Golden Boy

Sturges, the ultimate writer-director -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Preston Sturges was a wunderkind film director and screen writer of the last century. He died at age 60, in 1959 after a life of hard drinking and fun living. His golden period was a brief 5 years from roughly 1938 thru 1943. In those 5 years, he created some of the wittiest, craftiest screwball comedies of the era: The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels and The Great McGinty. I just watched 1940’s Remember the Night (starring Fred MacMurry and Barbara Stanwyck). It was truly a movie where I laughed and nearly cried. Sturges was a populist, everyman kind of story teller much like his contemporary Frank Capra. But Sturges’ movies were edgy, bright, laden with sexual overtones, sarcastic and a quite bit ahead of their time.

Sturges was born to a traveling salesman, and an aspiring singer, his mother Estelle. Estelle had a bigger-than-life personality and married 4 times (one marriage to a wealthy stock broker). Sturges spent his young adulthood as a Wall Street stock runner, then as an army lieutenant in 1916. From there, he made an unlikely springboard over to acting on Broadway in a play called Hotbed. While acting in 1928, he wrote his own play entitled Strictly Confidential – a play which found a producer and earned an unheard-of $300,000 in one year.

Sturges heard Hollywood calling from this success and parlayed his Confidential success into a wildly successful screen-writing career. He wrote The Power and the Glory in 1933, and soon was earning $2500 a week as a solo screen writer. (Most writers worked in pairs at the time). Sturges broke most of the rules at the time and incurred the awe, envy, wrath and jealousy of fellow writers. He was already Hollywood handsome and strident; he piled huge successes on top of that. By the early 40’s, Sturges was producing, directing and writing his own movies.

Every golden streak must come to an end, and so it was with Sturges. In the late 40’s, he befriended Howard Hughes – a kindred soul with a monolithic ego and money to burn. Sturges and Hughes created their own company, California Pictures. A first (and probably fatal) stumbling block occurred when Hughes wanted Sturges to feature his lady friend, Faith Domergue in a starring role. California Pictures created two (commercially dud) movies of any note – Vendetta and Mad Wednesday.

From this point, Sturges was labeled ‘box office poison’ (Hollywood’s ungrateful epithet for the no-longer-successful). By the mid 50’s, Sturges was battling creditors and the IRS – had to give up his privately owned nightclub called The Players. Following in the footsteps of his mother, Sturges married 4 times and lived a colorful, gin-soaked life. Sturges was a good-looking, macho braggart who could come through with “the goods”. You would have to love this man if you were secure in your own saddle, or loathe him if you weren’t. That he had a career decline is no major detraction; that he wrote and directed some of the best Hollywood movies ever made is truly remarkable and we have to give the Golden Boy his dues.

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