Product Description
-------------------
Preston Sturges was the first prominent screenwriter to direct
his own script. He went on an unparalleled creative streak that
brought to the screen some of the most beloved films of all time.
This collection pays tribute to seven of his finest and funniest
films, starring cinema's most illustrious screen stars. The Great
McGinty: An rtunist (Brian Donlevy), turns corruption into a
promising political career, but struggles to stay on top when he
tries to go honest. Christmas in July: Hope springs eternal when
an office clerk (Dick Powell) mistakenly believes he's won a
coffee slogan challenge and spends the "prize money". The Lady
Eve: It's the ultimate battle of the sexes when a wealthy heir
(Henry Fonda) falls (literally!) for a con woman (Barbara
Stanwyck) with a shady past. Sullivan's Travels: In this comedic
masterpiece, a wealthy director (Joel McCrea) wants to find
"real" people for his next great film (co-starring Veronica
Lake). The Palm Beach Story: Money makes the world go 'round, or
so Gerry (Claudette Colbert) believes when she divorces her
struggling husband (McCrea) and supports him by marrying a
millionaire. The Great Moment: This stirring biopic follows the
fascinating life of W.T.G. Morton (McCrea), a 19th century
dentist who successfully develops the first anesthesia. Hail the
Conquering Hero: A quirky soldier (Eddie Bracken) gets an
unexpected homecoming when a group of uproarious Marines decide
to "make" a hero out of the comic misfit.
Bonus Content:
Disc 1 - The Great McGinty:
* Theatrical Trailer
*
Disc 2 - Christmas in July:
* Theatrical Trailer
*
Disc 3 - The Lady Eve:
* Theatrical Trailer
*
Disc 4 - Sullivan's Travels:
* Theatrical Trailer
*
Disc 5 - The Palm Beach Story:
* Theatrical Trailer
*
Disc 6 - The Great Moment:
* Theatrical Trailer
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Preston Sturges was a 20th-century Renaissance man who, at
Para Pictures between 1940 and 1943, wrote and directed
eight original movies unlike anything before or since. All but
one were high-energy, brilliantly detailed, and very, very funny
comedies that became instant classics. No one ever dreamed up a
more colorful assortment of characters, wrote more lovingly
textured dialogue for them, or sent them hurtling and skittering
through more outrageous situations, with undertones often darker
than most dramatic films. Seven of these pictures comprise this
boxed set; The Miracle of Morgan's Creek is missing because it
remained with Para when most of the studio's pre-1949
inventory was acquired decades ago by Universal/MCA. (It's on DVD
via Para.) The omission of a single film from the cycle--and
one of the very best--is regrettable, but there's plenty here to
relish.
Sturges was already an established playwright and screenwriter
when he cajoled Para into letting him direct one of his own
scripts. The Great McGinty won him the 1940 O for best
original screenplay, the raffish tale of a bum (Brian Donlevy)
who ingratiates himself with the political machine of a heartland
city by successfully voting 37 times in one election, then rises
to become "reform" candidate for governor. The film is a glowing
example of Sturges's penchant for filling the foregrounds as well
as backgrounds of his movies with flavorful, mostly nameless
character actors and according each of them star status, if only
for one world-class line of dialogue. They and Sturges stood by
one another throughout the cycle, and the result was a richness
variously--and aptly--likened to Dickens or Bruegel.
Christmas in July (1940) followed, a sardonic but big-hearted
comedy about a young working-class couple (Dick Powell and Ellen
Drew) duped into believing one topsy-turvy afternoon that they've
struck it rich by winning a slogan contest. Then came the film
widely regarded as Sturges's most side-splitting, The Lady Eve
(1941). Barbara Stanwyck is merciless--and breathtakingly
sexy--as a second-generation con artist who targets brewing heir
Henry Fonda, a clueless amateur herpetologist who has spent
entirely too much time up the .
Then again, there are people who name Sullivan's Travels (1942)
among the best films ever made. Joel McCrea plays a successful
director of Hollywood comedies who decides he must make a
social-consciousness allegory, O Brother Where Art Thou? His
exploratory road trip disguised as a hobo, with starlet Veronica
Lake for companionship, combines Hollywood satire with starkest
drama verging on horror. The film is utterly unique and
shatteringly powerful.
The Palm Beach Story (1942), a return to screwball comedy, dances
a goofy tarantella on the American obsession with wealth. There
are a couple of dozen millionaires at large in this movie, every
one of them insane: Robert Dudley as a comic deus-ex-machina
("the Wienie King"), a railroad club car filled with Sturges
stalwarts ("the Ale and Quail Club"), and '20s crooner Rudy
Vallee ascending to character-actor immortality as the devoted
suitor of Joel McCrea's runaway wife, Claudette Colbert. At that
point (still in 1942) Sturges embarked on his most tortuous
project, Triumph over Pain, the fact-based chronicle of the
Boston dentist (Joel McCrea) who discovered the use of ether for
anaesthesia. Instead of being canonized, he was destroyed.
Sturges, whose 1933 screenplay The Power and the Glory had
anticipated the fractured time scheme of Citizen Kane by eight
years, tried for even more complicated narrative-in-reverse
here--and also studded the tragic story with startling bursts of
slapstick humor. Para recut the film drastically and changed
the title to The Great Moment; the fitful results would not be
released till two years later.
Meanwhile, Sturges scored a pair of best-screenplay O
nominations in 1944 for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail
the Conquering Hero, two small-town comedies starring Eddie
Bracken as a nebbish ill-made for heroism yet obliged by wartime
circumstance to rise to the occasion. Each of these films is a
comic masterpiece, each asking discomfiting questions about
cherished, arguably destructive American values, yet finding its
own cockeyed way to affirmation. Miracle isn't available here,
but Hail the Conquering Hero casts a lingering spell, beyond
satire. To quote its last line: "You got no idea." --Richard T.
Jameson