The comedies of Preston Sturges, part 3: Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero

A continuation of The comedies of Preston Sturges part 1 and part 2.

The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story took place among the East Coast upper set; in Sullivan's Travels, we're told that film director John L. Sullivan earns $4000 a week. For his final two Paramount films, Preston Sturges focussed instead on the middle-class denizens of small towns. Both movies feature unlikely star Eddie Bracken, who, with his diminutive stature, wide-set eyes, small chin and substantial schnozz, was the perfect embodiment of Sturges' Everyman hero.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (filmed October - December 1942; released January 1944)

Constable Knockenlocker (William Demarest), Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) and Trudy (Betty Hutton) the morning after the dance in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Image source: Happyotter

Sturges' films often dealt with subjects not usually treated in a comedic way: political corruption (The Great McGinty), the randomness of life chances (Christmas in July), summary justice and the brutality of the prison system (Sullivan's Travels), divorce (The Palm Beach Story). During the World War II years Hollywood churned out morale-boosting movies about resolute G.I.s fighting Hitler and Tojo and, on the home front, noble wives making sacrifices. In The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Sturges instead wrung comedy out of sexually predatory soldiers and an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Trudy Knockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is the belle of the Midwestern town of Morgan's Creek. She has long been hopelessly loved by nebbish Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken). But Trudy has eyes only for men in uniform, and Norval has been deemed medically unfit for military service thanks to his high blood pressure: whenever he gets excited he sees spots and starts to stammer uncontrollably.

As the film opens soldiers on leave are roaming through the town looking for girls to invite to the send-off dance that night. Norval asks Trudy to go to the movies with him, but she wants to go to the party to "kiss the boys goodbye." However, she's reckoned without her widower father (William Demarest), the town constable, whose emotional fuse seems to be permanently set at a slow burn. He bars her from going despite support for Trudy from her younger sister Emmy (Diana Lynn):

KNOCKENLOCKER: . . .What is this military "kiss the boys goodbye" business and where is it to be transacted?
TRUDY: Oh just like they always do. . .in the church basement and then at the country club and then kinda. . .like that.
KNOCKENLOCKER: Like what?
TRUDY: That's all, goodnight, Papa.
KNOCKENLOCKER: Just a moment, what happens after the country club?
TRUDY: They bring you home.
KNOCKENLOCKER: Yeh. . .by way of Cincinnati. . .with a side trip through Detroit. I was a soldier too, you know. . .in the last war.
TRUDY: But Papa. . .I've already promised, and I'm already dressed up. . .
KNOCKENLOCKER: Yeh. . .well. . .you can get undressed. . .
TRUDY: But Papa. . .
EMMY: People aren't as evil-minded as they were when you were a soldier, Papa. . .I think you have a mind like a swamp. [1]

Knockenlocker's imagination, it turns out, is not lurid enough.

Trudy calls up Norval and accepts the movie date. Norval can't believe his luck, and he shouldn't. On the way to the theater Trudy explains the plan: he'll go to the movies; she'll borrow his car and go to the dance. Against his better judgment (and after Trudy bursts into tears), Norval gives in and goes to the triple feature by himself. Trudy tells him that she'll be back when the movies are over, about 1 am.

But it's not until 8 o'clock the next morning that Trudy screeches up to the theater in Norval's car; both the car and Trudy herself look more than a little worse for the wear. The dancing had moved from the church basement to the country club (where a drunk member orders "champagne for everybody!") and then to a roadhouse. While dancing at the roadhouse Trudy is lifted high in the air and her head is banged against a low-hanging mirror ball; everything after that is a blur.

Norval desperately tries to think of a story to tell Mr. Knockenlocker. Flat tire? Falling asleep in the movie? Accident on the road? Knockenlocker's heard them all before, though, and when Norval brings Trudy home as their neighbors are heading to church on Sunday morning she and Emmy have to restrain their father from taking a swing at Norval, who barely manages to escape.

