Classic Movie Review: “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941) Written and Directed by Preston Sturges

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Dan Walker On Film

This tag line is misleading but the artwork is distinctive and eye-catching.

Director:

Preston Sturges (“The Lady Eve”, “The Great McGinty”, “The Great Moment”, and, if he added the words “The Great” to the title of this movie, I wouldn’t argue.)

Cast:

Joel McCrae (“Foreign Correspondent”, “The Great Moment”)

Veronica Lake (“So Proudly We Hail!”, “This Gun for Hire”)

Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines, and William Demarest in a publicity still for “Hail the Conquering Hero”.

Robert Warwick (This is the only movie I’ve seen him in and I only list movies I’ve seen when I do these credits so you understand what I do or don’t know about the actors.)

William Demarest (A wonderful, scene-stealing, no-nonsense character actor and a constant in Sturges films.  He’s also Uncle Charlie from TV’s “My Three Sons”)

Running Time:   90 Minutes

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The vibe of this Rita Hayworth clone bears no resemblance to that of the character in the film.

Rather than tell you up front what I think about this film, I’m going to explain what I discovered on the way to forming my opinion.  Because I wanted to minimize the number of words I use (for once), I did this review in bullet-point format.  The problem is that bullet points shouldn’t be a half-page long but I’m retaining the format so I don’t have to worry about cohesion.

-The very first shot of the film shows a big white invitation envelope with the Paramount logo as its seal.  The seal is broken and the paper is pulled back to unveil a book with the film’s title and caricatures of the two leads.  We are politely introduced page-by-page to the film’s participants and contributors and invited to watch the movie.  Not unusual for the time but I still thought it was a nice touch and worth mentioning.

Whoever created this poster had Lana Turner in mind because Lake never once makes an affected pose or affected anything in the movie.

-The movie’s wit is apparent from its opening and it hooks you immediately.  In its opening scene, two men are locked in a frenzied and frantic life-and-death struggle on top of a high-speed train at night.   Trains are a great and attention-getting way to start a story (“Dr. Zhivago”, the recent “True Grit”, “The Cider House Rules”, among others).  In the background is an appropriately dramatic and busy music score and the fight ends with a decisive finish where both antagonists fall into a river.  As your eyes continue looking downward onto the river, whose surface is wavy from the ripples caused by the entry of the combatants, the words “The End” appear.  The movie starts with the end of a movie-within-a-movie.  It took longer to type this paragraph than it took for that scene to play out.  So much for minimizing the number of words I use.

The first rapid-fire exchange scene

-Immediately after the opening, which is the end of a private movie screening, successful comedy movie director John L. Sullivan (McCrae, and I’m not sure why they name the character after a legendary boxer) and two movie execs leave the screening room and engage in a rapid-fire exchange, a trademark of the film.  Because I wasn’t prepared for the dialogue’s velocity, I turned on the subtitles and restarted the movie.  Sturges crams so much dialogue into such a short span of time during these exchanges it seems he was paid by the word to write the script.

Sullivan getting it from all sides

Not only is the dialogue dense and quick in these scenes, it’s all good and it’s all significant.  There are several group conversations with lightning-fast dialogue, double entendres and who’s-on-first exchanges that distract you enough that you almost miss the next lines. They must have had faster brains back then and I would have been lost without the subtitles.  In one self-aware scene, Sullivan, talking to a group of his lackeys (including a very enthusiastic publicist) about his plan to impersonate a poor person so he could live among them for the purposes of researching a movie, says, “Look, I’m trying to find trouble but I won’t find it with six acts of vaudeville on my tail.”

-If Gary Cooper had an adrenal gland, a sense of humor, acting skills, a personality, and charm, he would have been Joel McCrae.  One interesting trait McCrae has is that he always seems to be thinking about the next thing he’s going to do or say as he speaks and it gives his performance a unique, focused energy.

-If Lana Turner had all those same traits, she would have been Veronica Lake, although Lake’s vibe is very cool so maybe the adrenal gland thing doesn’t apply.  She still projects more energy than Turner, who I find to be a pretty shell with nothing inside.  Of the two, Lake is the better actor and more alluring.  All her scenes are a treat and she’s very smooth, understated and calmly potent in her delivery, which could easily be interpreted as monotonous but it emphasizes the stability, grounding, and practical nature of her character.  Lake’s character’s name is never given and, in another interesting element of the movie, she’s credited simply as “The Girl.”  Before I saw both Lake films, my opinion of her was based on the sultry sex kitten persona the studio pushed to sell both the film and Lake to the public, which is why I make the comments on the promo pictures I put up.  I feel compelled to overemphasize the fact that she’s much more than a pretty face with a trademark coif.

