Trivia and Other Fun Stuff

As a boy, Preston Sturges assisted on stage productions for his mother's friend, famed dancer Isadora Duncan. The scarf that strangled Duncan when it was caught in the wheel of her open-top riding car was made by Maison Desti, the company owned by Sturges's mother.

After returning from service in World War I, Sturges took over Maison Desti and invented a kiss-proof lipstick that the company marketed. Sturges invented several other things after his mother demanded he return control of the company to her, including a ticker tape machine, a car, an airplane and a photo-etching process, but none had the success of his lipstick.

A failed inventor, Sturges began writing stories. While recovering from an appendectomy in 1929, he wrote his first play, The Guinea Pig. He then wrote several more plays but decided the best way to make money from his writing was by going to Hollywood. He spent all of the 1930s as either sole scripter, co-writer or uncredited contributor to such screenplays as Strictly Dishonorable (1931, based on his own play), The Power and the Glory (1933), Easy Living (1937) and Remember the Night (1940), before moving on into directing.

Sturges won his only Academy Award for the screenplay of The Great McGinty (1940). Although he was never recognized by the Academy for his direction, he was ranked number 28 on an Entertainment Weekly list of the greatest directors of all time.

At his peak in the 1940s, Sturges was one of the highest paid people in the U.S.

After leaving Paramount, Sturges made only a handful of pictures. He directed silent film great Harold Lloyd in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947, aka Mad Wednesday). He followed that with the comedy Unfaithfully Yours (1948), The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949) and uncredited co-direction (with Mel Ferrer) on Vendetta (1950), a film he began in 1946 but didn't complete. His last film was made in France: Les Carnets du Major Thompson (1955, aka The French, They Are a Funny Race). When he died in Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel in 1959, he was all but forgotten as a great director, but in the years since, he has achieved the recognition he deserved.

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek opened in New York on January 19, 1944, and even though extra showings were scheduled on Broadway, many stood in line for hours to see the film. At the time, Sturges had just split with Paramount, where he had enjoyed his greatest successes. Distressed by the way The Great Moment (1944) had been butchered in editing and concerned that the studio would damage Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) in the same way, Sturges tried to negotiate a contract that would give him greater power over the final cut of his films. When the studio refused, he quit.

Betty Hutton was reportedly the favorite actress of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Hutton had appeared in musical shorts and brief singing appearances in other films, but made her acting debut opposite Eddie Bracken in The Fleet's In (1942). In her tenure at Paramount through the early 1950s, Hutton became a very popular star in a string of comedies and musicals, including Incendiary Blonde (1945), The Perils of Pauline (1947), and the circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). She replaced the ailing Judy Garland in the lead of MGM's Annie Get Your Gun (1950), earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy. But after quarreling with her studio in 1952, she walked out on her contract. Like Preston Sturges, the break with Paramount essentially signaled the end of her film career. She tried her hand at television and theater and made one final film, Spring Reunion (1957), before dropping from sight completely. It was later discovered in the 1970s that, down on her luck and suffering psychological difficulties, she had found a new life and hope in religion and was working as a housekeeper in a Catholic rectory in New England. She returned to school late in life and earned a bachelors degree; she was also given an honorary Ph.D.

"I am not a great singer and I am not a great dancer, but I am a great actress and nobody ever let me except Preston Sturges. He believed in me." - Betty Hutton in a Life magazine interview.

Although preview audiences roared at The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Paramount executive Buddy DeSylva was fearful that the subject matter and the lack of a big-name cast would keep the picture from being an A-list release. So, along with Sturges' other film Great Without Glory (released later as The Great Moment, 1944), DeSylva held The Miracle of Morgan's Creek back from distribution. This didn't stop Sturges, who despite his annoyance and frustration with the studio, set to work immediately on his next script, which would become Hail the Conquering Hero.

In The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, Brian Donlevy appears briefly as the state's corrupt Governor McGinty (a role he originally played in Sturges' political satire The Great McGinty in 1940).

The year The Miracle of Morgan's Creek was released, Betty Hutton was given the Golden Apple Award as the Most Cooperative Actress.

