Happy Birthday, Preston Sturges! Born today in 1898 as Edmund Preston Biden, this American playwright, screenwriter, and film director was one of Hollywood's genuinely legendary directors, and had redefined the boundaries and meaning of screen comedy during part of the early 1940s.
As a young man, Sturges bounced back and forth between Europe and the United States.
As Sturges spent much of his childhood and youth in France, he ended up fluent in French and eventually became a Francophile (or Gallophile) who always considered France as his "second home".
In 1916, Sturges worked as a runner for New York stock brokers, a position he obtained through his mother's third husband. This was the wealthy American stock broker Solomon Sturges. He had adopted Preston in 1902.
The next year, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Service, and later graduated as a lieutenant from Camp Dick in Texas without seeing action.
While at camp, Sturges wrote an essay entitled "Three Hundred Words of Humor", which was printed in the camp newspaper. This became his first published work.
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.
Sturges did not start writing until he was thirty years old. He was also the first of the writer directors and was soon followed by such as John Huston, Billy Wilder, Samuel Fuller, Blake Edwards, and Nunnally Johnson.
In 1942, in his review of 'The Palm Beach Story', American painter, film critic and writer Manny Farber wrote:
“He [Sturges] is essentially a satirist without any stable point of view from which to aim his satire. He is apt to turn his back on what he has been sniping at to demolish what he has just been defending.
He is contemptuous of everybody except the opportunist and the unscrupulous little woman who, at some point in every picture, labels the hero a poor sap.
That the invariable fairy godfather of each picture is not only expressive of his own cold-blooded cynicism but of typical Hollywood fantasy is an example of how this works.
Another phase of his attack is shrouding in slapstick the fact that the godfather pays off not for perseverance or honesty or ability but merely from capriciousness.”
Sturges passed of a heart attack in New York City, New York on August 6, 1959. He was 60.
This was during his time at the American historic Algonquin Hotel while writing and editing his autobiography (which, ironically, he had intended to title The Events Leading Up to My Death).
In 1975, Sturges became the first writer to be given the Screen Writers Guild's Laurel Award posthumously. His autobiography, Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges: His Life in His Words, was published years later in 1990 by Simon & Schuster.
Sturges has a star dedicated to him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 1601 Vine Street.
Contrary to popular belief, Preston was not related to American film director John Sturges ('Bad Day at Black Rock', 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral', 'The Great Escape').
Sturges made his mark at a time when talk in large part had supplanted images as the driving force in filmmaking. Although he had a string of commercial failures, he also acquired a reputation as an expensive perfectionist.
In the sound era, Sturges was the first great writer to became a director.
He was also the first prominent screenwriter to direct his own script. He went on an unparalleled creative streak that brought to the screen some of the most beloved films of all time.
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 a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene.
Prior to Sturges, other figures in Hollywood (such as Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith and Frank Capra) had directed films from their own scripts.
However, Sturges is often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his own scripts, at a time when those roles were separate.
Sturges famously sold the story for the 1940 American black and white political satire screwball comedy film 'The Great McGinty' to Paramount Pictures for one dollar, in return for being allowed to direct the film.
When he was at his peak at Paramount in the mid-1940s, Sturges was not only the highest-paid screenwriter but one of the highest-paid people in America.
Sturges won the first-ever Oscar for Writing Original Screenplay for 'The Great McGinty' (1940). This occurred at the 13th Academy Awards in late February 1941.
Sturges also received two screenwriting Oscar nominations in the same year. This was for 'Hail the Conquering Hero' (1944) and'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek' (1944).
However, he didn't win. This occurred the 17th Academy Awards in mid-March 1945.
This was a feat since matched by Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone and American film and theatre actor and later an award-winning screenwriter Frank Butler.
Though he had a thirty-year Hollywood career, Sturges' greatest comedies were filmed in a furious five-year burst of activity from 1939 to 1944.
It was during this time of which he turned out 'The Great McGinty', 'Christmas in July'(1940), 'The Lady Eve' (1941), 'Sullivan's Travels' (1941), 'The Palm Beach Story', (1942), 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek' and 'Hail the Conquering Hero'.
Half a century later, four of these – 'The Lady Eve', 'Sullivan's Travels', 'The Palm Beach Story' and 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek' – were chosen by the American Film Institute as being among the 100 Funniest Movies.
American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism Andrew Sarris wrote, "Sturges repeatedly suggested that the lowliest boob could rise to the top with the right degree of luck, bluff, and fraud.”
Sturges' rich writing style has been described as that of "a lowbrow aristocrat, a melancholy wiseguy." His scripts were almost congenitally unable to deliver a single mood.
In 'Hail the Conquering Hero', the series of lies, crimes, and embarrassments all somehow bolster the film's theme of patriotism and duty.
Sometimes this attitude could be conveyed in a single line of dialogue, such as when Barbara Stanwyck describes the man of her dreams with a combination of love and malice: "I need him like the axe needs the turkey."
In recent years, film scholars such as American film scholar Alessandro Pirolini have also argued that Sturges' cinema anticipated more experimental narratives by contemporary directors such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Robert Zemeckis, and Woody Allen.
This was also along with American comedy writer, novelist and prolific writer on The Simpsons (1989–present) John Swartzwelder.
He said: "Many of [Sturges'] movies and screenplays reveal a restless and impatient attempt to escape codified rules and narrative schemata, and to push the mechanisms and conventions of their genre to the extent of unveiling them to the spectator.
According to Sturges' trademarks, these include witty, rapid-fire dialogue mixed with broad, screwball physical comedy, a colorful supporting cast (often including the same actors) who give his films a bustling liveliness.
This also includes wry explorations of the sexual politics of the time, with a typically strong, crafty female lead who often runs intellectual circles around a gullible, idealistic male lead.
This also includes wry explorations of the sexual politics of the time, with a typically strong, crafty female lead who often runs intellectual circles around a gullible, idealistic male lead.
His films often have a more subversive and darker undertone than other comedies of the day, at times suddenly veering into such risqué themes as sexuality, poverty, corruption and murder.
In 1990, 'Sullivan's Travels' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
In 1994, 'The Lady Eve' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Because strong dialogue and solid story structure were essential to a film's success and because both were staples of the writer’s tool kit, the stature of the screenwriter skyrocketed during that era.
Due to his talent as a writer, Sturges went from being one of Hollywood's most-in-demand and best-paid scenarists to its first prominent writer-director.
Due to his talent as a writer, Sturges went from being one of Hollywood's most-in-demand and best-paid scenarists to its first prominent writer-director.
A superb writer and dazzling stylist in his prime, Sturges' reputation loomed larger even decades later, all the more amazing considering that it rested principally on a half-dozen pictures made during a relatively short period of time.
Sturges had been active from 1928–1956.
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