Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. His directorial style depended more on the pacing of action and dialogue rather on visual texture and composition.
During his long exile in the 50's his one realised European project was the bilingual 'Les Carnets de Major Thompson ('The FrenchThey Are a Funny Race') was unsuccessful. Part of his aversion to monogamy was that his mother often carried on affairs with several different men and women at the same time while she was raising him. The most incredible thing about my career is that I had one. He once owned a nightclub on the Sunset Strip called The Players. Today is the 122nd birthday of the film director Preston Sturges. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Following the war Sturges managed the New York City branch of his mother’s elegant Paris salon (and invented a smear-proof lipstick in the process) before becoming a playwright in the 1920s. He was educated primarily in European boarding schools, but his mother sent him back to the United States at the onset of World War I, during which he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The result was After writing the snappy (if atypically sentimental) screenplay for Leisen’s Many film historians consider Sturges’s next film, Tired of battling with executives at Paramount, Sturges left the studio and in 1945 joined Howard Hughes in forming California Pictures Corporation.
Was voted the 28th Greatest Director of all time by "Entertainment Weekly". Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. Did not start writing until he was 30 years old. Until his parents divorced, when he was age eight, Sturges split his time between Chicago and Europe, where his mother, an intimate of dancer Isadora Duncan, exposed him to museums and the world of art and culture. His reputation became one of a period director who ultimately lost contact with his audience. He was awarded an Oscar for his script of 'The Great McGinty' in 1940 and was nominated twice in 1944 for 'The Miracle of Morgan's Creek' and 'Hail the Conquering Hero', both for writer. Considered the father of the screwball comedy, Preston Sturges was recognized as one of the great early writers in Hollywood. He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: New York: The H.W. With only 13 films to his credit, he directed even fewer movies than In the late 1940, he formed a production company with eccentric tycoon Credited with bolstering the careers and maximizing the talents of When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten-cent notebook and start the whole thing over again. A colorful supporting cast (often including the same actors) who give his films a bustling liveliness You can't go around the theaters handing out cards saying, "It isn't my fault".
Interred at Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, NY. After 1944 he left Paramount to form a short lived partnership with Howard Hughes and his career suffered a precipitous decline with his three subsequent films being remote from the tastes at the time. He was a womanizer who struggled in most of his serious sexual relationships. Pages 1085-1090.
After writing the Broadway hit Sturges made his first impression as a screenwriter on William K. Howard’s Sturges persuaded Paramount executives to let him direct his next screenplay. [when asked by a writer to compose his own epitaph] Now I've laid me down to die / I pray my neighbors not to pry / too deeply into sins that I / not only cannot here deny / but much enjoyed as time flew by. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". As a boy he helped out on stage productions for his mother's friend, Isadora Duncan (the scarf that strangled her was made by his mother's company, Maison Desti).