Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on April 7, 2024
TRANSCRIPT
(ALIECE PICKETT:) It’s certainly a Screwball Comedy.
It has all the primary elements.
It’s got an unconventional romance, a self-directed Screwball Heroine, rapid-fire dialogue, physical comedy, The pool-dunk scene.
I love the “land yacht” car chase scene.
It also has a satiric element.
(KRISTEN LOPEZ:) I think what separates 1930s Screwballs from something like this in the 1940s, the Code had been established and was well in effect by 1941.
There were issues with Production Code in this movie, specifically with the sequences where Veronica Lake and Jill McCrea are sleeping next to each other in the train, or in the group area where all the people are sleeping.
There were objections to that.
And you see that a lot more in comedies of the 1940s where he wanted to illustrate ways that people were interacting with each other.
He didn’t appreciate the Code trying to assert the storytelling elements that he wanted.
>> AP: But he is such a master writer.
Preston Sturges is able to get around the Code, get the messages across.
We all know what’s going on.
And It’s quite effective.
He’s such an efficient filmmaker.
The pacing of this movie.
It tells so much in a short amount of time.
>> KL: He is the master of lean movies.
It’s just 90 minutes.
I think “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” (1944), is also in a similar space of time.
There’s something to be said about classic films of the era that were able to accomplish a lot between 60 to 90 minutes.
>> They were so disciplined then.
Movies are much longer now.
>> AP: Sometimes too long, depending on the movie.
>> KL: Yeah.
>> AP: What is your favorite part of “Sullivan’s Travels”?
Is there a particular scene or aspect of the film?
>> KL: I love that sequence in the movie where it’s Veronica Lake’s character who just found out that she believes “John L. Sullivan” is dead.
The camera lingers on her face as she’s crying.
I watched that, I remember where I was, in my room watching that on a small television and being gobsmacked at how ethereal she looks.
She’s angelic.
It made me a fan.
It made me a lifelong fan of hers.
She does so much with so little.
It’s why when people say they don’t think she’s a good actress, I have to roll my eyes and scoff.
I’m just like, “Then you’re not looking at the right thing.” Right.
They’re not looking closely enough, because she is so persuasive and convincing in this role.
She blends the hardening sensibilities of a Barbara Stanwyck and an Ida Lupino, and yet was barely five feet.
As her biographer Donald Bain told me, “She was a short girl with a big bust and a loud mouth”.
I love that about her.
>> AP: Perfect for a Screwball Heroine.
>> KL: I think she’s unlike most of the Screwball Heroines people saw.
Unfortunately, that pigeonholed her as not being somebody that could work in the genre.
>> AP: You mentioned in your introduction you have interviewed family members of Veronica Lake.
She’s best known to today’s audiences for her film noir masterpieces.
However, she has this Screwball Comedy and also another Screwball Comedy.
>> AP: She did “I Married a Witch” (1942).
Preston Sturges was supposed to direct, but he did not.
He produced it, and he had Rene Clair direct it, who was a great ethereal fantasy filmmaker.
It’s based on a book, which I’ve not been able to get my hands on.
It’s delightful.
It’s the inspiration for (TV show) “Bewitched”, depending on who you talk to in the “Bewitched” camp.
For legal reasons they’ve said yes or no, that it was direct inspiration.
She’s great in it.
She’s a vengeful witch that is out to get the heirs of this legacy of men that have wronged her, played by Fredric March.
She gets to be physical.
She gets to slide down a banister.
She stuffs waffles in her mouth.
Yet at the same time, she is the picture of cool.
You can believe that she’s a witch from the Salem witch trials.
She’s so funny.
So beautiful.
I love the story that her and Fredric March did not get along.
They hated each other.
She claims it was because he made a pass at her and she told him she was not into him, and he was not happy about it.
But supposedly, she played pranks on him.
She stuck rocks in her coat when he had to carry her.
There’s a scene where she’s sitting in a chair with her legs out and you can only see the top half of her in the frame.
Supposedly she was kicking him in the groin while she was making this scene.
They hated each other.
Yet you cannot tell, because she seems to be having so much fun.
>> AP: That’s good acting.
In this film, her comedic skills are showcased.
The rapid-fire dialogue.
Preston Sturges is known for his mastery of the English language.
The wit.
And it’s fast.
With Screwball Comedy, it’s fast.
And she nails it.
You hear everything, and she keeps up that fast pace.
>> KL: She has that great disillusionment that you probably, at the time, if you were a young person in Hollywood, that you saw in a lot of the young women, when she has that speech to Joel McCrea, “If you were a director, I would probably say this to you”.
She’s tapping into what a lot of young women, no doubt probably felt in Hollywood.
They have to flatter male egos. She talks openly in her autobiography about not wanting to please men, and wanting to be her own person.
I love it.
She was ahead of her time.
I think that was her problem.
She had other problems, but that I think was one of them.
>> AP: Let’s talk about Joel McCrea, her co-star in this film.
You’ve also interviewed the family members of Joel McCrea.
He had a monster career, over 100 films in all genres.
Yet today he’s not thought of with his Screwball Comedy legacy, but he starred in many, and always complimenting his co-stars.
“The Richest Girl in the World” (1934) with Miriam Hopkins, “Adventures in in Manhattan” (1936) with Jean Arthur, “The More the Merrier” (1943), again with Jean Arthur.
No matter who he’s paired with, he always makes them shine.
He’s a collaborative actor.
