Preston Sturges: More Than Comedy

July 27–August 26, 2023

Look again at the hilarious, utterly idiosyncratic films of writer-director Preston Sturges, and discover what makes them classic comedies—and something more than comedies. Author and film critic Stuart Klawans joins us in person for three screenings and a book signing.

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  • The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

  • The Lady Eve

  • The Palm Beach Story

  • Sullivan’s Travels

  • The Good Fairy

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Great McGinty

    Preston Sturges
    United States, 1940
    Thursday, July 27 7 PM
    Introduced by Stuart Klawans

    Preston Sturges’s ferociously funny attack on the American political system is a twist on the Abe Lincoln myth: even a bum, backed by the right machine, can become president.

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  • The Lady Eve

    Preston Sturges
    United States, 1941
    Saturday, July 29 5 PM
    Introduced by Stuart Klawans

    Starring Barbara Stanwyck as a cardsharp who plays naive ale heir Henry Fonda not once but twice, Preston Sturges’s comedy of innocence and experience is “one of the most liberatingly funny films ever made” (New Yorker).

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  • The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

    Preston Sturges
    United States, 1944
    Sunday, July 30 7 PM
    Book Signing and Introduction by Stuart Klawans

    When small-town girl Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) gets knocked up by a soldier—she isn’t sure which one—a 4-F local boy (Eddie Bracken) attempts to save the day. That Preston Sturges’s riotous comedy made it past the censors is a miracle in itself. 

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  • The Good Fairy

    William Wyler
    United States, 1935
    Wednesday, August 2 7 PM

    Preston Sturges provided the sparkling script for this rarely seen comedy. Margaret Sullavan plays a movie usherette, who, to deflect the amorous attentions of a would-be benefactor (Frank Morgan), finds herself a husband in the White Pages.

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  • Easy Living

    Mitchell Leisen
    United States, 1937
    Sunday, August 6 7 PM

    Jean Arthur plays a working girl whose life is transformed when a fur coat tossed from a millionaire’s apartment lands on her head. Preston Sturges’s screenplay is “funny and gracious and generous in the best Sturges tradition” (Andrew Sarris).

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  • Christmas in July

    Preston Sturges
    United States, 1940
    Wednesday, August 9 7 PM

    Striving clerk Dick Powell wins an advertising jingle contest and triggers a corporate nervous breakdown in this comedy skewering the American dream of overnight success.

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  • Remember the Night

    Mitchell Leisen
    United States, 1940
    Friday, August 11 7 PM

    DA Fred MacMurray takes jewel thief Barbara Stanwyck home to Indiana for the holidays in this tender comedy scripted by Preston Sturges. “As smart-mouthed as it is stunningly compassionate” (Village Voice).

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  • The Palm Beach Story

    Preston Sturges
    United States, 1942
    Saturday, August 19 7:30 PM

    Preston Sturges pits the idle rich, embodied by Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor, against the ingenious but impoverished Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea in this fractured fairy tale.

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  • Hail the Conquering Hero

    Preston Sturges
    United States, 1944
    Wednesday, August 23 7 PM

    Preston Sturges’s wartime comedy of community stars Eddie Bracken as a soldier who is discharged from military service due to hay fever but is hailed as a hero when he gets home.

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  • Sullivan’s Travels

    Preston Sturges
    United States, 1941
    Saturday, August 26 7:30 PM

    Hollywood movie director Joel McCrea wants to switch from lowbrow comedy to dramas with Social Significance, so he sets out to learn something about poverty, and finds out more than he bargained for. Veronica Lake costars.

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