Preston Sturges was one of the best screenwriters and directors. He made two of my favorite films with some of the most insightful quotes to be spoken on nitrate.
He was able have great stars in his best films, including Henry Fonda, Barbara Stanwick, Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert. The one thing I always found imponderable was why he had Eddy Bracken star in his later films.
In the LA TV market, Tom Hatten, the former "Popeye the Sailor Man" cartoon show sketch doodler, M.C.-ed an old movie show. He was terrific at introducing movies from the Universal and Paramount Library. He gave the viewers the film's historical and biographical context and thankfully he introduced Preston Sturges' films to me.
Sullivan's Travels (1941)
ON POVERTY
Burrows the Butler: Good morning, sir.
Burrows: I don't like it at all, sir. Fancy dress, I take it?
John L. Sullivan: What's the matter with it?
Burrows: I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir.
John L. Sullivan: Who's caricaturing?
John L. Sullivan: I'm going out on the road to find out what it's like to be poor and needy and then I'm going to make a picture about it.
Burrows: If you'll permit me to say so, sir, the subject is not an interesting one. The poor know all about poverty and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.
John L. Sullivan: But I'm doing it for the poor. Don't you understand?
Burrows: I doubt if they would appreciate it, sir. They rather resent the invasion of their privacy, I believe quite properly, sir. Also, such excursions can be extremely dangerous, sir. I worked for a gentleman once who likewise, with two friends, accoutered themselves as you have, sir, and then went out for a lark. They have not been heard from since.
Burrows: You see, sir, rich people and theorists - who are usually rich people - think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches - as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn't, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms. It is to be stayed away from, even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned.
Sullivan:
Well, you seem to have made quite a study of it.
Burrows: (dryly)
Quite unwillingly, sir. Will that be all, sir?
(Sullivan watches him exit, then turns to the valet.)
Sullivan:
He gets a little gruesome every once in a while.
The Valet:
Always reading books, sir.
"There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan."--John Lloyd Sullivan (Joel McCrea)
The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Gerry Jeffers: Anyway, men don't get smarter as they get older. They just lose their hair.
Princess Centimillia: I'd marry Captain McGloo tomorrow, even with that name.
John D. Hackensacker III: And divorce him the next month.
Princess Centimillia: Nothing is permanent in this world - except for Roosevelt.
No comments:
Post a Comment