"The most spectacular manipulator of sheer humor since Mark Twain." - Manny Farber, Film Culture, 1962
The term "multitalented" only begins to describe Preston Sturges (1899–1959), who, aside from his careers as an engineer, songwriter, restaurateur, and inventor of kiss-proof lipstick, was the creator of some of the most sharp-witted, audacious, and all-around hilarious comedies ever to come out of Hollywood. Raised in transit between hard-nosed Chicago and cultured Europe-his flamboyantly artistic mother was a close companion of Isadora Duncan-Sturges combined an exile's sophisticated, ironic view of Yankee ways with a purely American disdain for social and aesthetic pretense.
Sturges established himself in Hollywood in the 1930s as a writer of witty and elegant screenplays. But he quickly learned that in the movie business, writers were expendable, while directors were "princes of the blood." Legend has it that he offered his script for The Great McGinty to Paramount for ten dollars, on one condition: that he be allowed to direct. Thus, in 1940, he became one of Hollywood's first true auteurs, paving the way for other writers-turned-director like Billy Wilder (see p. 13), who called him "a superman in the craft." This summer series is an invitation to enjoy Sturges's abundant gifts as they were meant to be enjoyed: in a theater, laughing out loud in good company.-Juliet Clark
