Actually written as 'The Biography of a Bum' in 1933, but the studios found it too political and 'women wouldn't like it'. Eventually, after several successful writing assignments for Paramount (Easy Living, Remember the Night) he was entrusted the director job. His own words describe what happened next. 'I went into strict training. This was the big opportunity of my life. I gave up drinking. I gave up smoking. I gave up late hours. I had a masseur, dinner in bed, I saved my strength... I was rewarded, on the fourteenth day of shooting, with pneumonia." Luckily the studio were impressed enough by what they'd seen to delay filming rather than switch directors and in ten days he was back at the helm. "I gave up not drinking and not smoking and have not been troubled by pneumonia since." It won the Oscar for Best Screenplay and Sturges was off on his terrific run of forties pictures.
It's also delightful to see one of his repertory of actors in later films appearing in almost every scene, Brian Donlevy (Miracle - his character's called 'McGinty'), William Demarest, Tamiroff (Miracle), Louis Jen Heydt (The Great Moment), Harry Rosenthal (Sullivan's Travels, Christmas in July), Esther Howard and Jimmy Conlin (both Sullivan's Travels), Frank Moran (Miracle); plus Muriel Angelus and Alyn Joslyn.
Sensational beginning which announces.. well, it's easier to show the title:
Great mix of corruption, redemption through love and very funny moments. The scene about Donlevy's time in child labour, where he describes how the factory was clean and light and they were looked after, was based on an account from Preston's own mum.
Shot by William C Mellor and scored by Freidrich Hollander.
Quotes from 'Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges' (1990).
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