy Vallee: "That's one of the tragedies of this life, that the men who are most in need of a beating are always enormous."
Rudy Vallee: "Chivalry is not only dead, it's decomposed."
Robert Dudley: "I'm cheesy with money. I'm the Weenie King! Invented the Texas Weenie. Lay off 'em, you'll live longer."
Joel McCrea: "So, this gent gave you The Look?"
Claudette Colbert: "The Weenie King? At his age, it was really more of a blink."
Mary Astor: "I'd marry Captain McGloo tomorrow, even with that name."
Rudy Vallee: "And divorce him the next month."
Mary Astor: "Nothing in this world is permanent, except for Roosevelt, my dear."
Claudette Colbert: "You have no idea what a long-legged woman can do without doing anything."

[edit] From The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

William Demarest: "Listen, zipper-puss. Someday they're just gonna find your hair ribbon and an axe someplace. Nothing else. The mystery of Morgan's Creek."
Diana Lynn: "If you don't mind my mentioning it, Father, I think you have a mind like a swamp."
William Demarest: "The trouble with kids is they always figure they're smarter than their parents. Never stop to think if their old man could get by for fifty years, and feed 'em, and clothe 'em, he maybe had something up here to get by with. Things that seem like brain twisters to you might be very simple for him."

[edit] From Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)

William Demarest: "It's an honor to meet you, kid. What's your name?"
Eddie Bracken: "Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith. Go ahead and laugh."
William Demarest: "That ain't anything to laugh at, to anyone who knows anything. I guess you never got to know your father very well, eh?"
Eddie Bracken: "Well, not exactly, as he fell the day I was born."
William Demarest: "That's right. It's hard to realize. He was a fine-looking fellow. He didn't look anything like you at all."

(after the news that the town plans to build a statue of Bracken, the fraudulent war hero)

Eddie Bracken: "What do I do now?"
William Demarest: "Well, you just let it blow over."
Eddie Bracken: "Did you ever see a statue blow over?":
William Demarest: "I tell you it'll all blow over. Everything is perfect... except for a couple of details."
Eddie Bracken: "They hang people for a couple of details!"
Elizabeth Patterson: "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."

[edit] From The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)

Harold Lloyd: "A man works all his life in a glass factory, one day he feels like picking up a hammer."

[edit] From Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

Edgar Kennedy: "The way you handle Handel, Sir Alfred! For me, there's nobody handles Handel like you handle Handel! There's you up here, and then there's nobody, no second, no third...maybe way down here, a runner-up on poor fourth. And your Delius – delirious!"
Rex Harrison: "Have you ever heard of Russian Roulette?"
Linda Darnell: "Why, certainly. I used to play it all the time with my father."
Rex Harrison: "I doubt that you played Russian Roulette all the time with your father!"
Linda Darnell: "Oh, I most certainly did. You play it with two decks of cards, and..."
Rex Harrison: "That's 'Russian Bank.' Russian Roulette's a very different amusement which I can only wish your father had played continuously before he had you!"
Rudy Vallee: "Nothing is too much trouble for the busy man. If you ever want anything done, always ask the busy man. The others never have time. Now, you asked me to keep an eye on your wife, and I assure you that..."
Rex Harrison: "You keep repeating 'Keep an eye on your wife' as if it had some special meaning. I don't know what you're leading up to, but for some reason I feel my back hair rising."
Rudy Vallee: "You see, Alfred, being a little near-sighted, I couldn't very well keep an eye on her from Palm Beach. Nevertheless, I did not fail you."
Rex Harrison: "Again something's happening to my back hair. I don't recollect saying anything to you at the airport, except possibly 'goodbye,' but even if I did say 'Keep an eye on my wife for me,' I meant, see if she's lonely some evening and take her out to the movies, you and Barbara.
Rudy Vallee: "But you don't say you didn't say 'Keep an eye on my wife for me'?"
Rex Harrison: "Oh, supposing I did, how could you do it from Palm Beach?"
Rudy Vallee: "With detectives."
Rex Harrison: "With detectives... With detectives?! You stuffed moron!" (Grabs Vallee by his shirt.)
Rudy Vallee: "Control yourself, Alfred, control yourself! This is entirely uncalled for. Kindly release my scarf."
Rex Harrison: "You dare to inform me you had vulgar footpads in snap-brim fedoras sluicing after my beautiful wife?"
Rudy Vallee: "I believe it's called sleuthing. Alfred, kindly let go of my shirt, you're tearing it. There's nothing to be so upset about. Good heavens, I merely had her tailed."
Rex Harrison: "You merely had her what? (Again grabs Vallee by the shirt.) I give you my solemn word, August, if I don't regain control of myself in a few minutes (tears Vallee's shirt apart), concert or no concert, I'll take this candelabrum and beat that walnut you use for a head into a nutburger, I believe they're called!"

[edit] Partial filmography

[edit] Trivia

After Katharine Hepburn starred in the George Bernard Shaw play, The Millionairess, she tried to get a film made and she wanted Sturges to direct. She discussed it with him and he agreed, but she could not get a single studio interested in the project.

[edit] Adaptations

[edit] Published screenplays

[edit] Awards

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ rootsweb genealogy entry for Edmund Preston Biden ("Preston Sturges"). freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com.

[edit] External links


Awards
Preceded by
None		 Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay
1940
for The Great McGinty		 Succeeded by
Herman Mankiewicz & Orson Welles
for Citizen Kane