AWARDS & HONORS:

In 1990, Sullivan's Travels was chosen to be preserved as a National Film treasure in the Library of Congress National Film Registry

It was also voted Best Film of the year by the National Board of Review and The New York Times.

Preston Sturges was chosen Best Director by the New York Film Critics Circle in 1942.

The Critics' Corner: SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS

Sturges brought the film in for just under $677,000, but it was still over budget and nine days over schedule. Because it juxtaposed wacky comedy with dark drama, it got mixed reviews and did not do well in the long run at the box office, despite a good opening (it set an all-time house record of $75, 650 in its first week at New York's Paramount theater). Also because of the unusual mixture of comedy and drama, the studio had a hard time figuring out how to market the movie. The ad campaign for Sullivan's Travels was dominated by Veronica Lake's peek-a-boo hairdo image with the tag line: "Veronica Lake's on the take." But because of Sturges' success and popularity at the time, a trailer was also designed that featured him as the director quarreling with himself as the writer in split screen while Lake and McCrea looked on. Still, the story and the tone of the film seemed to confuse people. "One local reviewer wanted to know what the hell the tragic passages were doing in this comedy," Sturges said, "and another wanted to know what the hell the comic passages were doing in this drama." Sullivan's Travels managed one month as a Motion Picture Herald "Box Office Champion" then disappeared.

"A perverse piece ... disconcerting but brilliant and disturbing. [Sturges'] films have the rich disorder of a fertile mind." - C.A. Lejeune, London Observer, January 1942

"A confusing mixture of satire, slapstick, drama, melodrama and comedy." - Time magazine, 1942 "Sturges, a Hollywood satirical genius, at his peak had enough box-office clout, like Billy Wilder with Sunset Boulevard [1950], to assail the system that fed him. ...It's a great comedy, with a message that works in context, the flophouses of life's downside contrasting with Hollywood's absurd hedonism. Sturges's wonderful stock company of supporting players makes up the rest of the cast." - George Perry, BBC Online film reviews, 2001.

"Film's dialogue has humor and rhythm. It's like a relay race, with words used as batons. ...Sturges often holds his camera on his actors during long stretches of dialogue, emphasizing the importance of words to each character. He democratically gives all his characters, even his supporting players, important and wise things to say." - Danny Peary, Guide for the Film Fanatic (Simon & Schuster, 1986)

"A Swiftian glimpse of Hollywood and its occasional flirtations with social consciousness, generally considered the most profound expression of the director's personality. ...Like Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, the film pivots in one poetic pirouette from the sunny to the somber when an old derelict is trapped in a metal jungle of switch rails and is unable to avoid an oncoming train." - Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (Dutton, 1968)

Compiled by Rob Nixon