Preston Sturges: The PurPOLL one, with the pluuuuuuuuuuuumes at the hips.

In the forties, Bridge was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in ten of the eleven American films that Sturges wrote and directed.[7] He is perhaps best remembered for his role as "The Mister", the chain-gang boss over Joel McCrea in Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels.[8][9]

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend isn't that bad. Kind of Tashlin-like, if I remember correctly, at least in its brightness and zip and silliness, if not in its style of editing and use of blackout gags.

Thanks, darraghmac, but I already reconstructed that gone missing neurological pathway between posts, same way I recently had to remind myself of Julius Tannen's "talking picture" bit in Singin' in the Rain

Palm Beach the last night. Lovely.

miracle last night. patchy greatness, didn't really ever get behind the two leads as the two leads (obv dad and sister are great great great).

^heresy

They are obviously cartoonish, funhouse versions of the boy & girl next door, and Bracken freely admitted they were trying to upstage each other the entire film.

TRUDY KOCKENLOCKER

^^^^^^^

great McGinty

maybe the one that holds together best?

The Lady Eve.

The Lady Eve seconded.

Positively the same opinion!

Lemme aks you a hyperthermical question.

Gimme a spoonful of milk, a raw pigeon's egg and four houseflies.

OK its a clear top 3 with eve and it happened one night.

ya I know I've watched a gang of talkies lately gimme a break

i watched it happened one night again last summer, not having seen it since i was a teenaged capra fanatic (and not really getting it then, because it wasn't, y'know, idealistic and soppy), and it was just gangbusters.

is that a good thing?!

Yeah, I watched It Happened One Night a couple of times in the last two years and it was still good, but I tried rewatching Mr. Deeds Goes to Town a few months ago and its politics made me retch.

gangbusters def a good thing!

reluctant to watch deeds again for the same reason, though i caught the last 90 mins of Its A Wonderful Life at xmas and was still destroyed by it.

The Lady Eve under discussion at The Dissolve:

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/746-the-scorching-sensuality-and-style-of-the-lady-eve/

http://www.criterion.com/films/28103-the-palm-beach-story

http://www.criterionforum.org/caps/palmbeachblu00011.jpg

American...Sniper

Saw If I Were King (1938) as my only visit to the latest NYC Sturges series -- probably the most 'major' of his pre-directing writing jobs I'd never seen. It's real good! More high comedy than swashbuckler, Ronald Colman never wittier than as Francois Villon in an already oft-filmed story. (A Parisian peasant girl asks him as they share time in a dungeon, "An epitaph? What's that?" "Oh, usually something good about someone bad.") Pro direction by Frank (Mutiny on the Bounty) Lloyd. Basil Rathbone, cackling as Louis XI, reminded me weirdly of SCTV's Joe Flaherty.

It's a little like McGinty in 15th-century France, tho libertine virtue dominates corruption. Blotchy rendering on YT, don't watch that; otherwise hard to see cept on TCM i guess.

jealous

x2 :/

Missed the whole festival myself. Guess I will be handing in my Preston Sturges Fan Club Membership ID Card to Bruce G this Sunday at the FF Brunch.

ask him when they'll show The French They Are a Funny Race aka Carnets du Major Thompson.

Will do.

I have your answer

He showed it 1990, it is hard to get a hold of, it isn't very good.

well i did know 2/3 of that

but thx

There's a little more, sort of: Yesterday he showed a restored film of a vaudeville act featuring one of Sturges' stock company. I think he showed more such stuff at TCMfest about a month ago. He also told the crowd that the first film ever shown at current FF location was Sullivan's Travels

Finally saw Hail the Conquering Hero and good grief did I ever connect with it. Certainly would have given it a vote here. I guess I just assumed it was another schlocky WWII comedy, but train arrival scene is certainly next-level chaos choreography.

There Is Nothing Outside the Real: Preston Sturges on André Bazin (video)

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2015/07/29/there-nothing-outside-real-preston-sturges-andr-bazin

http://moviemorlocks.com/2015/09/26/preston-sturges-origin-story/#more-86954

Last night my wife and I watched a DVD of The Good Fairy, a film Sturges wrote, but it was directed by William Wyler so it didn't appear in this poll. Nevertheless, the script was pure Sturges, the pacing and acting was impeccable, and it had us both laughing aloud constantly. A real gem.

Margaret Sullavan was wonderfu.

wonderful too

Was pretty disappointed by The Palm Beach Story. McCrea and Colbert not onscreen together nearly enough, and the whole train sequence is both unfunny and unpleasant. I realize that lots of people love it, but I really don't find it to be anywhere near the equal of The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels or Unfaithfully Yours (I still need to see the others).

^^Banned from The Ale & Quail Club--4 Life!

Lol

McCrea plays peevish well (I still say "Convulse me" to students who insist a joke is hilarious).

Home movie footage shot by El Brendel on the set of Preston Sturges's BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND (1949). Also seen are Sterling Holloway, Snub Pollard, Sturges (at 1'06" and 1'33" (on horseback)), Betty Grable, Hank Mann, Rudy Vallee, among others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB_ld-Eh4JU&feature=youtu.be

Thanks!

^^Banned from The Ale & Quail Club--4 Life!

not sure i was at that one tbh

Sure you were. You invited donna rouge then we had five people, too many for one team, so you two were one team and In Orbit, dmr and I were Mr. Atoz's Bookmobile - "A Star Trek reference," as the host said.

c'est vrai! i don't remember what bar that was (magnetic field?) but i remember correctly answering a question about coin collecting

Wasn't Magnetic Field, but I did that one once with JBR/L and In Orbit and we came in second. It was in the Slope more or less, near Grand Army Plaza, place was called Shelley's maybe, something starting with an S.

Sharlene's