PRESTON STURGES
MIRACLE AT MORGAN’S CREEK
1944

Genre population during the great depression. Characters like noir except that female dominates the relationship with the male star whose masculinity is challenged. A battle of the sexes.

Verbal repartee

1. a quick, witty reply.
2. conversation full of such replies.
3. skill in making such replies.

Farce

1. a light, humorous play in which the plot depends upon a skillfully exploited situation rather than upon the development of character.
2. humor of the type displayed in such works.
3. foolish show; mockery; a ridiculous sham.

Escapist themes are often associated with all kinds of comedy. Farces are no exception.

Preston Sturges

Sturges was born August 29, 1898 and died on August 6, 1959 in Chicago. His mother was Mary Estelle Demspy and his father was a travelling salesman named Edwin C. Biden. Dempsy ran off to Paris where she had her marriage annulled. She the married a wealthy stock broker who adopted Preston in 1902. Sturges' mother was friends with dancer Isadore Duncan and toured with her. She took Preston back and forth to Europe. His mother was also romantically involved with Alistair Crowley, best known for his work in magic (not prestidgitation) with whom she worked on his magnum opus Magick. He worked in the stock market and enlisted in the Army He appeared on Broadway in 1928 in his own play The Guinea Pig was produced. His second play, Slightly Dishonorable was said to have been written in 6 days. It ran 16 months and earned him $300,000. His later plays for the stage were not successes. He went to Hollywood and did was a source of inspiration for screen writers of Citizen Kane.

He wrote for the films but was unhappy with the way the directors handled his dialog and wanted more control of his material. He traded the script (for $10.00) for The Great McGinty on the condition he be allowed to direct the film. So he became the first person to write and direct his own script and get the credit “Written and Directed by Preston Sturges” The Great McGinty also won the first Academy Award for Best original screenplay for that film. It is a political satire that involves corruption and one moment of honesty which loses McGinty his political status. McGinty is played by Brian Donlevy and “The Boss” with whom he is involved with the corruption, is played by Akim Tamiroff. The film was enormously popular and both Donlevy and Tamiroff reprise their roles briefly in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. The film had a number of obstacles to overcome, or perhaps was even written with an eye to the problems. These dealt with the Hays office and the Breen code. Hays had been postmaster general and became the author of the code of conduct which was supposed to regulate the film industry in terms of censorship. The industry had seen baseball suddenly impacted with governmental involvement and regulations and decided they would be better off "self regulated". A, American organization that promulgated a moral code for films. In 1922, after a number of scandals involving Hollywood personalities, film industry leaders formed the organization to counteract the threat of government censorship and to create favourable publicity for the industry. Under Will H. Hays, appointed by Republican President Harding, he was a politically active lawyer, the Hays Office initiated a blacklist, inserted morals clauses into actors’ contracts, and in 1930 developed the Production Code, under Joseph Breen, a strict Roman Catholic whose detailed what was morally acceptable on the screen. The code was supplanted in 1966 by a voluntary rating system.

Hays Office, formally Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.

Among some of the things which were forbidden:

Sexual suggestiveness
Adultery
Bigamy
Homosexuality
Graphic crime
Ridiculing of the law
Silly police

Although some of the performers claim many things about the code to make their points (e.g. one couldn’t say “girdle” or “virgin” or “bigamy”) they are in fact incorrect in this. Nowhere in the code to these words appear. But if you want to make a point, why worry about the facts?

The problems of the code and censorship are complex Henry Louis Mencken quotes "For every problem there is a solution which is simple, clean and wrong.”

Political correctness, for example, is an “approved of” form of censorship by many people. People who try to scream down speakers are also exercising a form of censorship. “We don’t think people should be allowed to hear what this person is saying because I don’t agree with it”

The code did block the discussion of many social issues and made them difficult to discuss in art.

Sturges seemed to have taken a great delight in finding ways around the censors who don’t always seem all that bright. A number of films at the height of the code were made about problems the code would have better left unsaid. Cat People deals with frigidity for example.

