Sturges's mother, Mary Desti, left her traveling salesman husband while her son was an infant and went to Paris, where she befriended Isadora Duncan and began a career as a bohemian and socialite. Upon returning to Chicago, she divorced her first husband and married Solomon Sturges, a kindly broker who legally adopted the four-year-old child in 1902. As a young man Preston assisted his mother with her cosmetics business, but after WW I he began writing plays, one of which, Strictly Dishonorable, was a Broadway hit in 1929. Two years later, he adapted it for the movies.
Sturges remained in Hollywood as a writer during the Great Depression, scoring several successes. Most notable were THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1933), William K. Howard's drama that featured a narrative structure that may have influenced CITIZEN KANE, and Mitchell Leisen's excellent screwball comedy, EASY LIVING (1937).
Sturges earned his fame during a short period between 1940 and 1944, when the world was preoccupied with the devastations of war, although his pictures dealt only obliquely, if at all, with the military campaigns. His first hit as both writer and director was THE GREAT MCGINTY (1940), a dramatic comedy about graft and corruption, as well as love and sacrifice. He won the Oscar for best original screenplay with this vigorous, quick-moving study of a tough guy (played by Brian Donlevy) who sells his vote in a Chicago mayoral election thirty-seven times over, and is eventually elected governor of Illinois.
The film succeeded financially, as did his more wildly comical satires THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942), about a struggling inventor (Joel McCrea) and his dizzy wife (Claudette Colbert); HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO (1944), which made light of bravery when few people dared to; and THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (1944), concerning a small town girl named Trudy Kockenlocker who winds up pregnant by a soldier she can't remember.
Most critics agree, however, that Sturges's best films were THE LADY EVE (1941), a sometimes farcical romance which pits an extremely skilled gold-digger (Barbara Stanwyck) against a multimillionaire (Henry Fonda) with a love for snakes, and SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS (1941), with Joel McCrea playing a comedy-film director in search of poverty so he can make a philosophically profound picture, one of the most intelligent and comically adroit films about the Hollywood frame of mind.
After WW II Sturges's star faded. Later pictures such as THE BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND (1949) and the French project, THE FRENCH, THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE (1956) / LES CARNETS DU MAJOR THOMPSON, were poorly received by patrons and critics alike. But his reputation as a great shaper of dialogue continues, enhanced in recent years by the availability of several of his best screenplays in published form.
Writing (Original Screenplay) 1940: THE GREAT MCGINTY
Nominated for Writing (Original Screenplay) 1944: HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO
Nominated for Writing (Original Screenplay) 1944: THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK
3 nominations, 1 Award