Preston Sturges (/ˈstɜːrdʒɪs/;[1] born Edmund Preston Biden; August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director.
He is credited as being the first screenwriter to find success as a director. Prior to Sturges, other Hollywood directors (such as Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith and Frank Capra) had directed films from their own scripts; however, Sturges is often regarded as the first Hollywood figure to establish success as a screenwriter and then move into directing his own scripts. He sold the story for The Great McGinty to Paramount Pictures for $10 in exchange for directing it. Anthony Lane writes that "To us, that seems old hat, one of the paths by which the ambitious get to run their own show, but back in 1940, when The Great McGinty came out, it was very new hat indeed; the opening credits proclaimed 'Written and directed by Preston Sturges,' and it was the first time in the history of talkies that the two passive verbs had appeared together onscreen. From that conjunction sprang a whole tradition of filmmaking: literate, spiky, defensive, markedly personal, and almost always funny."[2] For that film, Sturges won the first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.[2]
Sturges went on to receive Oscar nominations for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). He also wrote and directed The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels (both 1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942), each considered classic comedies, appearing on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs.[3]
Per the documentary Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer,
he opened the gates for generations of future filmmakers by becoming the first screenwriter to establish himself as a film director. In the process, he made himself one of the most celebrated figures of the 1940s. But his star, which had burned so brightly, fell almost as quickly as it had risen. To this day, this man who introduced irony to American screen comedy remains an enigmatic and contradictory personality: a lowbrow aristocrat and a melancholy wiseguy, he reaped the rewards and paid the price for being a brilliant American dreamer.[4]
^"Sturges". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
^ abLane, Anthony (September 14, 1998). "Ants in His Pants". The New Yorker.
^"AFI's 100 YEARS…100 LAUGHS". American Film Institute. Retrieved February 11, 2023.
^Todd McCarthy, Ken Bowser (July 2, 1990). Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer(documentary). PBS.
PrestonSturges (/ˈstɜːrdʒɪs/; born Edmund Preston Biden; August 29, 1898 – August 6, 1959) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and film director...
July: the life and art of PrestonSturges. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 123–4. ISBN 0520079264. "Mrs. E.H. Sturges Engaged to Wed; | Former...
in France, Sturges is one of only seven Americans baptized at Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. Sturges is the third son of PrestonSturges, the Hollywood...
1940 American political satire comedy film written and directed by PrestonSturges, starring Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff and featuring William Demarest...
primetime soap opera Savannah. Sturges was born in Hollywood, California, and is the daughter of actor Solomon Sturges and actress Colette Jackson, and...
La Cava Mitchell Leisen Ernst Lubitsch Leo McCarey George Stevens PrestonSturges W. S. Van Dyke Billy Wilder Later films thought to have revived elements...
Eve is a 1941 American screwball comedy film written and directed by PrestonSturges and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. The film is based on...
The Life and Art of PrestonSturges, page 253, University of California Press, 1992 Alessandro Paroling, The Cinema of PrestonSturges: A Critical Study...
comedies of the 1930s by directors like Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, and PrestonSturges, which often satirized social constructs and social classes, reflecting...
Beach Story is a 1942 screwball comedy film written and directed by PrestonSturges, and starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor and Rudy Vallée...
Leisen. The film was written by PrestonSturges and was the last of his scripts shot by another director, as Sturges began his own directorial career...
playing small but memorable roles with comic flair. He appeared in many PrestonSturges movies as well as the W. C. Fields films International House, The Bank...
PrestonSturges and as a member of a troupe of actors whom Sturges repeatedly cast in his screen projects. He appeared in 10 films written by Sturges...
Lloyd, William A. Wellman, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, PrestonSturges, Charles Vidor, Billy Wilder, Clarence Brown, William Castle, George...
Hero (1944) is a satirical comedy-drama film written and directed by PrestonSturges, starring Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines and William Demarest, and featuring...
Thomas. The film was written by Garrett Fort, Robert Presnell Sr. and PrestonSturges, who provided the dialogue in his first Hollywood assignment, and was...
she was six months pregnant when filming began, upsetting director PrestonSturges to the point he had to be physically restrained. Lake also clashed...
author PrestonSturges (1898–1959), American film director and writer Ralph W. Sturges (1918–2007), American Mohegan tribal chief Robert Sturges (1891–1970)...
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