Upstairs in their room Emmy points out that Trudy is wearing a ring (which looks suspiciously like a curtain ring) on the third finger of her left hand. The still-woozy Trudy tries to remember the events of the evening, and a detail flashes into her mind: someone said "Let's all get married," and then. . .but she can't remember his name. Maybe it had a 'Z' in it. . .like Ratzkiwatski? But then she recalls that someone advised not giving their right names. So Trudy not only has no idea of her husband's real name, she has no idea what name she gave either, or where the marriage may have taken place. She has no marriage certificate or any evidence supporting her story, apart from the curtain ring.

There is one more piece of evidence, it turns out: Trudy is pregnant. The only solution is for her to get married right away, and the startlingly unsentimental Emmy and her hard-nosed father have both picked out the perfect patsy: Norval. (As Emmy says, "He took you out, didn't he? He brought you home, didn't he? At eight o'clock in the morning, didn't he? He fits like the skin on a wienie." [2]) Once again Norval can't believe his luck: the girl he's loved forever wants to marry him. But Trudy can't go through with it, and confesses everything. While Norval still wants to marry her despite her pregnancy, there's an insurmountable problem:  she's already married, and if she marries again without getting a divorce, she's committing bigamy. But she can't get divorced without proof that she's married, which she'll never be able to produce.

Norval has a brainstorm: what if Trudy marries Private Ratzkiwatski again? She wouldn't be committing bigamy, because she's already married to him. Then she'd have a valid marriage certificate, which would enable her to get a divorce. After Trudy's divorce is finalized she and Norval can get married, and avert the looming scandal. It's a brilliant plan, requiring only that Norval carry off an impersonation of the nonexistent Ratzkiwatski. A little discretion, self-confidence, and coolness under pressure is all that's required. Unfortunately Norval possesses none of those things. Only a miracle (and cameo appearances by two characters from an earlier Sturges film) can head off catastrophe. . .

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek takes American pieties about the honor of soldiers and the sanctity of motherhood and utterly subverts them. It even courts blasphemy: the "virgin" birth takes place at Christmastime. The true miracle of the film is that it got past the Hays/Breen censorship office largely intact (Sturges did have to remove some footage and shoot some additional scenes). Although we never see either Trudy or the soldiers drinking alcohol, that Trudy got drunk and had sex with one (or perhaps more) of the departing soldiers is strongly implied.

Despite the movie's comic tone the set was not a particularly happy one. Sturges was becoming more volatile as his marriage disintegrated and as tensions heightened with the censorship office and studio executives. Despite wartime restrictions Sturges regularly ran over schedule and over budget; for one scene in Miracle he did 50 takes. When Paramount production chief Buddy DeSylva learned about this he shot off an angry memo to Sturges:

I think it is absolutely disgraceful. . .No other director on the lot needs fifty takes to get a scene. Either you do not properly explain to the actors what they are called on to do, or you engage inadequate actors, or perhaps the actors get so upset after take #15 or #20 that they are no longer capable of giving you what you desire. [3]

Norval Jones may have been smitten with Trudy Knockenlocker, but Eddie Bracken did not enjoy working with Betty Hutton. He'd appeared in several earlier films with her, and was concerned about being upstaged. Sturges promised that she wouldn't be given a song, but of course, Betty wanted one. Sturges' solution probably pleased no one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmdOH7dKSZQ

In the end the premiere of Miracle was delayed from the spring until the following winter. The studio that had released three of Sturges' movies between August 1940 and February 1941 was now willing to go a more than a year (December 1942 to January 1944) between Sturges films. It was a sign that relations between Sturges and the studio executives were badly frayed. In the end The Miracle of Morgan's Creek wasn't released until after Sturges had completed filming his next movie, Hail the Conquering Hero, and a full a month after his contract with Paramount had expired without renewal in December 1943. But remarkably, Miracle was the biggest hit of the year and the most profitable film of Sturges' Paramount career. [4]

Hail the Conquering Hero (filmed July - September 1943; released August 1944)

The Reception Committee Chairman (Franklin Pangborn), Woodrow Truesmith (Eddie Bracken), and Sergeant Heffelfinger (William Demarest) in Hail the Conquering Hero. Image source: Film Forum

The success of Miracle gave Sturges leverage when the studio took his next film, Hail the Conquering Hero, out of his hands after mixed audience responses during December previews. DeSylva ordered the movie to be extensively re-edited, but a February 1944 preview of this studio version was even worse. Sturges made DeSylva an offer he couldn't refuse: he would come back to the studio for rewrites, retakes, and re-cutting, without pay. He changed the ending, reshot scenes over four days in early April, restored many of the studio's cuts and made some new ones of his own. Ironically, the studio interference may have given Sturges an opportunity to improve the movie.

