Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on April 16, 2023
TRANSCRIPT
(EDWARD SCHROEDER:) Let’s talk about Preston Sturges.
It was unusual to have a writer-director at that time.
How did that come about?
(ALIECE PICKETT:) Preston Sturges had become increasingly frustrated with changes to his scripts as they went through production of the film being made.
He set the goal for himself to become a director, so that his vision of the film, from screenplay on, could be fulfilled.
He started a grand tradition.
He was the first writer-director with the advent of sound film.
Quickly thereafter, Billy Wilder, John Huston, Joe Mankiewicz.
That tradition continues to this day, with acclaimed writer-director Rian Johnson with the “Knives Out” series, most recently with “Glass Onion” (2022).
Preston Sturges, what a gifted writer.
Laugh-out-loud funny.
Hilarious, complex plots.
And the dialogue is naturalistic, mature.
It elevated the Screwball Comedy, and elevated film.
>> ES: It was amazing dialogue.
The quotes he had were laugh-out-loud funny.
What was his background?
How did he get into writing?
>> AP: It started long before he got the Academy Award.
He received a continental education. As you look at Preston Sturges’ life, all roads lead to his mother.
She was a bohemian. She was an artist. She was an entrepreneur.
She was crazy-ambitious.
She unfortunately came of age and lived at a time where women had few opportunities, and few avenues for financial independence.
You basically had two routes: inheritance, or marriage.
She wasn’t wealthy by family, but she did marry wealth.
After she divorced, she took two-year-old Preston to Paris to pursue a singing career.
Her singing career didn’t work out.
But what did work out is that she took her son all over Europe, to museums, opera, plays, and gave him a rich international education.
From there, she came back to the United States.
She married a financier, stock market-related.
He put teenage Preston as a runner in the New York Stock Exchange.
He got a business background there.
Her final husband was a wealthy merchant, and that allowed her the financial ability to open a cosmetics company.
Preston, in his young 20s, managed the cosmetic company for eight years.
That’s where he invented Kiss-Proof Lipstick, still in use today.
>> ES: What a renaissance man.
>> AP: In addition to his wildly successful career writing and directing films, he also ran the famous restaurant and nightclub on the Sunset Strip called The Players Club, for years.
He lived life large.
Unfortunately, he died very young, 60 years old.
>> ES: What a loss.
Compared to other films and the ones we’re showing in the Film Series, where does it stand as a Screwball Comedy?
>> AP: It’s in the pantheon of the best Screwball Comedy.
In the spectrum of physicality, it’s on the far-end, next to “Bringing Up Baby” (1938).
It has the classic hallmarks of the best of Screwball.
It is so funny.
You have a Screwball heroine who is on equal footing, if not a step ahead of everyone else.
And she’s not earnest, not heroic.
It’s interesting, because these characters are on a journey of self-discovery.
The Henry Fonda character, “Charles Pike”, thinks he’s a master at cards.
He’s wrong.
He’s a mark.
>> ES: I love the palming of the card. That was great.
>> AP: He thinks he has to marry within his social class.
He doesn’t.
Likewise, she thinks she can manipulate and control this man without becoming emotionally involved with him.
She’s wrong.
They both have to earn each other.
>> ES: Tell us about Barbara Stanwyck’s life.
>> AP: She had one of the longest careers in Hollywood.
60 years in film.
She appeared in all genres of film.
And she is known as an icon of Film Noir because of her famous performance in “Double Indemnity” (1944), one of the top Film Noir classics.
She’s also a Screwball Comedy icon.
Every role she appeared in, no matter what the genre, you see fiery intelligence coming through.
She is fantastic in this film.
She’s a con woman, but we’re rooting for her.
>> ES: Boy, does she sizzle.
Speaking of sizzling, on the sexual tension-scale we’ve talked about, where is this ranked?
>> AP: Off the Richter scale.
The dialogue is so clever.
The film, starting with its title, is loaded with double entendres and innuendos, all of which got around the Motion Picture Production Code, which censored films for sexual content that was imposed on all films of the era. And it got through.
Film historian-critic Roger Ebert wrote that the scene with Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda on the chaise lounge, he considers the sexiest scene in all of cinema.
I think today’s filmmakers could learn a lot from watching this movie and others like it, when you leave things to the imagination, and use subtlety and nuance.
That scene’s in our trailer. I’ve watched it several times this last week.
It’s such a funny scene. It’s hot, even on today’s standards.
>> ES: We’ve talked about Stanwyck.
What about Henry Fonda?
Before I saw this film, I thought Fonda was more high-drama, “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), “My Darling Clementine” (1946), “Young Mr. Lincoln” (1939).
>> AP: He had a huge career.
He’s one of our biggest movie stars and greatest actors.
He had credits on over 100 films starring him, and critically acclaimed, even an Academy Award winner.
Here, he’s surprising.
He excels at the physical comedy.
Think of it, he falls over a sofa.
He tears the curtains.
He’s hit with roast beef.
He goes through the physical comedy.
Screwball Comedy is “farce”-adjacent.
It can be very physical, as in this movie.
He pulls it off, all of it, beautifully.
He’s very funny.
He plays an “anti”-hero.
He’s socially awkward.
He’s one step behind.
He’s hide-bound in his upper-class life.
He (Fonda) does an incredible job.
It’s a shame he didn’t do more comedies like this.
He did appear with Barbara Stanwyck in three Screwball Comedies, “The Mad Miss Manton (1938), this film, and “You Belong to Me” (1941).
He said several times when he was interviewed that Barbara Stanwyck was his favorite leading lady.
>> ES: What a pair.
We need to talk about Charles Coburn.
He is so good.
>> AP: He is one of my favorites.
He is incredible.
We talked earlier that Preston Sturges was dead at 60.
Charles Coburn had, at 60 years old, a lengthy theatrical career.
He was a widower, and decided to try his hand at the movies.
At 60!
Late Bloomer, indeed.
Great movie-after-great movie.
Huge movie career, Academy Award for “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941).
He starred in the original “Heaven Can Wait” (1943), with Gene Tierney and Don Ameche.
“The More The Merrier” (1943).
And who can forget his standout performance with Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953).
>> ES: The diamond man.
He’s the diamond merchant from South Africa.
He has that diamond tiara that she (Monroe) wants so badly.
>> AP: But the wife wanted it back.
>> ES: That was a great movie.
How was the movie received at the time, and how is it looked at now?
>> AP: “The Lady Eve”, when it was released in 1941, was an immediate box office hit, and critical hit.
Film critics of the time ranked it above “Citizen Kane” (1941) and “How Green Was My Valley” (1941).
Think about that.
And above Preston Sturges’ other film that year, “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941).
>> ES: Which we hope to bring to the screen next season.
That’s one of my personal favorites.
It’s a great film by Preston Sturges.
And the sheen hasn’t dimmed in all these decades.
The American Film Institute considers “The Lady Eve” one of the all-time classic films in all cinema history.🎥
Film Society of Screwball Comedy®
Edited by Aliece Pickett
Copyright 2025