The soup kitchen scene the moment before the bite. Look at how intently she watches for his reaction. In the next moment her facial expression and body language change entirely. Probably my favorite scene in the movie.

One of my favorite Lake scenes is when Sullivan and The Girl are in the soup kitchen in their hobo garb.  As they sit in the large and sardine-packed room, she intently watches Sullivan as he takes an apprehensive and regrettable first bite of the food – as both a gauge for the quality of the food and for her entertainment – and puts her hand over her mouth to suppress her laughter at his face-contorting reaction.  Lake’s shoulders bounce while she laughs and the screen is bathed in her charm.  The authenticity, sincerity, and good nature of that scene were surprising and refreshing and her laugh was infectious.  As I note in the cast credits, the only other Lake movie I’ve seen is the war film, “So Proudly We Hail!”, which also features Paulette Goddard and Claudette Colbert and is a serious and engaging movie.  I only know the three of them from comedies – in the case of this film, a comedy with dramatic and intense, even scary, elements – and the movie and all three are outstanding.

The “land yacht”. 1933 Yellow Coach Nite Coach

-The stunts are very intense and realistic.  Along with the opening train fight, one scene that stands out is the comical and fast-forwarded chase scene where Sullivan the hobo accepts a ride from a kid with a lead foot and souped-up jalopy whose speedometer is a piece of wood with hand-written numbers.  The kid drives at breakneck speed and makes sharp turns in the hopes of evading a bus, which Sullivan refers to as a “land yacht.”   The bus passengers are Sullivan’s crew, following him to ensure every step of his quest is safe.  During the chase, they bounce off every surface of whatever compartment they’re in, appearing to defy gravity in the process.  The interiors of the bus are decimated by bodies smashing against them during the pursuit.  The black cook in the bright white kitchen seems to absorb the most impact and make the most damage.  His portrayal comes perilously close to being Stepin Fetchit-esque but his scenes would have been funny had a comically expressive actor of any race been in them.

The speedometer

When Sullivan gets hit later, and it doesn’t happen just once, it looks like McCrae is absorbing the impact.  The guy wanted to see how the poor and troubled lived and he found out first-hand and was never, ever prepared for it, which was a point extremely well-conveyed.  A main point of the movie, actually.  When he gets sentenced to six years hard labor, you feel like you’re Sullivan, and it’s unexpectedly disorienting and feels hopeless.  In a segment of this review that was focused on the stunts, I’m pointing out the diversity and broad range of scenarios this movie has.  This is a very complete film in that regard.

The church scene I didn’t mention and the location of Sullivan’s revelation. There are too many significant scenes in the movie to itemize them all.

-Since I mentioned Stepin Fetchit, I have to mention that, other than the cook, the film’s portrayal of blacks is very peaceful, spiritual and tolerant, which is to the writer/director’s credit, especially for its time.

– There are references to other entertainment people, like Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, Bob Hope, Mary Martin, The Abbott Dancers (who?), Bing Crosby, and Jack Benny & Rochester (another caricature that couldn’t happen today).  I found that to be generous of Sturges and it emphasizes the period of the film’s release.

-Sullivan’s butler’s soliloquy/explanation about why he recommends against Sullivan dressing like a hobo for the purposes of infiltrating the world of the poor to research a movie is insightful, perfect in its timing, and poetic in its verbiage and delivery.  The casting of Australian actor Robert Greig as Burroughs the butler pays off in this scene alone and the scene leaves the audience as speechless as it does Sullivan.

-The number and authenticity of the cast of homeless people were impressive and effective.  Whoever did the wardrobe and dressing for the movie either had a lot of fun or were really grossed out.  Those people really looked homeless and there were a lot of them.

Hoping for authenticity

-In a great, powerful scene, Sullivan’s naiveté is twice revealed when he stops, one by one, to give money to each poor person on the street, handing each a single bill.  I don’t know what the denomination was, but it was enough to entice one of the recipients to follow him into a dark alley, knock him out, and steal his money.   After dragging an unconscious Sullivan onto a train car, in one nonstop and compelling long and wide shot, we watch from behind as the hobo hurdles his way across a wide and dense railroad yard maze of tracks, getting progressively farther away from the camera until he trips over one of the rails, resulting in the money flying out of his hands and all over the tracks.  The same guy previously stole Sullivan’s shoes in the giant room where homeless people slept tightly packed together, which you don’t realize until later when it becomes significant to the story.  We see when Sullivan wakes up without his shoes but not how he lost them.  You can’t miss it; the soles of his bare feet are pretty much on the camera to emphasize the theft.  As the mugger rushes to gather the money, dropping more than he picks up in his greedy frenzy, a train approaches.  Because there are so many tracks the train can follow and the train is coming so quickly, the thief frantically hops from track to track, ultimately choosing the wrong one, essentially and ironically paying the ultimate price for his crime.  Maybe both crimes, since his stolen shoes may have been ill-fitting and the reason he tripped on a rail.

