Event – Detail Past

There has been a sudden and deserved rekindling of interest in the great American film maker Preston Sturges. Reflected in articles in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The New Yorker, plus a recent book by  Stuart Klawans, former film critic for The Nation: Crooked, but Never Common; The Films of Preston Sturges.  Local film collector and share-holder George Strimel will present a selection of Sturges’ creations this summer in matinee presentations.

A suicidal man walks into a bar…and Preston Sturges turns the joke into a political satire called The Great McGinty.  Preston wrote the story and sold it to Paramount for $10 on condition that he be its director.  With a skimpy $350,000 budget, 3-week shooting schedule and inexpensive studio actors, the film arrived in 1940 as a sleeper.  It did surprisingly well and won an Oscar for screenwriting. McGinty (Brian Donlevy), the bartender in a banana republic, tells a suicidal man the story of how he went from being a bum to a mayor to, briefly, state governor, all under the aegis of a corrupt boss (Akim Tamiroff).  Though disbelieved, the tale saves the would-be suicidal.  NY Times critic Bosley Crowther found the hijinks highly amusing and wrote, “You won’t make a mistake, believe me, if you stuff the ballot box for The Great McGinty.”