Continuing a disturbing trend - which I will make every effort to correct - this is another blog that was begun the previous night (in this case last night) but not completed until the next afternoon. This is that "next afternoon", and I will now complete the blog.
(from Saturday night July 27, 2019) : Tonight I watched another Preston Sturges masterpiece, "The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek" (1943), starring Betty Hutton and Eddie Bracken. Having seen several of his films now, including "The Lady Eve" which we watched just a few days ago, it's obvious that Sturges was a comedic genius. His movies are unlike any other screen comedies you've ever seen, with elements of farce, the high energy of Screwball and even satire in places, but they also have the exact timing of a Swiss watch, so that everyone in the cast has to be exactly on their marks, every second, to pull of any number of off the wall scenes. Finally, because Sturges wrote most of his own screenplays, he has an identifiable, idiosyncratic style of dialogue, always witty, which comes at you so rapid fire that at times you have to hit the "rewind" button to ensure that you caught all the jokes.
It's amazing to watch, and at times, when the ensemble cast is in perfect sync and the onscreen energy borders on manic, you shake your head a little bit between laughs just to marvel at the cumulative talent of the players, and that each one is bringing an entirely separate comic style into the mix.
I had only seen Eddie Bracken in one other film ("Summer Stock" with Judy Garland), but his persona is a perfect fit for a Sturges comedy. Bracken had a long career and appeared on TV up to the year 2000, so you may know him. He specialised in playing Nervous Nerds, and in his case the characters were often stuttering, stumbling, overly polite numbskulls who generally caused mayhem wherever they went. In this movie, he is wound up tighter than an overcaffinated ADHD sufferer, fit to implode at any moment, as the weight of the world is placed upon his shoulders.
Platinum blonde Betty Hutton is the town hottie of Morgan's Creek. She doesn't mean to be - she's a nice girl - but WW2 is on, and every departing soldier boy wants to dance with her at the upcoming sendoff party for The Boys. Betty is so popular and she has promised to be at the dance, but her cranky old curmudgeon of a father (William Demarest, who excelled in these roles) forbids her to go. He was a soldier in WW1, and he knows "how they are, especially when they're on leave".
So Betty outfoxes him by asking, then, if she can go to the movies with harmless Norval Jones, played by Eddie Bracken. Norval is homely and geeky, therefore Dad should have nothing to worry about. He agrees to let her go, but then when she and Norval get out the door, she uses his infatuation with her to enlist him in a plan to get her to the soldier's dance after all. Norval feels slighted, because he knows he is being used, but he will do anything for Betty, so he allows her to drop him off at the movies and then take his car to the dance. She is supposed to pick him up from the theater at 1am, but then we see that Eddie is sitting on the sidewalk outside the theater and the sun is coming up. It is 8am the next morning and Betty is just pulling in. She is drunk and the car looks the worse for wear.
It turns out that Betty had a pretty wild night. She went to the dance, and then to other dances which were continued at several other nightclubs with the same group of soldiers. At one dance, a soldier made the drunken suggestion that everyone should pair off and get married. WW2 produced fatalistic ideas in the heads of young men who thought they might not be coming back, and they wanted to have someone back home to care about them. So, in this crazy movie there is a serious theme.
Eddie Bracken, who is horrified at what he is hearing of Betty's night at the dance, is doubly floored when she tells him that she indeed participated in the mass marriage. She was drunk, she got married on a whim to a guy whose name she can't even remember, and now, a few weeks later, she discovers she is pregnant.
This was heavy subject matter for 1943, and now Betty has to figure out what she's gonna do about her condition. Nerdy Norval vows to stand by her, always at the ready, so she enlists him to pose as the father. He agrees, and after this point, all hell breaks loose with so many plot twists and threads that you have to be as fast as Preston Sturges to keep up with them all.
I've seen a lot of crazy comedies in my time, but for sheer energy and nuttiness, "The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek" may take the cake. I think Screwball comedy begat the styles that led to Saturday Night Live and that kind of madcap stuff, but nothing I have seen can match up to the insanity and impeccable timing of these Sturges movies.
Though the entire cast shines, especially Eddie Braken (himself a comic genius), a mention must be made of two of the supporting players. One is William Demarest. Most people my age remember him only as the grumpy old "Uncle Charlie" on the "My Three Sons" TV series in the 1960s, and that character is indeed based somewhat on the gruff old cranks he played in his earlier film career. But Uncle Charlie is old and stiff, and almost always angry. He's humorless, which was why little kids like me who watched the show found the character unappealing. However, in his movies from two decades earlier, Demarest - using a more energetic technique - created characters that were similar in personality to "Uncle Charlie" but were full of knowing humor. In "The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek", Demarest plays the Town Constable who is also Betty Hutton's father. He is up to his ears in trouble, and he takes out his frustrations mostly on Eddie Bracken, but it's as if Demarest is in on the joke. The banter he engages in with his two daughters is a high-speed riot, and he even does a couple of big time pratfalls.
The other cast member who must be separately applauded is young Diana Lynn, who we recently saw playing Rita Johnson's precocious little sister in "The Major And The Minor". In that movie, she was 14 going on 30 if you get my drift, totally aware of what the adults were up to, and she plotted a scheme against her sister to help Ginger Rogers win back Ray Milland.
In "The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek" she plays another "older than her years" little sister to Betty Hutton, and has the wiles and superior intelligence to both help Betty out of her jam, and keep Daddio Demarest at bay at the same time.
She was a beautiful young actress who was also a piano prodigy, a real gem who unfortunately died at age 45 in 1971. Keep an eye out for Miss Lynn, she was really great.
Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for "The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek". They just don't, and probably can' t,
make comedies like this any more. ////
Okay, this is me again, writing this afternoon (Sunday). We had good singing in church. I hope you are enjoying your day too. Now I am off to the store for watermelon and other supplies. I will be back later this evening at the usual time. See you then. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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