Customer Reviews

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Betty Hutton stars in "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" as Trudy Kockenlocker, a young small-town girl. As the film opens, Trudy is extremely excited about an upcoming party to send off the local men to fight in WWII. She schemes to attend the party, despite being forbid by her overprotective father (the brilliant William Demarest). As the night goes on, the party gets more and more wild, ending in Betty unexpectedly married and pregnant. The only problem is that she cannot remember getting married or to whom. To solve her dilemma, she resolves to get married to a local boy, the inept and frightened Norval Jones, played by Eddie Bracken. The situation spins completely out of control from here.

"The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" was written and directed by the peerless Preston Sturges. The film is on par with his greatest, such as "Hail the Conquering Hero." Bracken would go on to star "Hail" as well, but his performance here is arguably his best. Playing the nerdy Norvel who "sees spots" when he gets nervous, Bracken is perfect. Betty Hutton also would never have a better role; unfortunately, she really never attained the status she deserved.

The film's humor is rather zesty, and the pregnancy plot is handled in a relative frank manner, making for a bit of a surprise for a 1940s movie. The script manages to be touching as well as funny, eliciting some genuine laughs. In particular, Diana Lynn steals the show as Hutton's precocious teen sister, Emmy. The chemistry between Emmy and her father is fantastic. The film deservedly received an Oscar nomination for Best Writing (Original Screenplay), losing to "Wilson."

Despite its quality, "Miracle" is definitely not as well known as other Sturges classics. However, it stands up against the greatest comedies of this period; accordingly it was added to the US Film Registry in 2001. Highly recommended for fans of 1940s comedy as well as Preston Sturges devotees. Hopefully the film will be released on DVD soon, or else it may continue to be unjustifiably overlooked.

I'm normally not one to laugh out loud very much, but with THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK I couldn't help myself. I laughed so hard that not once but twice I had tears streaming down my face.

Norval Jones who's 4-F due to "the spots" is tragically in love with Trudy Kockenlocker. She knows of his love, but is more interested in the poor boys going off to war. One night after using Norval as a cover to get out of the house she goes partying with some soldiers, drinks too much spiked lemonade, bumps her head on a disco ball and ends up married to some guy she can't remember except that she thinks his name was Ratzkywatzky. She's also pregnant.

Broken hearted she tells Norval and after a screaming fit he agrees to help her. Hilarity and some of the craziest knee-shaking you've ever seen ensue.

Why is this movie not out on DVD? Or even better yet a Preston Sturges box set!

D: Preston Sturges (HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, THE LADY EVE)
W: Preston Sturges (HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO, THE LADY EVE)

Norval Jones - Eddie Bracken (SUMMER STOCK, HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO)
Trudy Kockenlocker - Betty Hutton (ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, INCENDIARY BLONDE)
Emmy Kockenlocker - Diana Lynn (THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR, THE KENTUCKIAN)
Constable Kockenlocker - William Demarest (THE LADY EVE, HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO)

A smalltown goodtime girl named Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) goes off with a group of soldiers before they're sent off to war; the next morning she has vague memories of marrying one of them--someone, she says, like a name like "Ratzskywatzsky"--but with no memory of who exactly or where to find him. Soon after she finds out she's pregnant, and pressures the 4-F boy next door (Eddie Bracken) to help her out of her predicament.

All Preston Sturges comedies are worth your time if only because they all manage to be so funny while also being so innovative from a narrative perspective: Sturges loved playing with stories within stories, and yet does it so simply and hilariously as only to enhance the story's pleasure. (The framing device of the governor hearing the news and sorting all the problems out at the end as deus ex machina seems like a comic trick borrowing from Moliére.) But the story also broke tremendous ground by dint of its subject matter, which only barely got past the Hays Code censors; if you're familiar with the films of the time, the fact that Private Ratzskywatzsky never appears by the story's end to reclaim Trudy or their issue will seem astonishing. (All the same, the film was a huge hit.)

