Sensation in Morgan's Creek

From the very start they're off and running. Even under the opening credits cast members are seen frantically gesticulating and flailing. And the movie has hardly begun.

So what's to be done with the next 98 minutes, if one begins climatically sweating and pulsating? Ease up the pace a bit to allow viewer to catch his breath?

Not Director Sturges: he continues to plow through this comedy at breakneck speed, as though any repose might prove fatal.

We get two super energetic starts--Bracken and Hutton--and a cast of obedient supports obeying the eager director's every frenetic command. We end with one of the screwiest screwball comedies of the forties.

This film has acquired a devoted following of supporters who find "Morgan's Creek" very funny, along with a goodly number of detractors, who see it as an essentially strained and bloated one-joke yarn.

As usual, Sturges makes sharp social comments along the way and handles large groups with Capraesque skill. But that he manages to maintain his unrelentingly breathless pace throughout the shoot may be the real miracle of Morgan's Creek.

Although I've always preferred Palm Beach Story this is my 2nd favourite Preston Sturges film (Lady Eve 3rd). It still makes me hoot with laughter or bring tears to my eyes by turns even though I know it's basically only satirical screwball comedy. The problem is that anybody watching this who doesn't know anything at all about Hollywood censorship and the Hays Office is likely to be very puzzled by it all and hardly understand it. The tortuous plot was solely meant to circumvent and sneer at the prevailing censorship enforcement, whilst simultaneously maintaining the standard decorum expected from media in 1942-44. Otherwise we might have been treated (among many other things) to coitus scenes with Ratzkywatzky, Officer Kockenlocker comically swearing his head off or at the very least a shot of Trudy's belly at Christmas. Nowadays with the relentless progress of acceptable "taste" none of this matters - we are not spared the littlest thing!

The main actors give it their best and play it with gusto: live-wire Betty Hutton and 4F Eddie Bracken as the simple young lovers who don't find it so simple, Diana Lynn as her sidekick cynical 14 yo sister, but especially William Demarest who turned in his finest knockabout and farcically violent performance here - at 50, too. I think it also helps to have seen Star Spangled Rhythm with Hutton and Bracken really "enjoying" themselves in a ... more light-hearted way before seeing this. My favourite bits are the scenes where Norval and Trudy are preparing to leave home and get "married", both of them joyfully stuttering away.

The Production Code was ridiculously strict - I've even thought it was designed by a bunch of perverts - but it at least provided some kind of discipline to all concerned. It's a discipline that is completely missing from todays films, except for my personal discipline in avoiding most of them. This is a wonderful film, the old story told cleverly and differently about simple people in Hicksville having fun and paying the price. Even only 2/3 years later Sturges would have done it differently, but along with Capra's "Arsenic and old lace" this has got to be one of the best of the many tombstones over the grave of the Hays Office there is.

In the middle of WWII comes this film that is full of references to that war yet manages to undermine the usual image of the valiant warrior marching off to battle, suggesting that along the way one of them took advantage of a tipsy girl, maybe even drugged her drink from her lack of recollection of the evening that was supposed to be an innocent farewell dance for the soldiers, and left her pregnant from a one night stand, never to inquire about her again. In the 21st century date rape comes to mind. If it was even a date.

Now of course this soldier is never found or named. And instead a sanitized version of the story appears. What I wrote in the first paragraph is strictly between the lines. Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is an underaged girl, probably late teens, back when legal age was 21, who is told by her widowed father, the town constable (William Demarest), that she is not to go to the farewell party because he rightly fears the rowdiness of the event. So Trudy says instead she will go to the movies with Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken). She knows he loves her and she is accustomed to using him, although she would probably never admit that to herself. So she borrows Norval's car, tells him she will pick him up after the last feature, but does not appear again until the next morning at 8AM, with a big blank where the latter part of the evening should be. As they drive away a "Just Married" sign falls off of the car's rear bumper, and when Trudy gets home she notices she is wearing a ring. Slowly, through the haze of memory, a "maybe" wedding comes back to her, but not the who or where. The trouble appears later when Trudy realizes she is pregnant by her anonymous husband, and she has no marriage license to prove her story.

As in any Sturges film, there is a veritable cornucopia of wonderful one liners, which can come from any and every member of the large comic ensemble cast, at any time. No scene is too sacred, including a wedding, or a father's viewing of his newborn children. As for the cast, Hutton plays it sweet and somewhat dizzy, showing that she could prevail in other genres besides musicals, Eddie Bracken plays it nervous and a bit over the top as the only man in Morgan's Creek between 18 and 40 who is not in the military because of his 4F status, and the always funny William Demarest is full of pratfalls and one liners and even compassion when it is called for as Trudy's exasperated dad.

Why does this remain in Paramount's possession when they sold off just about every other talking picture made between 1929 and 1949 to Universal? It is because, at the time, nobody believed anyone would ever allow this to be shown on TV.

Highly recommended.

Writer-director Preston Sturges is generally regarded as one of the greatest comic talents ever, and his impeccable track record--including The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels--is more than worthy of the praise. Often overlooked, The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek ranks with Sturges' absolute best work.

Sturges takes an almost Capra-esque WWII America and turns it on its pointy little head, with Betty Hutton as a girl who's more than willing to give "the boys" departing for the war the utmost reason to fight for our country. Stripped of her usual production numbers, Hutton cranks up her comic acting skills and creates a surprisingly rich characterization of a young woman straining against the restrictive social attitudes of the time. Eddie Bracken is his usual self-effacing self, and his sad-sack Norval Jones is an earnest, often moving portrayal of the kind of understanding, devotion and love almost never seen in American movies of the era.

A "screwball comedy" only on paper, the often frenetic pacing and physical humor was sufficient to distract censors (and often audiences) from Morgan Creek's almost brutally derisive satire about the hypocrisy of small town "values" and military behavior during wartime, satire that still resonates given the current political climate. No target is safe, from "the troops" and bucolic Anywhere USA to state governors, the Dionne quints, and Adolf Hitler. Sturges pushed hard against the production code and probably earned a few ulcers slipping racy plot twists and subversive dialogue past the censors, but the results were well worth the Maalox. One of the funniest and most pointed satirical comedies ever produced.

Preston Sturges is often referred to as "the king of the screwball comedy," the acknowledged master of writing and directing this tricky variant combining rapid-fire repartee dialogue with the occasional slapstick pratfall. A lot easier to describe in words than to execute on a movie screen. Equally interesting is what Hollywood and the Hays Code allowed him to get away with, as in this above-average example starring Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, Diana Lynn as Betty's sister, & William Demarest as her cantankerous dad. Against her father's wishes, and w/enabling assistance from Bracken and Lynn, Hutton goes to a send off for departing soldiers, accidentally gets drunk, is married to one of the soldiers in an impromptu ceremony, and then promptly forgets which soldier was the groom. But the more scandalous part back in 1943, when this movie was made, was the revelation that this single-night soirée has resulted in Hutton's pregnancy. Yowza! The best aspects of the story here are 1) that nobody thinks of Hutton's character as a tramp or floozy, and 2) that the whole situation in which she finds herself is just considered wacky and doesn't change Bracken's genuine and long-standing love and admiration for her. I can't believe this plotline got to theater screens virtually unchanged from Sturges original screenplay, which went on to be nominated for an Oscar. Like so many of Preston Sturges' screwball comedies, this one's right in there over home plate. 8/10.