Birth name:Edmund Preston Bidens Birth: 29 August 1898 Died: 6 August 1959 Nationality: Hollywood Walk Star: Yes
Career / Biography
Preston Sturges was a director, producer and writer. His Oscar win and nominations were for his screen writing. He was responsible for 6 very influential screwball comedies in the early 1940's. After World War 1 he started writing plays. His second play, Strictly Dishonorable ws a big success on Broadway and attracted the attention of Hollywood. He wrote a lot of successful screen plays during the 1930's. The first film he directed and wrote was The Great McGinty.
The film won the first Best Original Screenplay Oscar. In Christmas in July a man thinks he has won a big money prize and spends money on other people and twist come when the true comes out. He followed this with one of the best rom-coms/screwball comedies, The Lady Eve which has a wonderfull performance from Barbara Stanwyck and is one of the classic screwball comedies. Sullivan's Travels is a film about film making an in a sense a defence of comedy films.
The Palm Beach Story is just a fun screwball comedy. It starts where most romantic comedies end, and follows what happends after the romantic wedding. The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek is the film that caused him problems with the censors after a one night stand in which she marries someone and gets pregnant. and then goes into some curious scenes that are still funny. With Hail the Conquering Hero he ha less control over the film due to changes in senior people at Paramount. Both of these films were nominated for Best Original Screenplay. He wanted to keep control of his films and so together with Howard Hughes they created California Pictures. The Great Moment, a biopic, was his last film with Paramount, was not a success an marke the start of his decline despite being one of only a very few poeple who wrote, directed and produced their own films (the other being Charles Chaplin, Noel Coward and Rene Clair).
He brought Harold Lloyd out of retirement for The Sin of Harold Diddlebock. It went over budget an over long in production. It has only a few moments of Sturges at his best. Unfaithfully Yours was a dark comedy with Rex Harrison fantasising about differnt ways to get revenge on his unfaithful wife. His influence in cinema is greater than the relatively few films he made.
