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2. The Comedic Crowds of Preston Sturges
- Wayne State University Press
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53 Few filmmakers have portrayed crowds or addressed the implied crowd of the audience as shrewdly as Preston Sturges. Nor have many understood so well the deep connection between crowds, love stories, and comic narratives. Even in Unfaithfully Yours (1948), a film largely concerned with its protagonist’s paranoid fantasies (which Canetti identifies as a malady characteristic of power), Sir Alfred’s (Rex Harrison) recovery at the end is confirmed when he embraces the crowd of common people that he has scorned throughout the film. For Canetti, interestingly, “There is no more obvious expression of power than the performance of a conductor. . . . The applause he receives is the ancient salute to the victor and the magnitude of his victory is measured by its volume” (394, 395). When Sir Alfred experiences the epiphany that sets him free of his jealousy, he simultaneously gives up his power and renounces his cultural elitism: “Will you put on your lowest cut, most vulgarly ostentatious dress, with the largest and vulgarest jewels that you possess , and then accompany me to the vulgarest, most ostentatious, loudest, and hardest-to-get-into establishment the city affords? . . . I want everyone to see.” The Great McGinty (1940), Sturges’s first film, and Christmas in July (1940) repeatedly invoke the masses and crowd symbols of thronged neighborhoods, building-crowded cityscapes, and the audiences of millions commanded by newspapers and radio. Behind Hopsie in The Lady Eve (1941) is a fortune continuously increased by the fact that every second of every day masses of people open fourteen bottles of “Pike’s Pale, The Ale that Won for Yale.” The one film Sturges wrote and directed that is not a comedy, The Great Moment (1944), repeatedly insists on the power of anesthesia to mitigate the suffering “of millions.” 2 The Comedic Crowds of Preston Sturges CHAPTER 2 54 The populism of Sturges’s movies has not gone unnoticed, but it has often been considered ironic—as if Sturges were an unrepentant Sir Alfred.1 I am convinced, on the contrary, that Sturges’s comedies work out as predominantly romantic rather than ironic or satiric—though there is certainly irony and satire in all his screenwriting—and that taking note of the pervasive role of crowds in his movies confirms that understanding. In particular, the celebratory crowds at (or just before) the conclusions of Sturges’s comedies —often the first true crowds, from a Canettian understanding, to appear in the film—give emphatic imprimaturs to their happy endings. These concluding throngs both validate the resolution of whatever problems have vexed the protagonists and/or their communities and invite the audience in the theater to join the celebration . Such validations figure crucially in four of Sturges’s most crowd-crowded movies, Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944), The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947), and Sullivan’s Travels (1941). Hail the Conquering Hero: “We want you very much!” Numerous, often chaotic crowds throng Hail the Conquering Hero (1943). Sturges’s wartime comedy moves from an opening in which the protagonist is miserably isolated to an ending that puts him at the center of an adulatory crowd, one that he has helped to create. Between the sharp contrasts of beginning and end, however , the treatment of crowds is complex and often ironic: they gather under circumstances both true and false; they are intricately related to actions of love and growing up, and to themes of war and politics. As Hail the Conquering Hero begins, Woodrow Trusmith (Eddie Bracken) sits solitary and morose in a crowded club. A cantankerous group of marines, reduced to fifteen cents among them, orders what they can afford, a single beer. After Woodrow sends over more beer and sandwiches, they join him and we learn the reason for his gloom. The son of a marine who died in World War I, he enlisted in the marines himself, but washed out because of chronic hay fever. It turns out that the sergeant of the small group served with “Hinky-Dinky” Trusmith, Woodrow’s father. This coincidence and the mother-fixation of one of the men, Bugsy (Freddie Steele), pushes off a series of actions that will end with the lonely hero engaged to his childhood sweetheart, his formerly divided town ready [3.235.199.19] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:23 GMT) The Comedic Crowds of Preston Sturges 55 to “Win with Woodrow,” the quarreling marines reunified, and, by emphatic implication, a confident United States gratefully...