Eddie Bracken made his adult film debut reprising his Broadway role in the screen adaptation of Too Many Girls (1940), the movie that introduced Desi Arnaz to screen audiences - and to his future wife, co-star Lucille Ball. As a boy, Bracken had appeared in four "Our Gang" shorts. His greatest success was in the two films he made for Preston Sturges, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero. His popularity declined throughout the post-war years and in 1953 he retired from the screen and returned to stage work (including a run in a production of Hello, Dolly on Broadway). He came back to film work in the 1980s and appeared as the owner of Wally World amusement park in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983).

Bracken's nerdy character in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek was given the name of a man Sturges's wife knew many years before, Norval Jones.

Diana Lynn's mother was an accomplished pianist and teacher who trained her daughter from an early age. By the age of 12, Lynn was playing with the Los Angeles Junior Symphony Orchestra.

Lynn never achieved major stardom, and in 1970 she changed careers to direct the GO travel agency in Manhattan. In 1971 she was lured back to the screen to play Anthony Perkins' wife in Play It As It Lays (1972), but at 45 years old, she suffered a fatal stroke before filming began.

The same year this movie was released, Lynn co-starred with Gail Russell in the highly popular Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944), recreating the early lives of writers Emily Kimbrough and Cornelia Otis Skinner. An alcoholic, Russell died in 1961 of liver disease and malnutrition. When Lynn died ten years later, both Kimbrough and Skinner were still alive.

Sturges worked frequently with a group of character actors that became something of a stock company for him at Paramount. Chief among them was William Demarest, who played Officer Kockenlocker in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Demarest had prominent roles in all eight of the movies Sturges directed in his time at the studio. He also appeared in two earlier films written (but not directed) by Sturges. A veteran of more than 140 pictures between 1926 and 1978, Demarest also achieved television fame as the irascible Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons.

Several other Sturges stock company actors also appeared in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, including Al Bridge (a total of 10 films with Sturges), Emory Parnell (5) and Porter Hall (4).

The cinematographer on The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, John Seitz, was one of the most respected and sought-after in Hollywood. Most often associated with the film noir genre, Seitz received seven Oscar® nominations, including four films for Billy Wilder: Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), The Lost Weekend (1945) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). The clothing in this film was designed by Edith Head, who has received more Academy Award nominations and awards than any woman and any costume designer working in films - a total of eight awards out of 34 nominations. Among Head's Oscar®-winning costumes were those for All About Eve (1950) and The Sting (1973).

by Rob Nixon

Famous Quotes from THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK

GOVERNOR (Brian Donlevy): Morgan's Creek? Is that in my state? Never heard of it!

BOSS (Akim Tamiroff): A little creek should have a big dam.

TRUDY (Betty Hutton): You shouldn't have kept me out so late. Papa will be sorer than a boil.

KOCKENLOCKER (William Demarest): Git off my lap! What's the matter with you?
EMMY (Diana Lynn): I've got a right to sit on your lap. I'm your daughter, aren't I?"
KOCKENLOCKER: That's what they told me.

EMMY: If you don't mind my mentioning it, father, I think you have a mind like a swamp.

KOCKENLOCKER: Listen, zipper puss, someday they're just gonna find your hair ribbon and an ax someplace. Nothing else. The mystery of Morgan's Creek.

KOCKENLOCKER: They're a mess no matter how you look at 'em. ...A headache til they get married, if they get married, and after that they get worse.

EMMY: (discussing Norval's suitability for marriage) He was made for it, like the ox was made to eat and the grape was made to drink.

JOHNSON (Al Bridge): The responsibility for recording a marriage has always been up to a woman. If it wasn't for her, marriage would have disappeared long since. No man is going to jeopardize his present or poison his future with a lot of little brats hollering around the house unless he's forced to. It's up to the woman to knock him down, hog-tie him and drag him in front of two witnesses immediately if not sooner. Anytime after that is too late.

GOVERNOR: This is the biggest thing that's happened to this state since we stole it from the Indians!
BOSS: Borrowed.

Compiled by Rob Nixon