Movie. Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, 1944. (HIx: 1)
Another roaring Preston Sturges movie.
Kockenlocker (William Demarest) is a widower, a grumpy small town police chief with two daughters: the nubile Trudy (Betty Hutton), and a prematurely worldly-wise 14-year old (Diana Lynn). Trudy gets in trouble, marrying a GI in the middle of the night after a wild soldiers’ going-away party, but she was in a stupor and doesn’t remember who the guy was, and the soldiers are all long gone. Technically she is married, she doesn’t know to whom and, unfortunately, turns out to be in the family way.
Local nebbish Norville (Eddie Bracken) wanted to join the military, but they wouldn’t take him. He has always had a crush on Trudy. So he quite willingly becomes manipulated into becoming the Oriole whose nest has been filled by a Cowbird. But bigamy must be avoided, so trying to patch this up without letting the father into what really happened sets the stage for all kinds of rollicking and hysterical situations. Much of the comedy, both physical and dialogue, is very funny. All three of the main leads are great comics.
On the special features track, some movie critics giggle and titter about how Sturges got around the Hays Commission rules to tell a story like this. A pregnant woman had to be married, and a female couldn’t be drunk. So he contrives that she is technically married, and her stupor is not due to alcohol, but because she bopped her head on a chandelier during a dance.
Now, I am not prudishly suggesting that a story of an unwed mother cannot be done. Not at all. But here, an atmosphere of flippancy about it is pervasive. She pouts; she cries; she is desolate: but all of that is almost self-parodying. There is no possibility of repentance because she is too superficial for such categories to even apply. The hysterics, whether sad or funny, seem to convey the message that “society,” not the silly girl, is what needs to change.
The question also needs to be raised whether a movie portraying American soldiers this way, not to mention the general slapstick pervading the theme, should have been made at the climax of a desperate war advertised as saving civilization from barbarism. Or: if the soldiers were of such character, should we not consider that the war was indeed the triumph of the barbarians?
An interesting historical note: even Mussolini and Hitler are shown as comic figures. I’m pretty sure this would not have been done if there had been a belief in 1944 about a holocaust going on.
I’m giving this a “one” mainly for the “ya gotta see this to believe it” category.