Many writers, studios and producers found ways around the code – for example, put some really anti-code material in the script that no one wants in there anyway so you can cut that and let the rest of the script that you really want in there get passed over.

Another approach was to do something to get past the code that was so ludicrous that the audience would know immediately what the author actually meant. More on that after the film

Sturges liked to poke fun at some of America’s “sacred cows”. He does it rather gently in looking at small town America (Morgan’s Creek), marriage, family, the military and so on, in such a way the audience did not reject it. (Compare with Blue Velvet as to what goes on in a small town)

Sturges is one of the first writers since the advent of sound to be able to mix in his scripts both visual and verbal humor. Watch for slapstick and verbal humor throughout the film.

Apparently a tyrant of a director who told the actors how to say very line and how to do every gesture, he managed to keep a little repertory group of actors happy.

The code can be found here: http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html

Getting around the code.

The problems of having Trudy Knockenlocker (Betty Hutton) becoming drunk and getting married under those conditions. She wound up hitting her head on a chandelier. Apparently getting married and not knowing to whom, and getting pregnant when drunk was out of the question, but doing it as a result of a blow to the head while dancing was OK!

Of course in the film, Hutton gets pregnant while married, but she has no idea to whom she is married nor can anyone find out.

In getting around the code, Sturges would often comply but in totally ludicrous ways. When Trudy hits her head on the lamp while dancing, no one in the audience would believe that this would cause the kind of “blackout” she has. Certainly, they wouldn’t after all the conversations about “lemonade”.

The Hays office apparently never got a complete script. The were having problems making decisions because they couldn’t see where things were going.

Another approach was to agree to take things out or change them, and then not do it and the next time around, the censors would have forgotten about it.

Trudy’s father, Constable Edmund Knockenlocker (William Demarest) plays a father of two daughters who control him, rather than the other way around. Yet he is capable (as we see near the films conclusion) of being very sympathetic to the plight of his daughter, so that beneath this “gruff” exterior he is OK and not being made into a “silly policeman” who walks around the house with his utility belt on. Problems as to whether wearing his utility belt around the house, probably never came up.

Poor Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) is also manipulated completely by his girlfriend, whom he finally marries and manages to have to deal with her sextuplets. He is a sort of small town schnook. There is little in his part that would be problematical except for his “illegal” activities which may not be that illegal. His stupidity at times might be seen as criminal but excessively honest. Both Bracken and Hutton were apparently pretty competitive trying to find funny things to do, which seems to contradict the statements that Sturges had them do everything exactly his way.

Sturges had directed on stage, and like Hawks is famous for his long takes. The scene where Norval and Trudy leave the house and go to the movies lasts nearly 5 minutes. Notice the way th long take gives a leisurely "small town" feel. Notice how many "small town" things show up in the background. There is a great deal of camera movement in tracking and dollying. There is a good deal of motion on the screen – cars move by as does a horse and buggy and so on. Much of the use of the long take probably has to do with Studges having been a stage director. It helps the actors in giving them a longer period for developing the scene without cuts, and it allows the audience a smoother connection with the characters.

The film lacks the verbal sparring of many of the screwball comedies. It is not the fast paced repartee of films like His Girl Friday. However both films focus on the female lead character and not the male, and both films have males who are dominated or “under the control” of women - one of whom is Norval and the other Mr. Kockenlocker who is dominated by his daughters.

The scene in the jail where Norval is being "urged" to escape by the constable, Norval fails to take the hints and read betwee the lines. One almost suspects that this is a "dig' at the audience to read between the lines of the film and be aware the that (a) they aren't drinking lemonade (b) Trudy did not hit her head on the lamp (c) the new psychology approach taken by the army and other things are all "digs" at the code.

Notice how sturges gently attacks the "sacred cows"

Small time life is not as idyllic as people would beloieve
The forces of order are not as ordered as people believe and their are forces that control them
The news media are not as honest as people have been led to believe
The government and the news media do not serve the people as much as themselves
The entire "miracle" is based on someone getting married and pregnant while drunk and then giving birth to 6 boys which gives great publicity to the State. As a result all the "negative" aspects of the event have to be altered and cleaned up so that people become "heroes".