Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges

By Preston Sturges and Tom Sturges

Book Overview

Includes The Palm Beach Story, Triumph over Pain/The Great Moment, The Miracle at Morgan's Creek, and Unfaithfully Yours.

Humorous, sophisticated, and superbly crafted, the cinema of Preston Sturges maintains an enduring presence in the small canon of films that enjoy critical acclaim, scholarly attention, and popular admiration. Following the enthusiastic reception of Five Screenplays by Preston Sturges, the University of California Press returns with Four More.

This volume contains three scripts widely regarded as among the filmmaker's best: The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and Unfaithfully Yours. Based on the actual shooting scripts rather than the final screen versions, these screenplays contain scenes that were not filmed or that disappeared on the cutting room floor.

In the fourth script, Triumph over Pain/The Great Moment, Sturges dramatizes the career of W.T.G. Morton, the doctor who first demonstrated the use of ether and thus revolutionized surgery. Arguably the most important biographical film project of the 1940s, this film was recut and rearranged by Paramount before it was released. By reprinting Sturges's original script and explaining its transformation, Brian Henderson has, in effect, discovered a new work by Sturges.

In the introductions that precede each screenplay, Henderson examines every important aspect of the screenplay's composition. He analyzes Sturges's process of constant revision, discusses variant drafts and fragments of drafts, and describes the writer/director's relations with Paramount executives, the Church, the Hayes Office, and Darryl Zanuck.

Alone or as a companion to the earlier volume, this work will be welcomed by scholars, film buffs, screenplay writers, and admirers of Preston Sturges.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520203658
• ISBN13: 9780520203655
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 983 Pages
• Weight: 2.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 2.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Preston Sturges' Screenplays

This book is a wonderful compilation of Preston Sturges' screenplays. It's very good for all who love the great director.

Three Fine Comedies and One Odd Misfire

This volume contains some of Sturges' best work, including the immortal comedy The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, together with The Palm Beach Story and Unfaithfully Yours. Five stars for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, perhaps the funniest, most subversive movie of the 1940's. The biggest curiosity here, though, is Sturges' script for his odd dental-anesthesia biopic The Great Moment. This film was heavily altered by the studio prior to its release. Sturges' original script would probably have been a better picture, but it's hard to imagine this project succeeding in any case.

Great comedy films

Contains the screenplay for "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (to my taste, the most hilarious film of all time). When I worked as a cataloger at Newport Public Library, I constantly told my co-workers that I thought Preston Sturges wrote better dialogue than Shakespeare. I could prune lines from "Hamlet," but I couldn't cut a single line from "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek."