Volume 30, Number 4 · March 17, 1983
Kings of Comedy
By Veronica Geng
Between Flops: A Biography of Preston Sturges
by James Curtis
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 339 pp., $15.95
The King of Comedy
written by Paul Zimmerman, directed by Martin Scorsese
The American filmmaker Preston Sturges had a supreme gift for making people laugh without representing the world as better or worse than it is. It was worse than usual during the Depression and World War II, when, from 1933 (the year he finished a first draft of The Great McGinty) to 1944, Sturges wrote and directed seven comedies: McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero. In them, politics is rigged, poverty is immune to charity, bosses are petty dictators and workers live on dreams of jackpots, romantic love is either a luxury of the rich or a fabrication of the con artist, and small-town America's morality is the kind that ostracizes an unwed pregnant girl while embracing a bogus war hero. Yet these movies sent waves of euphoria rolling through the audience.
Review, 4424 words
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