Sullivan and The Girl in the “borrowed” car

-An ongoing gag, story point and source of frustration for Sullivan is that, every time he gets out of Los Angeles to begin his quest, he somehow finds himself back in LA.

-This movie does something several times that I like when it’s done well; it tells us it knows it’s a movie.  In one scene shortly after Sullivan and The Girl meet and she believes his hobo story, they are stopped by cops while he drives his own car, which he explains to The Girl is “borrowed”.   Because he’s dressed in tramp clothes and has no identification, both are arrested and jailed.  When Sullivan’s butler and valet come to the jail house to vouch for his identity, the police reluctantly release him, eliciting this exchange:

Sullivan:        “OK, let the girl out, too, will you?  She’s getting bored in there.”

Cop:                “How does the girl fit in this picture?”

Sullivan:        “There’s ALWAYS a girl in the picture.  Haven’t you ever been to the movies?”

It’s like Bugs Bunny or Ferris Bueller acknowledging the audience but the movie does it indirectly and without anyone looking into the camera.  The Girl is the only real female role in the movie, although the role of Sullivan’s wife-of-convenience (taxes) is significant at the end of the movie.  It might have been this scene that inspired Sturges to leave the character unnamed.

Another example is when Sullivan gets six years hard labor and tries to convince a fellow con/laborer that he’s a picture director.  The guy thinks he’s lying or delusional and has every reason to not believe him.  As Sullivan tries to figure out how to get out of his predicament, he says, “If ever a plot needed a twist, this one does.”  In less than a minute, the progression of the conversation – another example of the movie’s cleverness – provides that twist. In a light bulb-over-the-head moment, Sullivan quickly stands up and is off to the races, hits the homestretch, and heads toward the finish line in an ending I can only describe as “rousing”.

Preston Sturges

This is the third time I’ve seen the movie and easily the one I most benefited from, mostly because of the stressed mood I was in prior to watching it.  For decades, I’ve had people tell me that I needed to look into the movies of Preston Sturges but I always found other movies I wanted to watch instead.  The first time I watched the movie, I impatiently and obligatorily sat through it, thought it was OK, and was glad it ended just so I could get it behind me.  I dismissed Sturges as inferior to both Billy Wilder and Capra and considered him to be a watered-down version of a combination of both directors.  When I watched it a second time, I followed the story more and liked but didn’t love it, although I felt I was missing out on something and knew I would watch it again.  In really focusing on it during this last viewing, it was almost as though I’d never seen it before.

Chain gang scene. The film’s most brutal character – The Mister

Yesterday, because I wanted a break from myself and from the heat – the basement, where my projector is, maintains a cool temperature – I chose “Sullivan’s Travels” without much thought and it turned out to be a very significant and well-timed choice.  Because of how intense the articles I’ve been writing have been in the ongoing column on this site, I wanted to watch something light.  Look at most of the articles I’ve written lately.  They look like, in my benevolence, I descended from the heavens to grace your eyes with the sequencing of my carefully selected choice of words and enlighten your perspective with my eloquently written-in-stone proclamations.  While I think I’m making valid points, that self-importance gets wearing and I have to take a break from it.  If you only judged my personality by those articles, you’d think I was very serious and egomaniacal.  More than anything, I’m a goof that will say anything to get a laugh because I love laughing myself.

The DGA Building on Sunset near Fairfax. My first Miramax office was here.

To show you how far I’ll go for a laugh, when I was in Hollywood, me and three other execs from my company – all higher ranking than me – met with Disney Imagineering to discuss the purchase and renovation of a building our office would be moving to.  Disney was our parent company and the DI people were very smart and cool but very corporate, which is not how Miramax was at all.  Being the junior person in the room and loathsome of meetings, I only contributed when I was asked for input and mostly paid attention to what was being said.  I fidget like a child in meetings.

The House “The Terminator” Built. Hemdales’s old building on Beverly. It’s near The Grove.