Out of the fog, a group of six marines on leave enter a nightclub. They've just lost all their money in a crap game, and are in a dire situation:

PFC BILL SWENSON (Stephen Gregory): No dough.
PFC JUKE GILLETTE (Len Hendry): Nothin' to do.
SERGEANT HEFFELFINGER (William Demarest): And five days to do it in. [5]

In the bar, though, as they order one beer with their last 15 cents and prepare to share it, a full tray of sandwiches and beer for all of them miraculously materializes. When the marines go in search of their benefactor they find Woodrow LaFayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) sitting at the end of the bar. The son of a marine who died in World War I, joining up has been his dearest wish all his life. And when Pearl Harbor was bombed, he did—but after a month he received a medical discharge for chronic hayfever. He tells the marines that he lied to his mother and told her that he'd been posted overseas, but ever since his discharge he's been working in a shipyard.

One of the marines, the orphan Bugsy (Freddie Steele), has an especially soft spot for mothers. From the bar's pay phone he calls Woodrow's mom (Georgia Caine) in the small California town of Oakridge, and puts Woodrow on the line. Woodrow tries to maintain the fiction that he's in the marines, but Bugsy tells his mother that he's been wounded and honorably discharged, and Heffelfinger adds that he'll be coming home the next day on the train.

The marines dress Woodrow in uniform and, to his horror, give him a medal. The plan is to slip into town unnoticed and have Woodrow quietly reunite with his mother. Only, the return of a war hero is just about the biggest thing ever to happen in Oakridge. When the train pulls into the station he's greeted by a mob of well-wishers, banners, all four of the town's brass bands (who start playing simultaneously), and Mayor Noble, who is campaigning for re-election and wants to associate himself with the unsuspecting Woodrow.

Once the intensity of the town's interest in Woodrow becomes apparent to the marines, they go all in. At every opportunity they embellish Woodrow's fictional exploits, until it seems that he's single-handedly massacred whole Imperial Japanese Army divisions and ensured victory at Guadalcanal. Woodrow is sinking ever deeper into a trap from which he sees no way to escape. When there is a knock at the door and the sheriff and judge enter he's sure the jig is up. But they don't want to arrest him for impersonation and falsehood—they want to draft him as the Progressive candidate in the mayoral election. When they shove him in front of the crowd, he tries to tell them the truth, but everything he says only increases their acclaim:

WOODROW: Ladies and Gentlemen. . .You're making a big mistake. [Wild cheer]. . .I REALLY DON'T DESERVE IT! [Laughter and hoorays]. . .The medals you saw on me you could practically say were PINNED ON BY MISTAKE! [Crowd roars] [6]

Further complicating Woodrow's life is that after his discharge he had written his sweetheart Libby (Ella Raines) that he'd fallen in love with someone else, so that she wouldn't wait for him. She didn't: she's engaged to Forrest, Mayor Noble's rich, tall, handsome son. But now that Woodrow has returned a hero, she's having second thoughts. Woodrow, of course, has never stopped loving her. But now he's facing shame and disgrace, and is glad that she'll be spared. Only, does she want to be. . .?

