The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

This is an amusing farce guaranteed to bring some good hearted laughter as it recounts the story of a small town girl's indiscretion that has to be covered up with a series of lies. Betty Hutton is terrific as the partyloving gal who can't remember the man she married during a drunken joyride. Eddie Bracken as her nerdy but loyal boyfriend has the kind of role he was born to play--as does William Demarest as her outraged father who always has his shotgun ready and complains about having two rambunctious daughters. Diana Lynn shines as Betty's younger sister. Her scenes with William Demarest are among the funniest in the entire film--even though her 14 year-old seems a bit too sensible at such a tender age.

All of the main cast are perfect. Demarest never had a funnier role in his life. His pratfalls are performed as naturally as the great silent comics.

The technique of long takes with lots of dialogue going on must have been very demanding for Hutton and Bracken--but they handle it brilliantly. Many of their scenes are done in one long take and it's amazing how much material and physical comedy they had to memorize for such extended takes.

Some of the storyline seems a bit dated by today's standards but on the whole the film holds up well in the laugh department. I liked it much better than HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO with Bracken in a similar role.

Preston Sturges deserved his nomination for Best Original Screenplay but lost the award to Lamar Trotti for WILSON. Sturges was also nominated the same year for HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO.

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.

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 was one of the most interesting directors and screen writers working in the Hollywood of the thirties and forties. His incredible look at a small town USA during WWII is the basis for this delightful comedy. Mr. Sturges was a man ahead of his times. It's incredible how he was able to get this film approved for release by the Hays Code. Mr. Sturges direction was impeccable. It is easy to see how in most of his films he keeps showing a lot of the same faces, as it's evident the actors loved the quick tempo he gives to the movie.

Betty Hutton was an incredible appealing Trudy. She shows us a young woman, who in spite of what happens to her, keeps trying to make her situation right by drawing the nerdy Norval into her side to correct what she has done. Ms. Hutton projected such a luminous presence as she demonstrates with her take of Trudy, the girl next door type, who finds out how a reckless moment of pleasure comes to haunt her. After all, Trudy only wanted to do the best for the boys going to a war where most of them wouldn't come back alive.

Eddie Bracken was given one of the best opportunities of his career to play the kind hearted Norval. He is willing to break the law in order to make Trudy happy, after realizing she clearly doesn't care for him. This actor was an accomplished comedian with a great sense of timing, as he shows, for our amusement, in this picture.

The supporting cast is great. William Demarest, who played in a lot of Mr. Sturges' films, is seen as Trudy's father, the nutty Constable Kockenlocker. Diana Lynn is immensely appealing as the young sister Emmy, an intelligent girl who is more mature than the happy go lucky Trudy. Brian Donlevy is seen briefly as the governor and Akim Tamiroff plays a minor part.

Preston Sturges was a man that had an understanding about the times in which he lived. This comedy, as well as most of his other films, is a testament to his vision of America during those years. His films were a way of commenting about what was wrong with the American society during those years. Mr. Sturges' films made him the toast of Hollywood. That is why it's ironic how soon the same industry he helped elevate artistically, forgot him after his comedies fell out of favor with the public.

This movie is a classic and the proof is in the way audiences are still moved and amused watching them after more than sixty years since they made their debut.

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.