The highest-ranking Miramax exec there, the company’s female VP of Finance, had been a Disney department head and was brought into Miramax to bring structure and order to that part of the company.  She was very hard-working and smart but she had the reputation for being difficult to work with, a bully, and for having the compassion of a cobra and she was despised company-wide.  I was spared her wrath because I worked hard, which she appreciated.  Still, you never want to get too close to a cobra because they can strike without warning.  I’m actually convincing myself she was a real cobra as I’m writing this.

The Piazza del Sol on Sunset. My office was on the top floor over the left garage opening. We moved a lot.

During the meeting, which was dominated by the cobra, in response to someone else’s comment she said, “Well, we don’t want anyone to think I’m a bitch on wheels”, which got a polite laugh from the group.  Me being me, I immediately said, with an already-pleased-with-myself Cheshire cat grin, “I hate to break this to you, but everyone already DOES think you’re a bitch on wheels.”  This was a packed and very corporate conference room and, after the shocked pause and seeing everyone’s face expressing that exact reaction, the room exploded with loud, riotous laughter.

No way would I put an actual photo of a cobra here. Those things are evil. Like “anaconda” and “black mamba”, “cobra” is one of the best names in the animal kingdom.

All eyes were on me as I looked down, laughing out of embarrassment at the attention I was getting, and said to the cobra, “You’ll find my resignation on your desk in the morning”, which made everyone laugh even harder and it took several minutes for the meeting to resume order.  You should have seen the look of disbelief my boss – who REALLY hated her and I sat directly across the table from both – gave me for a while after I made that comment, which did nothing but endear me to everyone in the room, including and to her credit, the VP.  That’s how much of a goof I am and how far I’ll go to get a laugh.

The building we moved to, by the way, was the former Hemdale building on Beverly Blvd. near Fairfax, which I used to refer to as “The House that ‘The Terminator’ Built”, because that’s what it was. Hemdale was the company that produced “The Terminator”, which will always be my favorite James Cameron film.  When I took the picture of the building in 2011, I talked to the parking attendant, who had no idea that Miramax,  Billy Bob Thornton, Quentin Tarantino and his production company, A Band Apart, had offices there at one time and really enjoyed listening to my anecdotes.  I saw and met a lot of talent while I worked there.  Leonard Maltin – who I like, especially for his knowledge of and appreciation for classic animation – was a frequent and friendly visitor because the building had a nice screening room.  I loved watching movies from the projection office, which had a full window overlooking the room.  The projectionist had a Scorsese-esque love and knowledge of film and we talked through viewings without missing  a beat.  He introduced me to Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother, who was very pleasant to converse with, sharp, and completely unassuming.

Black Iris from my front yard, June 2, 2013

My original responsibility to the site when I started in November was to write movie reviews, with an emphasis on older movies because the editor is a fan of them and likes my perspective on movies and the way I write (I got him fooled).  Writing the reviews has been enjoyable and I have limitless room for improvement, which is exciting.  Because I wanted to try to give this site a new dimension and injection of energy, I started a column that I wanted to dot with photos I thought were pleasing, energetic or interesting and also include video clips.  I really didn’t have an idea about what I would write about and the column is still transitioning.

Tiger Lilies, New Milford, CT, July 6, 2013 10:00am

Me starting the column is ironic because, as I repeatedly point out, op-ed pieces and (in another irony) movie reviews lost their value for me years ago.  It’s more fun and responsible to figure out things for myself.  The first two articles (June 24) were about James Gandolfini’s passing and the Florida murder trial and that might have set the tone because the content is much more intense than I intended.  I thought it would be things like the woodpecker anecdote.  I went from something enjoyable to something more serious, although there are lighter pieces in the column.  “Sullivan”‘s lead character was somewhat similarly driven to break out of directing comedies, which he was successful at, to make a serious social statement, where he was untested.

The revelation

As I was watching the movie, and I don’t think any particular scene triggered it and without remembering the movie’s exact storyline and moral, it occurred to me I needed to go back to focusing more on movies.  I’ve received very supportive feedback on the writing in the op-ed column, but I neglected my original focus and told myself I needed to review more movies.  I also felt movies would be healthier for me to write about.  Similarly, but on a much higher level, Sullivan ultimately realizes the world needs to laugh and his efforts are best served in that pursuit.  He had to go through what he went through – experiences that were brutal, intense, seemingly hopeless, and life-endangering – to come to that conclusion.  All I had to do to was watch a movie.  The parallels between my responsibilities to the site and the storyline didn’t occur to me until the very end, which is appropriate; I never try to guess a film’s ending.