Libby was one of the first big roles for Ella Raines, a young actress with striking looks who went on to star in Phantom Lady (1943), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1946), and Impact (1949), among other films. In the initial takes of her scenes she was stiff and unsure (her performance quickly improved). After four days Henry Ginsberg, Paramount's "Hatchet Man," not only insisted that she be fired, but without telling Sturges had already hired her replacement. Sturges burst into Ginsberg's office in a fury. When he left, two things had been decided: Ella Raines would remain in the cast of Hail the Conquering Hero, and despite being offered a raise, Sturges would not renew his Paramount contract when it expired six months later. Sturges would later write, "The awful day about Ella Raines will be with me always." [7]

Raines was clearly the occasion, not the cause, of Sturges' break with Paramount. He was tired of the officious oversight and interference of studio executives and their reluctance to release his films. He wanted to form his own independent production company where he would have greater control.

Hail the Conquering Hero includes many of Sturges' familiar situations, characters and actors. There's the ever-exasperated William Demarest, the ever-flustered Franklin Pangborn, and the ever-opportunistic Raymond Walburn. But most especially there is the figure of the naïve and acted-upon central character Woodrow Truesmith, who, like Dan McGinty, Jimmy MacDonald, Charles Pike, John L. Sullivan, Tom Jeffers and Norval Jones, has his happiness thrust upon him by more knowing others. It is the summation and culmination of Sturges' achievement as a writer and director at Paramount, but also marks the abrupt end of his most creative and productive period.

Coda: Sturges after Paramount

Tony Windborn (Kurt Kreuger), Daphne de Carter (Linda Darnell), and Sir Alfred de Carter (Rex Harrison) in Unfaithfully Yours. Image source: Family Friendly Movies [8]

After leaving Paramount, Sturges did eventually form a production company in partnership with Howard Hughes, but Hughes' money meant that Hughes, not Sturges, retained control. The one film Sturges completed for California Pictures, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947), was given only a limited release, and after disagreements on their next project, Vendetta, Hughes closed the set and dissolved the partnership.

Sturges immediately signed a contract with 20th Century Fox that promised him $9000 a week. The first result was the formally inventive black comedy Unfaithfully Yours (1948), which starred Rex Harrison as conductor Sir Alfred de Carter and Linda Darnell as his much younger wife Daphne. The film's humor turns on the jealous Sir Alfred's murderous fantasies about his wife, which is perhaps one reason for its box office failure. Sturges was then assigned the uncongenial task of writing and directing a Technicolor vehicle for Betty Grable, The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949). Grable was Fox's biggest star, but the movie far exceeded its budget and was her first flop. Sturges' contract was not renewed.

He worked fitfully over the next several years writing scripts (none were produced) and pouring money into his failing restaurant The Players. In 1953 he sold The Players and his home, and left Hollywood for good.

Before his untimely death in 1959—he was only 60—Sturges would direct just one more film. Les carnets du Major Thompson (1955) was based on the book by Pierre Daninos that humorously detailed the cultural differences between the French and the English. Filmed in Paris with a multinational cast for Gaumont Studios, it was released in America as The French They Are A Funny Race. Critic Bosley Crowther, usually Sturges' champion, wrote in his New York Times review that it was "a generally listless little picture, without wit, electricity or even plot. . .The French they must be funnier than this." [9] Although the movie made back its modest production costs, it was a dispiriting finish to the filmmaking career of the man who, in the four years between 1940 and 1944, created seven great comedies.

Other posts in this series:

• The comedies of Preston Sturges part 1: The Great McGinty to The Lady Eve
• The comedies of Preston Sturges part 2: Sullivan's Travels and The Palm Beach Story

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1. Brian Henderson, editor, Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges, University of California Press, 1995, pp. 609-610.
2. Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges, p. 637.
   
3. Diane Jacobs, Christmas in July: The Life and Art of Preston Sturges, University of California Press, 1992, p. 303. 
4. Brian Henderson, editor, Five Screenplays by Preston Sturges, University of California Press, 1985, p. 685.
5. Five Screenplays by Preston Sturges, p. 712.
6. Five Screenplays by Preston Sturges, p. 773-774.
7. Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges, Simon and Schuster, 1990, p. 297.
8. A movie about suspicions of sexual infidelity and fantasies of homicidal revenge is family friendly? Just asking.
9. Quoted in Jacobs, p. 428.