The Life and Films of Preston Sturges Quiz

Answer: The Great McGinty

Preston Sturges (1898-1959) wrote and directed the 1940 film "The Great McGinty". The film marked his directoral debut. He was nominated for and won Best Original Screenplay. He also was nominated for Best Screenplay for the 1944 film "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and the 1945 film "Hail the Conquering Hero", but did not win.

Answer: inventor

According to the Internet Movie Data Base, Sturges invented a kiss-proof lipstick, a ticker tape machine, an intaglio photo-etching process, and an automobile.

Answer: Francois Villon

The movie stars Colman as the famous vagabond poet who is appointed by the King to the position of Grand Constable . . . as punishment! The film also starred Basil Rathbone as King Louis XI and Francis Dee as Ketherine De Vaucelles.

Answer: Won a fortune in a contest

Powell portrays Jimmy MacDonald, who wants to win a coffee slogan contest so that he can afford to marry his fiance. He becomes the victim of an office joke when some of his co-workers forge a letter telling him that he won the $25,000 in the coffee slogan contest, for his slogan "If you can't sleep at night it isn't the coffee-it's the bunk"! Problems develop when he goes about spending the money.

Answer: The Lady Eve

Barbara Stanwyck starred in all these movies: "Double Indemnity" in 1944, and "Ball of Fire" and "Meet John Doe" in 1941. However, one of her best roles was as Jean Harrington/Eve in "The Lady Eve". She plays a card sharp who meets Henry Fonda, the son of a wealthy brewer, on ship returning from the Amazon. Stanwyck and her father think Fonda makes the perfect pigeon, but before they can reel in their prey, Stanwyck falls in love with Fonda.

Answer: Joel McCrea

Joel McCrea plays John L. Sullivan, a sucessful Hollywood director of lightweight comedies. He decides that his next film will be a searing drama about human suffering. His studio bosses remind him that he has no experience in human suffering, so Sullivan decides to set out among the impoverished and experience what it is like. The film co-starred Veronica Lake.

Answer: Betty Hutton

Betty Hutton plays Trudy Kockenlocker, a small town girl who gets drunk at a party one night and wakes up the next morning with the vague feeling that she got married to a soldier at the party. The soldier has vanished, but her sometime boyfriend Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) comes to the rescue. Norval and Trudy find themselves in one mix-up after the other and it takes a miracle to rescue them.

Answer: Working in a shipyard

Eddie Bracken plays Woodrow Truesmith who always wanted to be a marine like his father, who was killed in world War I. When war breaks out, he leaves his hometown to enlist, but he is claasified 4-F due to hay fever. He is too ashamed to return home, so he spends the war working in a shipyard, sending letters through friends from the Pacific to his mother.

When the war ends, he is hesitant to go home, but some real marines returning from Guadalcanal listen to his story, and then call his mother and tell her that he was a real hero. Problems arise when he arrives home and steps off the train to a hero's welcome.

Answer: Rex Harrison

Harrison plays a famous British conductor who loves his wife played by Linda Darnell. However, he becomes jealous and begins to believe that she is unfaithful. Harrison devises three elaborate murderous plans to get even.

Answer: Ward Bond

Ward Bond was a member of director John Ford's stock players. Demarest, Walburn and Pangborn are among well actors by their work, but not their name. Demarest was best known as Uncle Charlie in the TV series "My Three Sons". Pangborn was known for playing countless harried hotel clerks and bell boys and Walburn often played a smug mayor or a judge.