The “miracle” of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is that audiences in 1943 bought Preston Sturges’s film as a proposition. The story makes no sense and Sturges knew it didn’t. Hence the framing device added to distance the “facts” of what we see on screen from their telling.
The film begins with a state governor being told a wildly implausible story in a telephone call from an excited journalist, and ends back in the governor’s office, where the final tawdry details are being received. Sturges obviously intends that we understand we’re getting the facts at one remove and that there’s been a bit of journalist licence used in the story’s reporting.
Here’s the plot. A wild and flighty young woman, who lives at home with her cop father and smartypants sister, goes out for the night with some soldiers on their way to fight the Second World War. Dad doesn’t want her to go, what with soldiers being soldiers and this being their last night in America, but Trudy (Betty Hutton) is determined to have her fun. So she gets stuttering milquetoast boy-next-door Norval (Eddie Bracken) to say she’s going out with him to the movies. Norval is keen on her but she’s not so keen on him, especially as he can’t pass the military physical, but Dad’s fine with Trudy going out with him. Norval is harmless.
Trudy, who can talk Norval into anything, has her night out with the soldiers, while Norval waits back at the movie theatre on his own, ready to take Trudy home, the sap. But instead of coming back at midnight, or whatever, Trudy doesn’t turn up until eight in the morning, drunk and steering Norval’s dented car all over the place. Back at home with her fuming dad – all night! – and talking to her whip smart young sister, Trudy suddenly realises two things. One: she got married in the middle of her big night out but she has no idea who the lucky man was. Two: she’s pregnant.
Er… the marriage is implausible enough but how Trudy knows she’s pregnant, the very next morning, is the real puzzler. Has Sturges just not done the passing of time very well? Are special rules of human embryology in play? Whatever it is, we need to accept this possibility as a certainty before the film can get on to its real proposition, which is an equally far-fetched bit of plotting about Trudy and Norval setting off on a scheme to get her a marriage licence by getting married themselves using false names.
Bigamy, unwanted pregnancy and, eventually, a consideration of suicide – this is what screwball comedy looked like in 1943. Audiences had grown so used to outlandish screwball plots that Sturges obviously believed they’d swallow almost anything if it was served up the right way. There is a feverishness to it all which makes more sense if we understand that Sturges was writing the film on the hoof while dealing with the release of other films he already had in the can and, remarkably, also running a restaurant. On top of that The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek had other problems. Hutton and Bracken were each convinced that their co-star was going to upstage them.
You cannot see that on screen, or if it is going on then Hutton and/or Bracken instantly neutralises it with comedy playing so breathless it shades into hyperventilation. They are in good company – William Demarest as the permanently shouting dad, the excellent Diana Lynn as Trudy’s perky sister, old stagers Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff as the Governor and his right hand man, plus Julius Tannen and Victor Potel as the pair on the other end of the telephone line at the bookend start/finish. It’s a great cast.
It being Sturges, this is a homely smalltown America of judges and cops, reporters and bankers. Very Caucasian too – “that’s very white of you” is used to express approval at one point. And it being Sturges the ensemble playing is excellent – he’d rehearse like crazy and then let his actors semi-improvise their way through scenes. On top of all that it’s got technical chops. The DP is John Seitz (of Double Indemnity and Sunset Boulevard fame) and he lays on several extended tracking shots down the main street for Sturges, each one marking a new chapter in Trudy’s increasingly fraught existence.
Screwball is at its best when it’s about smart people losing their bearings and whether this is really classic screwball is the question. Trudy is a bit of a silly and Norval is most definitely a dope being given the runaround by a woman or fate. And on top of that there’s the nonsensical plot. Maybe the “miracle” of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is that it works.
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
