Category Archives: 1944

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1944/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Amazon Instant Video

[box] Norval Jones: Ignatz Ra-ra-ratzkywatzky. That – that fits alright.

Trudy Kockenlocker: Oh, phooey! [/box]

Preston Sturges, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways …

Dippy teenager Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) is the peppiest girl in town with a weakness for servicemen.  She lives with her widower father Edmund (William Demerest), the Town Constable, and younger sister Emmy (Diana Lynn), a practical sort who is handy with the wisecracks.  Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) has been in love with Trudy since grade school.  His greatest regret is that he has been declared 4-F by every branch of the military for high blood pressure.  When Norval gets excited or nervous he sees “spots.”

When her father refuses to let her go to a dance for servicemen about to go overseas, Trudy cons Norval into “taking her to the movies”.  She asks him to wait and then departs in his car to the dance.  She doesn’t return until 8 a.m.  By then she has had a few too many “lemonades”.  When Norval takes her home, her father assumes the worst.

Trudy has only hazy memories of her evening.  Gradually, she dimly remembers getting married to someone with a funny name, something like “Radzkiwadzki”.  She used a false name at the ceremony and has no proof of anything.  Later, a positive pregnancy test gives her all the proof she needs.

Norval may be the answer to her prayers.  But, after he proposes, she can’t go through with it and develops a true affection for him.  Despite everything, Norman is true blue and the two cook up a ridiculous scheme to get a marriage certificate in the names of Trudy Kockenlocker and Ignatz Radzkiwadzki so they can divorce and remarry under their right names.  Needless to say, the course of true love never did run smooth.  Sturges ties the whole thing up with a happy ending that must be seen to be believed.   With Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff reprising their roles as The Governor and The Boss from The Great McGintey in the framing sequences and a host of Sturges regulars.

This movie is one gag after another.  If you didn’t like the last pratfall, wait 10 seconds and you will get a brilliant one-liner.  The performances are superb.  I especially like Eddie Bracken and I’m not big on comic stutterers.  Diana Lynn is a calm of deadpan humor in the hurricane of hysteria that surrounds her.  Sturges might have made better pictures but he never made a funnier one.  Highly recommended.

Preston Sturges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

Trailer

Hollywood continued to operate under war-time restrictions but movie attendance was never higher.  Film noir became well and truly entrenched in 1944, although nobody thought it was anything special at the time.    The so-called “Havilland decision,” ruled that that Warner Bros. had to release actress Olivia de Havilland after her seven-year contract term expired and could not add time to the term for periods the actress was on suspension.  The ruling proved to be of great benefit to the many actors who took a break from their film work to serve in the Armed Forces.  Barry Fitzgerald became the first – and only – actor to receive two Academy Award nominations, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, for the same role in the same year – as St. Dominic’s stubborn, yet loveable old priest Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way (1944). Swimmer Esther Williams starred in her first Technicolor aqua-musical in the MGM production of Bathing Beauty (1944).

The war dominated U.S. news in 1944 while the home fires burned.  The people decided not to change horses in the middle of the stream and Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected to a fourth term in November.  On December 18, 1944, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously declared that loyal citizens of the United States, regardless of cultural descent, could not be detained without cause, paving the way for the release of all internees in January 1945. Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie debuted.  Bing Crosby’s “Swinging on a Star” was the number one hit single of the year and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song.  The novel that won the Pulitzer Prize was Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin.  Smokey the Bear started advising Americans that “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires.”

Hard fighting lay ahead but the news from the front was mostly good. The Allies invaded France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in the largest amphibious operation in history, and had liberated Paris by August 25.  General Douglas McArthur made good his promise to return to the Philippines when he waded ashore at Leyte on October 20.

 My working list of films for possible viewing can be found here.  I reviewed several of the 1944 films noir as part of Noir Months 2013 and 2014. They were:  ; ; ; ; and .

Montage of stills from films that won Academy Awards

Montage of stills from all films nominated for Academy Awards