>> KL: When I talked to Wyatt McCrea, he thinks a key reason his grandfather is not better known, not one of the first names in comedy or acting, is because he didn’t make waves in the industry.
He made the films he was required to make.
Made the films he wanted to make.
He was never involved in scandal.
He also was a great actor opposite the women he worked with.
He worked with some difficult women. Not just Veronica, but Miriam Hopkins was temperamental.
Hard to work with.
And he worked with her more than once.
They were able to establish a rapport.
Even though he may not have liked working with Veronica Lake, she said Joel McCrea was one of the nicest performers she worked with.
Unfortunately in Hollywood, it doesn’t always pay to be the nice guy.
I think what happens is people discover him and they’re like, “Why don’t I know about Joel McCrea?” I tell people, “He’s not flashy”.
He wasn’t in swashbucklers.
He was in serious movies, but he didn’t have the whiz-bang, being in the trade papers.
>> AP: Isn’t that what Preston Sturges was seeking in using Joel McCrea?
>> KL: He wants an “every man”.
>> AP: He wanted that relatable persona, of which he had.
Let’s talk about writer/director Preston Sturges, one of the giants of the Hollywood golden era.
He was the first to break through, acknowledged and credited as writer/director.
Ernst Lubitsch, the grand master before him, didn’t take the writing credit when he co-wrote so many of his films.
Preston Sturges led the way for Billy Wilder and John Huston.
Today it’s common to have writer/directors.
But then, what a trailblazer he was.
>>KL: Also a colorful figure.
Married, I think, four times.
>> AP: Two heiresses. He led a Screwball Comedy life.
>> KL: He did.
That’s what I love watching this movie, is how much “John L. Sullivan” is Preston Sturges. Having to prove himself as not just a director of comedies, but a director with something to say. Trying to get away from his wealthy past.
It’s a shame–I said it in the intro–Tom Sturges said it was a shame Sturges did not live a couple more years to when film schools and French directors started to discover him.
No doubt he would have been in demand as a person to lecture and talk about film and his time there.
He led a colorful life.
And, as most of the old Hollywood creatives that led the best, most shocking lives, and you remember forever, they also died young.
But the talent is on the screen.
I don’t know any director that can talk himself in the way that he did. You watch the run of movies that he did in the early 40s, whether it’s this, or Christmas in July” (1940), or “The Lady Eve” (1941), or “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” (1944).
He was able to key into making people laugh, and thumbing his nose at the Production Code.
Giving social commentary where he could.
>> AP: And that’s why he’s a grand master today.
He wrote from his original works.
He did not adapt.
Your book that you’ve written and was recently published by TCM is “Have You Read the Book?, 52 Literary Gems That Inspired Our Favorite Films”.
Let’s talk about that, the challenge of adapting a book into a Screwball Comedy film.
>> KL: It’s more difficult than it seems.
I think there’s a reason–somebody can tell me if I’m correct–that Sturges’ work hasn’t often been remade.
You don’t get the same element to it.
The example I always use with a Screwball adaptation is “The Thin Man” (1934).
>> AP: You have a chapter on it in your book.
>> KL: I do have a chapter on my book about “The Thin Man” (1934).
Dashiell Hammett tried to write the script, could not do it, and got really mad at how the film turned out. And jumped ship after the second film.
But people were surprised that there were five movies, I think, and only one book.
It’s not a book series.
It was just the one book.
But to read “The Thin Man”, if you’ve seen the movie, it’s hard to read the book without thinking of Bill Powell and Myrna Loy.
The book is crazy.
You know it’s got drug addiction, infidelity.
It’s got a weird extended discussion about cannibalism.
You lose that luster, reading it on the page.
That’s not to say the book isn’t great.
It’s a lot of fun.
But you can see where screenwriters did use those books as a launch pad to play.
The director, W.S. Van Dyke told the screenwriters, “Use the text as a foundation and not a guide”.
I think the best adaptations do that, by using it as a place to start, not a place to end.
>> AP: I was interested in your book because, like many people, I’ve had the experience I walk out of the theater scratching my head because I’ve read the book and I’ve just seen the movie and never the two shall meet.
The book is timely.
Anytime there’s an adaptation, it raises the issue, and people invariably compare the two different forms of art.
>> KL: I’ve talked to screenwriters who’ve done adaptations and they’ve said it’s one of the hardest things to do, because you have to appease two different audiences.
An audience that knows the source material and expects you to give them the same feeling they had when they read the book.
And an audience that doesn’t know anything and just wants a good story.
Sometimes those audiences are completely different.
>> AP: Can you share with us about another Screwball comedy, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953).
>> KL: Anita Loos’ “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” is one I was excited to include because I did not know it was a book when I watched, and I love the movie.
Howard Hawks makes a great adaptation of it.
It’s like “Sullivan’s Travels” in that it’s poking fun at people that did exist.
Anita Loos used her own friends, Hollywood people, when writing that book.
If you’ve seen “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, you probably know the little boy, the character “Henry Spofford III”, that she, Marilyn, thinks is a wealthy heir.
In the book, he’s a grown man.
He was based on Will H. Hays, who started the Production Code.
The book ends with the character “Lorelei Lee” marrying this man so he can make movies she can star in.
Whether they adhere to the Code or not, it doesn’t really matter.
>> AP: That is so different from the film.
>> KL: I can see why it was changed for the film.
>> AP: Kristen Lopez, thank you so much for joining us today.🎥
Film Society of Screwball Comedy®
Edited by Aliece Pickett
Copyright 2025