Brian lapping up the praise in “Brian’s Play”

These coincidences happen to me and not infrequently and I pointed that out to my buddy two nights ago.  I started writing the piece I did on the insecurity of writers on a Saturday, a topic of which didn’t occur to me until that day and I was inspired to write it because a of related incident.  The next night, “Family Guy” reran the episode, “Brian’s Play”, which was exactly about that same thing.  After a few months of living in the new place, I purchased a couch, again on a Saturday.  The next night, “The Simpsons” ran an episode called “Pulpit Friction”. Here’s a promo:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l6IscgrO4c

In the scene right before the first scene of the clip, guys in a furniture warehouse say something like, “What people don’t realize is that all couches get shipped from Brooklyn”, as they forklift-load Homer’s couch-to-be, infested with bedbugs, onto a truck.  I live 80 miles from New York City.  I also really backed off watching movies in theatres when that bedbug outbreak was reported in NYC a few years ago.  You don’t have to tell me twice.  I think I just felt something crawling on me.

On a slow day when I was in the film industry, I invited a co-worker into my office to watch “Mulholland Drive”.  I’m a huge David Lynch fan and found it exciting when a train car I was in during a European trip carried Lynch, which I didn’t realize until I saw him walk by my window after he de-trained.  He was going to Cannes.  An unofficial part of my job, believe it or not, was to watch new movies and email Harvey’s office with my thoughts.  “And the reason you left Hollywood was WHAT exactly, Dan?”

The “Silencio” woman from David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”

As we watched the movie, there was a scene where a non-sequitur character says – for no apparent reason and there were long silent pauses before and after so it stood out – “Silencio.”  Not thirty seconds later another co-worker, entering the office, said, at a booming volume, “Silencio!”.  The co-worker who was watching the movie looked at me in shock and I walked over to the guy and asked him why he said that word, especially since the office was dead quiet when he arrived, making his comment not only coincidental but a complete non-sequitur.   I also pointed out that I never heard him say a single Spanish word before, which he confirmed.  His response was, “I don’t know, I just felt like saying it.”  Then I showed him the scene in the movie, which we paused, and he saw by how little rewinding we had to do the close timing of the two comments.  He said, “OK, now I’m weirded out because I have no idea why I said it.”

Art Fleming, the coolest game show host ever. To me, he’ll always own “Jeopardy!”

When I was working on Park Avenue, the subject of Thor, which had nothing to do with the movie, came up with a co-worker and we talked about it at length.  I think it was a crossword answer.  The topic never came up before or after that day.  That night, a Jeopardy clue was something like, “This day of the week was named after the Norse god of thunder.”  I recorded the clip, which I still may have, and emailed it to the guy I had the conversation with and he agreed the coincidence was a little eerie.  I pointed out these coincidences as they occurred to a co-worker in that same office because I needed a witness and he got more weirded out each time a new one happened to the point he asked me to stop updating him.

While I’ve forced the topic of the column on you, I have to mention that when I talk about people needing to broaden their perspective, avoid categorizing other people and being more open-minded and objective, I’m also telling that to myself because it’s not like I have all the answers and my perspective can always be broadened.  Patience is another thing I’m working on.  You’d think I’d have a handle on it by now.

The first two times I watched “Sullivan” were on Netflix rentals.  This time I watched a version that was part of a Preston Sturges box set that was given to me.  Because of my mindset going in, this viewing was relaxing, stimulating, thought-provoking, and therapeutic.  Aside from its funny moments, the dialogue was so dense and thoughtful that it felt like my brain was exercising in a way it needed and in a way it hadn’t exercised in a very long time.  When I took my eight-day break from the internet, my computers and my smart phone, the only movies I watched at home were summer blockbusters like “Jaws” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

I  could keep writing about “Sullivan”‘s every detail because I enjoyed it that much and there’s a lot I didn’t touch on.  If I didn’t include the picture of the black church, I’d have neglected referencing one of the film’s most significant moments.  Having seen all the other movies in the set, I’m looking forward to seeing them again, although I don’t think any of them, enjoyable as they are, will elicit a review like this one did.  Let’s hope not, anyway.  I’m worried this review is going to keep feeding off itself after I stop typing.

After finally giving it my full attention and being in the perfect frame of mind for it, I now understand why “Sullivan’s Travels” and the work of Preston Sturges in general was recommended so many times and so strongly and even given to me.  The movie is very special and more than a classic.  It’s a movie that anyone who loves movies – or even non-movie lovers who are open to early 1940’s nostalgia and a stimulating and almost-interactive entertainment experience – really should see.

DPW

July 17, 2013

Let me know where to send the check for this therapy session.

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