Gouverneur malgré lui

In his debut as a director Preston Sturges turned in one of the brightest political satires ever done for the cinema in The Great McGinty. Sturges allegedly got the idea for the film and the various scenes therein from talking to a judge from Chicago who filled them in one the various shenanigans pulled there back in the day and still being pulled in some parts of the USA.

Preston Sturges though he had a successful Broadway play, The Good Fairy, and had written several sparkling screenplays for Paramount, the moguls that ran Paramount were a bit uneasy about giving him his own film to direct as well as act. The Great McGinty was a B film when it was released, playing the lower half of double features. It had a competent cast of players, but none of them you could say were big box office.

Imagine the surprise the following year when The Great McGinty won an Oscar for Preston Sturges, not for directing, but for Best Original Screenplay in 1940. The Great McGinty returned a tidy profit for a film they had not spent all that much money on. Sturges was given greater autonomy and control after that and for the next four years turned out a series of comedy classics with much larger budgets. But he was in constant warfare with the money people at Paramount for the rest of the time he was there.

The film is told in flashback as Brian Donlevy as a philosophical bartender tells a distraught Louis Jean Heydt his life story after preventing Heydt from shooting himself. There both in an unnamed South American country without extradition to the USA.

Donlevy was the epitome of the American dream as Preston Sturges sees the American dream. In Sturges's view any bum with nerve enough to seize opportunity before him, there's no telling how far he can go in America.

When we meet Donlevy he's exactly that, a hobo. He's on a soup line and ready to earn a few bucks by being a repeat voter for some people who for one reason or other are still on the voting rolls, but just can't make it to the polls. By earning $74.00 a vote by voting 37 times at $2.00 a vote, he comes to the attention of boss Akim Tamiroff.

Though they are immediate antagonists, Tamiroff sees potential in Donlevy and he begins a great political career and then has a very big fall.

Preston Sturges was starting to assemble his stock company of players who were in most of his films at Paramount, like William Demarest, Jimmy Conlin, Robert Grieg, etc. Although Sturges was only at Paramount for four years his stock company rivaled that of John Ford for that brief period.

Seen 67 years after its debut, The Great McGinty is a fresh as the day it was first made. It's dated in that the political bosses like Akim Tamiroff are not what they used to be in the age of information. Still though the ethics or lack thereof are still present in the age of television and the internet.

Government corruption may not be a laughing matter, but writer director Preston Sturges made some of his funniest comedies from the most unlikely material, and he smartly lampooned the political process in his big screen directing debut. Brian Donlevy is the title character, a less than scrupulous bum elected to the State Governor's office under the patronage of underworld boss Akim Tamiroff and, in a clever reversal of the usual formula, reformed by the responsibilities of public office. But the Governor's newfound honesty spells the end of his fledgling political career because, as McGinty himself so eloquently says, "you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear". The film lacks the madcap pace and eccentric characters of later Sturges classics, but compensates with plenty of rich satire (says big boss Tamiroff: "if it weren't for graft you'd get a very low type of person in government…") and an unusual romantic subplot decades ahead of its time. After more than half a century Sturges' wit and originality is still invigorating, not unlike a bracing slap in the face.

The Great McGinty grabbed me with its verve and jaunty iconoclasm from the beginning. "This is the story of two men who met in a banana republic. One of them never did anything dishonest in his life except for one crazy minute. The other never did anything honest in his life except for one crazy minute. They both had to get out of the country." In McGinty, a guy on the outs votes for a politician something like 72 times, and for this he is rewarded with a political boss's favor--"The Boss," and what a boss. Akim Tamiroff is simply wonderful: "Where you get that horse blanket?" And: "What a wonderful opportunity. This state needs everything. ... We'll need - you'll kiss me for this - a new dam. ... You think a dam is something you put a lot of water in. A dam is something you put a lot of concrete in. And it doesn't matter how much you put in there's always room for a lot more. ..." As the lead, "The Boss's" counterpart and equal, it's Brian Donlevy as he never had been before, never was again. McGinty (and Sturge's second movie, Christmas in July) may not quite be up there in the stratosphere with his absolute best like The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, or Unfaithfully Yours, but they are nevertheless both wonderful movies with the Sturges stamp of buoyant uniqueness.

Preston Sturges couldn't get any studio interested in doing his "Story of a Man," nor could he even get it published when it was retitled "Biography of a Bum," so he offered it to Paramount for $10 on condition he could direct it. It was an offer the studio bosses couldn't refuse and it paved the way for other writers, such as John Huston, to take control of their own work by directing its film production. The script, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, has some extremely funny moments, with almost all of them involving Akim Tamiroff, who steals the movie as "The Boss," the man who pulls the political strings in the entire state. He is the perfect counterpoint to the rather bland Brian Donlevy, who is in the title role, as a bum who votes thirty seven times in an election for mayor to get the two dollars per vote. This makes a deep impression on Tamiroff, who likes his chutzpa, and eventually runs him for alderman, then mayor, and finally governor. The pace of the film is slow at its start, but picks up when Donlevy starts his story (in flashback) until he's elected mayor, and then slows down again. The condition that he marry to win any election begins his downfall, because he marries his secretary, Muriel Angelus, who wants him to do great things and eliminate the graft in politics. Although it's a marriage of convenience, he falls in love and wants to please her. And you see what she means when Tamiroff is all smiles as he says, greeting the new governor: "What a wonderful opportunity. This state needs everything. ... We'll need - you'll kiss me for this - a new dam. ... You think a dam is something you put a lot of water in. A dam is something you put a lot of concrete in. And it doesn't matter how much you put in there's always room for a lot more. ..." The level of writing is first rate, but I wish there were no flashbacks in the screenplay construction, since you know how it ends from the start. I've always felt the flashback construction in nine out of ten films is detrimental to their enjoyment. The supporting cast includes William Demarest, who has the classic line "If you didn't have graft, you'd have a lower class of people in politics!" Muriel Angelus was and is a relatively unknown actress who quit making movies after 1940. Sturges had severe budget constraints and couldn't use high salaried actors, which would have benfited the film.

Preston Sturges' directing debut is a smash as he cleverly shows how even back in "the good old days," politics were as cruel and crooked as ever. The acting is pretty solid here, especially the leads, but the real point here is the story that Sturges has put together. Here, we see a simple man who does what he is told and almost immediately is made governor of the state. This shows that America is the land of opportunity as well as the land of corruption. What amazes me is how fluidly the film moves. It is only 82 minutes long, yet more happens here than in most Disney family movies. This shows the wonderful genius of Sturges and how he was able to enjoy a successful career throughout the 1940s. A very underrated and unknown film, this is a perfect gem about our not-so perfect government.