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I've recently been re-watching the films of Preston Sturges for the first time in many years and have a couple of questions:
1) I never thought much of THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK, but was surprised at how much I enjoyed it this time around. The studio-bound "thrill" sequence rather spoils things, IMHO, but there's some great Sturges dialogue and Lloyd is excellent throughout. Do any others here share my enthusiasm, or are my critical faculties finally disintegrating?
2) I don't have THE GREAT MOMENT, THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND or THE DIARIES OF MAJOR THOMPSON. Are they worth tracking down or are they really the stinkers I've read about?
Opinions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Richard

THE GREAT MOMENT isn't bad, by any means, but it just doesn't feel much like a Preston Sturges film, except for having many of his "stock company" of actors. It's a pleasant and earnest little biopic about an idealistic doctor who develops the use of ether for anesthetic. It's certainly worth watching for Sturges completists, but don't expect a comedy. It might play better with one of the many other medical pioneer biographies of the 1930s and 40s from WB and MGM.

I always disliked Diddlebock, but I have to admit the last time I watched it I thought Harold Lloyd and Jimmy Conlin were wonderful. Not a great film, but not the great Lloyd flop history would have it.

Christopher and Ed - many thanks for the feedback.

I quite enjoyed The Beautiful Blonde ... it is fun to watch. Not on a par with his other films by any means, but I wouldn't call it a stinker.

didi-5 wrote:I quite enjoyed The Beautiful Blonde ... it is fun to watch. Not on a par with his other films by any means, but I wouldn't call it a stinker.

I'll second that, BEAUTIFUL BLONDE is actually a pretty fun and wacky western spoof thats worth seeing for the cast alone. Sturges uses a lot of silent comics( who even get their own sight gags in the shootout sequence, Snub Pollard has a great bit) and western character actors, and it has a really funky kind of energy to it. Sterling Holloway and Dan Jackson are really good as the inbred Basserman Boys. And any film that has both Hugh Herbert and El Brendel in it can't be all bad.

It was actually the first Preston Sturges film I ever saw, so it was even uphill from there. All of his films are worth watching.

RICHARD M ROBERTS

Richard R. and didi-5, thanks for the upbeat opinions on BASHFUL BEND.
I've taken the plunge and ordered a secondhand VHS of BASHFUL BEND and a DVD of THE GREAT MOMENT.
I also found THOMPSON under its USA release title of THE FRENCH THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE on the LovingThe Classics website, but the order / payment section of their site appears to be broken so I've given that one a miss! Oh well, 2 out of 3 isn't bad.
It's so nice to be able to get opinions from people I respect before shelling out - one of the great advantages of the internet and places like Nitrateville, Silent Comedy Mafia etc. I know I won't be disappointed - second-tier Sturges is still more worthwhile than most entertainments I can think of!
Thanks again,
Richard

I recommend reading STURGES ON STURGES for getting the views of the great man himself on these films. The troubles he had with Paramount over THE GREAT MOMENT (a title he despised) make fascinating reading.









"This bar of likker is now a bar of justice!'

DIDDLEBOCK is an entertaining film and up to the point where Lloyd wakes up from the drunk it's a very good one. At that point the story begins to go off the rails a bit. Maybe an actor with a broader comic style than Lloyd could have carried it off- he was pretty clear that he wasn't pleased with the direction the story took and he doesn't look entirely comfortable.

It does show that with a good director he could handle spoken dialogue very well- and he had excellent comic timing. I've often thought that if Lloyd had not been so wealthy that he didn't need to work he'd have made a very fine character actor.

Richard Warner wrote:I never thought much of THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK, but was surprised at how much I enjoyed it this time around...Do any others here share my enthusiasm, or are my critical faculties finally disintegrating?

It's a good film with a fantastic opening--the integration of the silent material is well done and Lloyd's monologue about the heroine's sisters is one of the loveliest Sturges ever wrote. The film runs out of steam toward the end, since the attempts to recreate Lloyd's comedy with the lions and tall buildings doesn't work. But that's forgivable.

I don't have THE GREAT MOMENT, THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND or THE DIARIES OF MAJOR THOMPSON. Are they worth tracking down or are they really the stinkers I've read about?

Before you watch The Great Moment, make sure to read the original script, which is printed in the book Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges. Then you'll see what Sturges was trying to do, and you'll see how badly the studio butchered and disgraced what could have been a small masterpiece. The film, originally titled Triumph Over Pain, was meant to up-end the already standard biopic genre by telling the story of an inventor who made a major discovery, donated it to the good of humanity, was repaid with scorn, bankruptcy, persecution, and ruin. Sturges daringly scrambled the chronology and inserted moments of wild slapstick to ward off any feeling of stuffiness. Paramount responded by recutting blocks of the picture into an incoherent jumble, in an attempt to make it as conventional as Sturges didn't want it to be.

Beautiful Blonde is easily the worst movie Sturges ever made. There's one funny bit at the beginning, featuring Betty Grable's character as a child, but the rest plays like the work of a clumsy Sturges imitator. The slapstick is heavy-handed, predictable, and witless.

The Notebooks of Major Thompson is worth buying if you approach it as a gentle little comedy about cross-cultural differences, rather than a standard Sturges film. Cullen Gallagher wrote a sympathetic review of the film that can be read here. The myth of Sturges' decline is ultimately false--his later films, aside from Blonde, were often made in compromised circumstances and come better than one would expect. And the unfilmed scripts from his later years prove that he never lost his talent. I read two of these--Nothing Doing and Look Ma, I'm Dancin'--at UCLA, and both deserve to be published. I'm hoping we'll much more of Sturges' lesser-known work in the years to come.

I have never understood the disdain by so many for "Diddlebock." The first half is a rather hilarious Sturges film with some of his funniest dialogue ever ("Your mother kept making them better every year" or something like that). The second half is an above average Lloyd talkie even if largely a rehash of his earlier thrill comedies. Each auteur (can I use that word on Nitrateville) seems to control half of the film. The tension is palpable and the Sturges half is better, but this clash of comedy titans is well worth seeing with lots of solid laughs. Far from the trainwreck often claimed.

How about the films Sturges wrote (or had a hand in) before he directed? Even the B films were a cut above the average.

They just announced that The Power and the Glory will be in the second wave of Fox MOD releases.

mndean wrote:How about the films Sturges wrote (or had a hand in) before he directed? Even the B films were a cut above the average.

DVD now provides evidence of how very good The Good Fairy, Easy Living, and Remember the Night are, and The Power and the Glory, Diamond Jim, and If I Were King fully deserve DVD release too. The first is a little stodgy, but the storytelling is still innovative (though the original scripted version has a better ending); DJ has a melancholy undercurrent that fully manifests itself at the end; IIWK is a genuine romp.

Jim Reid wrote:They just announced that The Power and the Glory will be in the second wave of Fox MOD releases.

Great news!