The film has much going for it besides Sturges's direction and writing. Not the least of these is Betty Hutton, who got perhaps the best role she ever had as the overenthusiastic Trudy. Hutton is all but forgotten today, but she was one of the few stars of Broadway musical comedy who made a very successful transition to Hollywood. Unlike Ethel Merman or Zero Mostel, whose enormous theatrical energies seemed artificial for the screen, Hutton succeeded because her over-the-top desperation seemed at its best (as here) incredibly sincere, and so her funniest moments are when she gives way so mercurially to her change of feelings with such zest and extremity. One of my favorite moments is when her father forbids her to go out to the dance with the soldiers; within a moment she goes from utter elation to blank depression, and she walks up the stairs with such disappointment in her spine that she's deeply endearing. Eddie Bracken's nervous nerdish comedy has aged less well than Hutton's hyperenthusiasm, perhaps, and the film suffers from its somewhat patronizing vision of smalltown life. (Sturges's comedies work best when he is making fun of sophisticates rather than just rubes, as in SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS or THE PALM BEACH STORY--he's at his best when he shows the wealthy and privileged to be just as apt towards enacting or being taken in by utterly harebrained schemes as is the middle class.) But the film has two fantastic assets in William Demarest as Trudy's crotchety father and Diana Lynn doing her funny specialty at adolescent knowingness as Trudy's incredibly sane younger sister. There's a great slapstick bit Sturges works up that whenever Lynn sasses her father Demarest tries to give her a flying kick in the pants, which he invariably mistimes so that he falls flat on his back.

This is a hilarious movie and ahead of it's time. I won't tell you what happens, because it's funnier if you don't know about the movie's plot. If you are wondering if the DVD quality is good, it's wonderful. And it's sixty years old. And the price is cheap. Buy this if you want a classic comedy.

Years ago, in the days before cable, there were six or seven television stations in Chicago. Only a few of them had programming late at night. There weren't channels to flip between; when you found a movie you liked, you actually watched it. One weekend night, I came home late and found my sister watching the late-late show on WGN. "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" had just started and we had never seen anything quite like it. A good Sturges movie is as close as you can get to a rollercoaster ride without going to an amusement park. And this movie is as wild a ride as any Sturges movie.

I have seen this movie a number of times over the last 30 years and each time I am almost doubling over with laughter. I can't wait to get it on DVD.

For a few years in the 1940s Preston Sturges was a brilliant shinning star. As far as I am concerned, he never shone brighter than he did in this "Miracle."

In a way, this is quite a perverse film. Trudy Kockenlocker (energetically portrayed by a very young Betty Hutton) goes out to a dance, drinks a little too much punch, and awakes the next day with a paper ring around her finger, and the vague memory that someone suggested that everyone in the party go get married, in her case "perhaps" to someone named something like Yatskywatsky. A few weeks later, she finds herself pregnant, and unaware of who the father/her husband might be. She then plots to snag Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), the quintessential 4-F local boy, as a husband to save her from local shame. Those are the bare bones of the story, but Sturges enriches it with enormously rich and clever dialog to create one of the great film comedies. Some might find the onscreen personalities of Bracken and Hutton a bit too pungent, but most others will find them hysterical in a manic, slapstickish way. William Demarest, as Officer Kockenlocker, Trudy's father, steals the film in what is almost certainly his greatest screen role.

The narrative of the film is structured around a phone call to Governor McGinty. For those who haven't seen Sturges's first directorial effort, Brian Donlevy played the title role in THE GREAT McGINTY and Akim Tamiroff played "The Boss." They reprise those roles in cameos here.

A very great film comedy. Perhaps not quite as outstanding as SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS or THE LADY EVE, but nonetheless still on the short list of the great film comedies of the 1940s.

Here's a fine example of "They don't make 'em like that anymore." The plot involves a beautiful young blonde who sneaks out to a party for servicemen about to be shipped off to war, whereupon she gets conked silly on the head and foolishly goes along with the crowd who decide to get married en masse, under assumed names. She takes this marriage thing all the way, so to speak, and is impregnated....and cannot remember who she married or what name she or he used.

Then there's the poor but standup moon-eyed sap who's loved her for years, who displays tremendous chivalry by trying to figure out how to marry her and give the child a father without committing bigamy.

These days there'd be no marriage, the sap wouldn't have a chance, and grampa would raise the baby in spite of himself while the dingy blonde runs off to escape any responsibility.

But I'm getting about 60 years ahead of myself.

As it is, this little-remembered classic comedy is more than just a laugh riot, which it is. It's more than just a bit of WWII nostalgia, which it is. It's also a wistful reminder of innocent days gone by, days when people were like this, although certainly not as much like this as the movies would have us believe.

I always think of William Demerest as the grumpy old Uncle Charlie from TV's "My Three Sons," but he was grumpy long before TV was popular. Here he portrays the town constable and single father of two teen daughters, and is at his absolute grumpiest. Having just seen him as Henry Fonda's bodyguard in "The Lady Eve," another Sturges film, it's a treat to see him in an even more physically comedic role here. The old guy is a riot when it comes to broad comedy. What a mug!

