Preston Sturges

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1085-1090. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. He was born into a wealthy family. As a boy he helped out on stage productions for his mother's friend, Isadora Duncan (the scarf that strangled her was made by his mother's company, Maison Desti). He served in the U. S. Army Signal Corps during WWI. Upon his return to Maison Desti, he invented a kissproof lipstick, Red-Red Rouge, in 1920. Shortly after his first marriage, his mother demanded that he return control of the company to her. Kicked out of Maison Desti, he turned to inventing. A tickertape machine, an intaglio photo-etching process, an automobile and an airplane were among his some of his commercially unsuccessful inventions.

Was voted the 28th Greatest Director of all time by "Entertainment Weekly". With only 13 films to his credit, he directed even fewer movies than Stanley Kubrick.

He began writing stories and, while recovering from an appendectomy in 1929, wrote his first play, "The Guinea Pig".

In financial trouble over producing his plays, he moved to Hollywood in 1932 to make money. It wasn't long before he became frustrated by the lack of control he had over his work and wanted to direct the scripts he wrote.

Paramount gave him this chance as part of a deal for selling his script for The Great McGinty (1940), at a cheap price. The film's success launched his career as writer/director and he had several hits over the next four years. That success emboldened him to become an independent filmmaker, but that did not last long--he had a string of commercial failures and acquired a reputation as an expensive perfectionist.

He has directed four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). He wrote all of those films in addition to The Power and the Glory (1933), which is also in the registry.

In the 1950s Katharine Hepburn acquired the rights to George Bernard Shaw's play "The Millionairess" and tried to put together a version in which she would have starred and Sturges would have directed. However, no producer or studio would finance the project with Sturges attached to it, and "The Millionairess" was ultimately filmed by Anthony Asquith with Sophia Loren and Peter Sellers as the stars.

He moved to France to make what turned out to be his last movie, The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955).

Son Solomon Sturges was born in June 1941. Son P.G. Sturges was born in 1953. Son Tom Sturges (aka Thomas Preston Sturges) was born on June 22, 1956.

Great-grandfather of Jack Enzo Kelly, born on September 6, 2001, to Shannon Sturges (his granddaughter) and Michael Kelley.