Biography: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges was born to a working-class family in Chicago, but he spent much of his early childhood traveling Europe with his mother as she unsuccessfully pursued a career as a singer. She later remarried, and his adopted father, Solomon Sturges, was a wealthy American stockbroker for whom Preston briefly worked as a stock runner upon graduating from high school. He then spent two years in the United States Army Signal Corps, but because World War I was already winding down by the time he finished training, he never saw any combat. While at boot camp, he published an essay in the camp newspaper called “Three Hundred Words of Humor,” his first attempt at professional writing.  

Over the next eight years, he invented a kiss-proof lipstick, a ticker-tape machine and a photo-etching process, as well as the designs for a car and an airplane, none of which made him as rich as he had hoped. Meanwhile, he also managed a department store in New York that was owned by his mother’s fourth husband. In 1928, at the age of thirty, his first play was produced. The Guinea Pig opened in Massachusetts, then went to Broadway, where it ran for sixty-seven performances, closing in March of 1929. The following year, his second play opened and ran for over sixteen months. Strictly Dishonorable earned him over $300,000 and garnered the attention of Paramount Pictures, leading him to move to Hollywood. 

That same year, he eloped with Eleanor Post Hutton, heir to the founder of the Post Cereal company. However, she had their marriage annulled two years later because he was technically still married to his first wife. In 1933, he sold his his first original screenplay, The Power and the Glory, which was loosely based on the life of C.W. Post, Eleanor’s grandfather, and it has been cited by the screenwriters of Citizen Kane as a major inspiration, including its innovative use of a nonlinear narrative structure. During this time, Sturges also worked as a writer-for-hire on a number of projects for various studios, which was somewhat of a rarity at that time. 

In order to make the difficult transition from screenwriter to screenwriter/director (at a time when Hollywood was very much like a factory system), he agreed to sell the rights to his script The Great McGinty to Paramount for one dollar on the condition that he also be allowed to direct it. Sturges was not only one of the only people at the time to ever have made this transition, he was also one of the only American screenwriters from this era who generally worked alone. This caused some resentment among other writers, but at the peak of his career, Sturges was one of the highest paid people in Hollywood. However, through a series of bad investments, including an L.A. nightclub/restaurant that he owned called The Players, he lost most of his money. 

As a writer, Preston Sturges was known for his sharp, witty dialogue at a time when movies were only first beginning to have dialogue. As a director, he seemed to draw influence from both Charlie Chaplin and Frank Capra, as Sturges’s films generally used absurdist humor to address contentious issues, whether corruption in politics (The Great McGinty), pregnancy out of wedlock (The Miracle of Morgan's Creek), or what it means to be a hero in small-town America (Hail the Conquering Hero), while also maintaining a broad appeal. Furthermore, much of the humor in his films seems to come from the deconstruction of artificial class boundaries, which is likely the result of having grown up in an environment of "high culture," which he experienced while both rich and poor. 

His most successful movies were all written in a five year period from 1939-1943. In 1944, he formed a partnership with billionaire Howard Hughes called California Pictures, which established him as a writer/director/producer, but this also marked the decline of his career, as none of his later films ever matched the success of those which he made during the Second World War.  

He died of a heart attack in a New York hotel room in 1959 while writing his autobiography, which he had intended to title, “The Events Leading Up to My Death.”

Filmography (as director):

The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955)

Vendetta (1950)

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949)
Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)

The Great Moment (1944)

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944)

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

Safeguarding Military Information - documentary short (1942)

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

The Lady Eve (1941)

Christmas in July (1940)

The Great McGinty (1940)