Lake Neuron

I got two autobiographical sorts of books for Christmas — one, about which I’ve already blogged, was Steve Martin’s Born Standing Up.

The other, which I’m now reading, is Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges: His Life in His Words, which (despite its name) was actually culled, edited and compiled from his journals by his widow Sandy Sturges.

Sturges directed several of my favorite old movies, including Sullivan’s Travels, which I usually list as one of my three all-time favorite movies (along with “Casablanca” and the Kenneth Branagh version of “Henry V”). I also love The Lady Eve and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.

The book is a delight. Usually, I get frustrated with biographies that spend too much time on the subject’s early life and not enough on the career or achievements for which the subject became famous. But Sturges turns out to have had a life as colorful as, and more unbelievable than, his wackiest comedies.

I’m two thirds of the way through the book and he hasn’t even become a playwright yet — much less gone into the movie business — but I’m still enthralled. Sturges’ mother was a larger-than-life, “Mame”-like character who was a best friend to the dancer Isadora Duncan and who cut a swath through Europe with her precocious son in tow. She had a cosmetics business, and Preston Sturges, before becoming one of America’s iconic movie directors, was the inventor of a long-wearing lipstick! Along the way he tries to become a World War I flying ace, and gets into numerous other scrapes and misadventures.

It’s a great read. My copy is used, and it bears an inscription (from “Beth” to her godmother “Florence,” for Christmas 1993). I would be embarrassed to sell an inscribed gift book in the first place, even if it were lousy, but Florence really missed the boat when she got rid of this one.

Tags : preston sturges