Preston Sturges Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Preston Sturges
Directing
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Preston Sturges (29 August 1898 – 6 August 1959), originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated playwright, screenwriter and film director born in Chicago, Illinois. In 1941 he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film The Great McGinty. Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. In recent years, film scholars such as Alessandro Pirolini have also argued that Sturges' cinema anticipated more experimental narratives by contemporary directors such as Joel and Ethan Coen, Robert Zemeckis, and Woody Allen, along with prolific The Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder: "Many of [Sturges'] movies and screenplays reveal a restless and impatient attempt to escape codified rules and narrative schemata, and to push the mechanisms and conventions of their genre to the extent of unveiling them to the spectator. [See for example] the disruption of standardized timelines in films such as The Power and the Glory and The Great McGinty [or the way] an apparently classical comedy such as Unfaithfully Yours (1948) shifts into the realm of multiple and hypothetical narratives. Prior to Sturges, other figures in Hollywood (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 be initially mainly successfully established as a screenwriter and then to subsequently move into directing his own scripts, at a time when those roles were mostly entrenched and separate. Famously, Sturges sold the story for The Great McGinty to Paramount Pictures for $1, in return for being allowed to direct the film; the sum was quietly raised to $10 by the studio for legal reasons. Description above from the Wikipedia article Preston Sturges, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Paris Holiday
Comedian Bob Hunter is aided by his French counterpart Fernydel and two beautiful blondes when he is targeted for death by a powerful European counterfeiting ring.
Christmas in July
An office clerk loves entering contests in the hopes of someday winning a fortune and marrying the girl he loves. His latest attempt is the Maxford House Coffee Slogan Contest. As a joke, some of his co-workers put together a fake telegram which says that he won the $25,000 grand prize.
Star Spangled Rhythm
Pop, a security guard at Paramount has told his son that he's the head of the studio. When his son arrives in Hollywood on shore leave with his buddies, Pop enlists the aid of the studio's dizzy switchboard operator in pulling off the charade. Things get more complicated when Pop agrees to put together a show for the Navy starring Paramount's top contract players.
Preston Sturges: The Rise and Fall of an American Dreamer
Documentary about the life and work of film director Preston Sturges.
Production
The Lady Eve
It's no accident when wealthy Charles falls for Jean. Jean is a con artist with her sights set on Charles' fortune. Matters complicate when Jean starts falling for her mark. When Charles suspects Jean is a gold digger, he dumps her. Jean, fixated on revenge and still pining for the millionaire, devises a plan to get back in Charles' life. With love and payback on her mind, she re-introduces herself to Charles, this time as an aristocrat named Lady Eve Sidwich.
The Lady Eve
It's no accident when wealthy Charles falls for Jean. Jean is a con artist with her sights set on Charles' fortune. Matters complicate when Jean starts falling for her mark. When Charles suspects Jean is a gold digger, he dumps her. Jean, fixated on revenge and still pining for the millionaire, devises a plan to get back in Charles' life. With love and payback on her mind, she re-introduces herself to Charles, this time as an aristocrat named Lady Eve Sidwich.
Unfaithfully Yours
A composer—who suspects his wife of cheating—plots to kill her and frame it on her lover, but things don't turn out as planned.
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
Twenty-three years after scoring the winning touchdown for his college football team mild-mannered Harold Diddlebock, who has been stuck in a dull, dead-end book-keeping job for years, is let go by his pompous boss, advertising tycoon J.E. Wagglebury, with nothing but a tiny pension. Harold, who never touches the stuff, takes a stiff drink with his new pal... and another, and another. What happened Wednesday?
The Sin of Harold Diddlebock
Twenty-three years after scoring the winning touchdown for his college football team mild-mannered Harold Diddlebock, who has been stuck in a dull, dead-end book-keeping job for years, is let go by his pompous boss, advertising tycoon J.E. Wagglebury, with nothing but a tiny pension. Harold, who never touches the stuff, takes a stiff drink with his new pal... and another, and another. What happened Wednesday?
The Palm Beach Story
A New York inventor, Tom Jeffers, needs cash to develop his big idea, so his adoring wife, Gerry, decides to raise it by divorcing him and marrying an eccentric Florida millionaire, J. D. Hackensacker III.
The Palm Beach Story
A New York inventor, Tom Jeffers, needs cash to develop his big idea, so his adoring wife, Gerry, decides to raise it by divorcing him and marrying an eccentric Florida millionaire, J. D. Hackensacker III.
Unfaithfully Yours
Before he left for a brief European visit, symphony conductor Sir Alfred De Carter casually asked his staid brother-in-law August to look out for his young wife, Daphne, during his absence. August has hired a private detective to keep tabs on her. But when the private eye's report suggests Daphne might have been canoodling with his secretary, Sir Alfred begins to imagine how he might take his revenge.
Unfaithfully Yours
Before he left for a brief European visit, symphony conductor Sir Alfred De Carter casually asked his staid brother-in-law August to look out for his young wife, Daphne, during his absence. August has hired a private detective to keep tabs on her. But when the private eye's report suggests Daphne might have been canoodling with his secretary, Sir Alfred begins to imagine how he might take his revenge.
Unfaithfully Yours
Before he left for a brief European visit, symphony conductor Sir Alfred De Carter casually asked his staid brother-in-law August to look out for his young wife, Daphne, during his absence. August has hired a private detective to keep tabs on her. But when the private eye's report suggests Daphne might have been canoodling with his secretary, Sir Alfred begins to imagine how he might take his revenge.
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