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THE RICHNESS OF PRESTON STURGES PART 2
YESTERDAY, FILM DIRECTOR PRESTON STURGES lolled with the likes of folks named Hutton, Post, and Woolworth. It apparently rubbed off, and his movies blended this rich environment with a screwball attitude. Here in Part 2, the latter predominates.
Sturges and Isadore Duncan. What with both biological and surrogate parents, Preston’s upbringing was anything but conventional. LRB reviewer David Trotter says of his birth mother: “In January 1901, Mary Biden, née Dempsey, set off for Paris to study for the stage, with the infant Preston in tow. A woman of inexhaustible enterprise, she was always going to land on her feet. To help things along, she now called herself Mary d’Este, on the grounds that Dempsey had always been a crude anglicisation obscuring noble (if distant) Italian ancestry. When she gave the cosmetics business she subsequently established the name Maison d’Este, the noble Italians objected, and she had to revert to Desti.”
Trotter continues, “She had barely set foot in Paris before becoming best friends with Isadora Duncan, then cutting a swathe through the more bohemian reaches of the avant-garde with her lyrical interpretations of dance. A good deal of Sturges’s life until the age of fifteen was lived as a junior member of Duncan’s entourage.”
Quel entourage.
“Mary,” Wikipedia notes, “also carried on a romantic affair with Aleister Crowley and collaborated with him on his magnum opus Magick. Come to think of it, Crowley made an appearance here as well: See “Aleister Crowley—A First-rate Nut Case.”
Sturges the Pilot. Trotter says, “In 1918, Sturges trained as a pilot. He was just getting the hang of the appropriate Top Gun manoeuvres ‘when a terrible disaster overtook us all: on 11 November 1918, the war ended.’ ”
TCM’s Sturges Showcase. Based on recently enjoyed viewings on Turner Classic Movies, I see that Sturges films have aged very well. The Palm Beach Story and The Lady Eve were great pleasures; I still have Sullivan’s Travels in the recorded/to watch queue.
Barbara Stanwyck portrays a beautiful con artist who outwits rich guy Henry Fonda. Indeed, twice, along with falling in love with him.
Typical of Sturges flicks, the pacing and dialogue are rapid. Wikipedia notes, “It is not uncommon for a Sturges character to deliver an exquisitely turned phrase and take an elaborate pratfall within the same scene.”
In The Palm Beach Story, Rudy Vallée plays a meek, eccentric, and amiable rich guy (who reminds me of the Tony Curtis masquerade for Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.
Spoiler: Rudy and Claudette end up getting married, but not to each other. All part of Sturges’ screwball charm. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023
Simanaitis Says 
Wife, Larraine, editor of Morganotes, Keeps buying these long scarfs,I once had a shoulder safety belt drop over the side of the Morgan.The loud ticking warned me of the danger,.John
Regarding scarves, may I assume you’re referring to Mary’s pal, the ill-fated Isadora Duncan?
I saw the ’68 movie about Isadora as a kid, and forever thought she was riding in a Bugatti, but that was just the name of the character driving the car.
I don’t recall that movie, but Wikipedia relates that the car was an Amilcar CGSS owned by Italian-French mechanic Benoit Falchetto. The scarf was a gift from Mary Desti. To this day, such tragic accidents are known as the Isadora Duncan Syndrome.