I don't remember having heard of Eddie Bracken before, as this was all before my time. He's something of an anemic Donald O'Connor without rhythm, portraying a mid 20th century version of Ben Stiller's character in "There's Something About Mary," a much less hilarious film than this. Bracken plays the poor sap noted above, who ultimately, through the titular "miracle," becomes a national hero after first becoming the ultimate local bad guy. He deserves neither title, but it gives little away to state that he does get the girl. And he deserves her...and about a half-dozen other surprises. Very nice little comedy.

Preston Sturges was never more outrageous or funny than with this film. How he ever managed to get this one through the censors is a miracle, a miracle addressed in one of 2 worthwhile documentaries attached to this DVD.

Betty Hutton plays an exuberant small town girl who wants to show the soldiers on leave a good time before they head off to war and in doing so, parties, marries and falls pregnant in one night, a night of which she has almost no memory. Eddie Bracken plays the nerd who loves her and comes to her rescue when she can not recall whom she married.

Hutton and Bracken are superb, hilarious in the slapstick but also very moving in the more tender moments. The supporting cast are also brilliant as in all of Sturges's films. William Demarest has a large part as Hutton's angry father and Diana Lynn plays her facetious sister. Both have some great lines but Lynn almost steals the show with her cynical delivery. The film is framed with scenes of Brian Donlevy as "The Great McGinty" and Akim Tamiroff as the mayor, a throwback to an earlier Sturges film. You may have to see the film a few times to savour all their one liners. Sturges often uses long takes and the actors' skill with the dialogue is impressive.

The print of the film is excellent and the extras consist of 2 documentaries, one about Sturges and one about censorship. Clearly edited from the same interviews, they benefit from the presence of Sturges's widow and Eddie Bracken himself. It is particularly amusing to hear Bracken speak of the hypocrisy of the censors and how the director and cast were laughing at their stupidity as the film was made.

This was a ground breaking film in many ways and if, at times, it seems a little in bad taste, that is part of its cynical charm.

I saw this film on TV...Late, a few nights ago. I loved it and found it extremely funny. It takes place (and was filmed) during World War II and set in small town America. The story line involves a young girl who feels that it is her patriotic duty to "see the boys off to war". She is told by her father that she can't go out to party with soldiers and talks the boy that has been in love with her since childhood to take her out. She convinces him to let her take his car and wait for her to come back to the movie theater, she never intended to see the movie with him. She comes back in the morning drunk and married. She doen't know who the groom was since they used false names. She soon finds that she is pregnant without a husband and no wedding certificate to prove she was ever married. The boy who loves her tries to help her by marrying her. The poor boy goes from one bad situation to another. Both Betty Hutton and Eddie Bracken were very good in this, but I enjoyed the supporting cast just as much, especially Diana Lynn, who played the younger sister that had more maturity at fourteen than her older sister.

I purchased the movie so I could share it with a few friends. After my copy arrived, I watched it with my daughter-in-law. Most of the humor went right past her. The basic premise of the movie may slip by some viewers in the generation after mine, since pregnancy without marriage is so commonplace and it is accepted now. There are also quite a few references that not everyone under 40 might "get". That being said, I feel it is a very funny and nostalgic look at what America was (in a comic sense) like before TV, Microwaves, cell phones, and smart bombs. Bottom line: If you are a senior, buy it and enjoy it with your friends. If you're young watch it for it's sheer comic value.

A walk through a cultural museum of societal hypocrisy, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, 1944 lambastes the mores of the 1940's. Since the action takes place in a small Mid-Western town with the usual local yokels and the newly arrived GI's, boy's and girls do without the preliminaries as the privates are marched to the grim reaper. The girls give it up with romantic heroism. The fumbling in the dark after an evening of spiked lemonade causes pregnancy and social chaos. Betty Hutton is the prettiest girl in town and the most innocent soon-to-be mother in history thanks to the movie code and sexual regulations left over from the 19th Century. She got married, but to whom? No sex without marriage of course, but what a convoluted script to get this idea across as to preserve the GI pin-ups honor. The laughs burst from the cover up. Preston Sturges, a true genius, pumped it up to the hokey, sentimental climax. Slapstick and screwball comedy are melded to a script that can be described as a screenplay converted to a play and then regurgitated to a film. The scenes are very long and the actors walk the town as though they were on a stage. You have to see the lack of quick cuts to understand what I mean. It just doesn't look like a Hollywood film.

Much has been said about the in-house players that worked in Sturges' films. William Demarest is hilarious, a pratfall a minute. Eddie Braken practically invents the lovable nerd. Diana Lynn is the most sarcastic teen ever. McGinty is the Governor of the Great State of Anywhere. All these stereotypes are immortalized in a million films since.

Are Sturges' comedies as important as Hollywood's classic dramas? Yes!