➤ PRESTON STURGES, from p.36
laughs.”
Unlike Colbert, Sturges really
got along with Barbara Stanwyck,
who gives such a matchless comic
performance in the matchless “The
Lady Eve”: “She was the one that
got away. He loved Barbara Stanwyck,
oh my God, and if he’d been
able to fi gure that out with her,
there would have been no me.”
Sturges had written the sparkling
script for Stanywck’s “Remember
the Night,” directed by
Mitchell Leisen, and realized just
how funny off-screen she was, although
never really allowed to
show that side of herself. He wrote
“The Lady Eve” for her, and during
the shooting insisted that she retake
a certain scene in which she
describes the man she loves about
four times.
Stanwyck fi nally gave him a look
which showed she was on to him
— that he just wanted to hear her
repeat lines he had written about
himself, this woman who had rejected
his romantic overtures to
her. She told him that he had failed
the 20-second test of hers, during
Tom Sturges.
which time she could fi gure out
whether a guy was right for her or
not.”
Tom’s mother, Sandy, was the
last of Sturges’ four wives: “My
Dad marred the same woman over
and over again, all of them were in
their early 20s when he met them.
Mom was 20 when she stopped
into The Players to say there was
smoke coming from something. My
Dad told her that was part of the
building’s construction and introduced
FILMFORUM.ORG
himself, she said, with that
slightly hesitant pause that people
who think they’re really important
leave for the rest of us to react to.
She had no idea who he was.
“What we learned from those
letters was that the marriage was
not as smooth as some would
hope for. It could be like reading
dialogue of a play with my father
writing, ‘In your letter of August 6,
second paragraph, you said such
and such. That’s not true.’ And she
would respond, ‘You only respect
your marriage vows when they’re
being practiced by somebody else.
Fidelity is not a phase.’ She gave
it right back to him. She was 30
when he died, leaving her a widow
with no money who nonetheless
survived, went to school to become
a paralegal, and raised me and my
brother all right.”
I had heard abut a brilliant
screen adaptation Sturges had
written for Katharine Hepburn of
her stage success “The Millionairess,”
by George Bernard Shaw,
and Tom assured me that it existed
and he has it, promising to send it
to me.
“I still want that to become a
movie, a wonderful story about a
girl who doesn’t want Dad’s money
and the conditions that go with it.
All I would have to change is one
letter of it, not even a word, and
that would be an M to a B, making
the title ‘The Billionairess.’”
PRESTON STURGES: THE LAST
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD’S FIRST
WRITER-DIRECTOR | By Tom
Sturges and Nick Smedly | Intellect
Books | $29.50 | 324 pages
GayCityNews.com | October 10 - October 23, 2019 37
/FILMFORUM.ORG
/GayCityNews.com
