42: Hudsucker DNA Part 2: Sturges
One can understand that Joel & Ethan Coen are great fans of Preston Sturges without watching a frame of their movies. One merely needs to be familiar with the film Sullivan’s Travels. In the film, the titular Sullivan is a Hollywood director known for his zany comedies that pack in audiences, however he desperately wishes to make a serious and high minded movie about the suffering of the poor and their exploitation by those in power*. The problem is that the highly privileged Sullivan has never truly known hardship, and so to make his movie he dresses in his shabbiest clothes, leaves his checkbook at home, and sets out to know what it means to be an itinerant poor working man. The title of Sullivan’s proposed film about the poor and indigent of the Great Depression was to be O Brother, Where Art Thou? which of course became the title of the Coens’ masterful zany comedy about the poor and indigent of the Great Depression, made 59 years after Sturges concocted the overwrought title in Sullivan’s Travels.
Clearly Sturges was an influence on O Brother, but considering his broader work and style, it’s tough not to see his fingerprints all over the Coens’ comedy in general, especially in The Hudsucker Proxy. Sturges, like his contemporary comic directors of the 30s and 40s, relied a great deal on pratfalls and puns to get his comedy across, but Surges’s great innovation was the way he wrote his characters. He had a knack for creating characters who acted on clear motivations and said things that they thought were deadly serious, but by virtue of their context and situation were incredibly silly, a technique the Coens very much took to heart. For example when in The Lady Eve, as Charles Pike’s combination bodyguard and valet Mugsy orders “a spoonful of milk, a raw pigeon’s egg and four houseflies” for breakfast, we as the audience know it’s because he’s getting something for a pet exotic snake, but it makes his order no less silly. Similarly as Delmar in O Brother Where Art Thou? whispers to his imprisoned compatriot Pete “we thought you was a toad!” that he means the statement seriously as a heartfelt explanation to his friend why he abandoned him. Due to the characters being deadly serious they’re some of the funniest lines of the films. The Coens and Sturges likewise find their greatest strengths in their comedies in the characters and dialog as being secondary to the plot, which often is nonsense. Their plots are barely held together, and are simple scaffolding to hang jokes on. It would take far too much effort to explain why John Goodman is demolishing a Corvette while screaming “do you see what happens Larry? Do you see what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass?”** in The BigLebowski,just as it would take far too much effort to explain why Eddie Bracken is quaking in fear as he explains to a clerk that is name is “Ignatz Radskiwadsky” in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, but both scenes —even without fully understanding the absurd plotting that got us to this point— are still deeply hilarious. For Sturges, his nonsense plotting was a characteristic of how he worked. As a director working under the studio system that dominated American filmmaking until the 1960s, Sturges was expected to be constantly working on a new film, directing new films every year and sometimes multiple films a year. However for Sturges as a combination screenwriter and director this often meant writing his films in a rush before and sometimes during production of the film. While making The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek he famously would spend the day on set, and then go home and write the next ten pages of screenplay. Without having any opportunity to revise or rewrite what he’d written, the plot became a hopeless twisted and tangled (yet hilarious) mess. To contrast, the Coens are meticulous planners and plotters of their work, having plenty of time to revise their plots. Sturges may have wanted to create tight and easily understood plots as vehicles for his gags and funny situations, but was unable to due to time constraints. In the meantime, Joel & Ethan Coen seem to relish their style-over-substance plot lines. Hail, Caesar! was written over the course of 16 years, plenty of time to deliver a tight, coherent plot. Hail, Caesar! does not, however, have a tight coherent plot, but who cares? What it does have is Robert Picardo as a rabbi saying “G-d has children? What, and a dog? A collie, maybe?” Who needs a plot when you’ve got Hobie Doyle doing ranchin’ rope tricks with a spaghetto?
While the Coens have absolutely borrowed an overall aesthetic from Sturges for their comedies, they also took several aspects of various films of his as inspirations for plot points and individual scenes in The Hudsucker Proxy. For example The Lady Eve is a film about a smart woman who cons a naive man into trusting her for her own gain, only to fall in love with him, itself creating a sticky situation when the truth is revealed to him. The Hudsucker Proxy is a movie about the same thing. The two films share little beyond this broad plot point, but two of The Hudsucker Proxy’s most iconic scenes are very clearly reinterpretations of scenes from The Lady Eve. Eve opens with the eccentric and absent minded brewing heir and amateur ophiolologist Charles Pike boarding a cruise ship on its way back to the US after spending a year in the Amazon. His reputation on the ship as a wealthy and handsome bachelor causes nearly every woman on the ship to try and gain his attention, with only the con artist Jean succeeding. As Charles sits down to his first dinner on the trip, Jean watches him with her hand mirror, and comedically narrates every failed attempt by various women to get his attention. The scene is a clear inspiration for the narration of the cabbies Lou and Bennie as Amy tries to get Norville’s attention at the diner. Just as Jean says to herself “He’s returned to his book, he’s deeply immersed in it. He sees no one” so too do Lou and Bennie exchange “He’s not buying it, Lou. Maybe he’s wise? He don’t look wise”. Both Jean and Lou & Bennie also see every attempt to get the man’s attention as being clichéd beyond belief. “Holy smoke, the dropped kerchief! That hasn’t been used since Lily Langdry.” Jean scoffs as one woman walks by. “Adenoids? No Bennie, Lumbego. Oh that gag’s got whiskers on it!” Lou & Bennie likewise intone in disbelief. The scene in The Lady Eve however brings in an extra layer of meta-narrative, in that Jean is observing all this play out in her hand mirror, so that she can observe the situation and not be seen observing it. In displaying the action, the frame shows Barbara Stanwyck’s hand holding the mirror with the action of the scene playing out inside it. The extra framing of the rectangle of the mirror inside the rectangle of the movie frame nails home the point that we’re not watching the action, we’re watching someone watch the action, and as has been stated previously in this very essay series, the act of watching a scene through another character’s eyes lets us believably see the bad acting that’s going on without needing to suspend our own disbelief. Somehow both Jean’s mirror and Lou & Bennie complaining about their gas both frame their respective scenes in the same way.
Both Hudsucker and Eve are movies full of cynicism and morally complicated people that ultimately have sweet and sentimental cores, allowing for their romantic protagonists to ultimately come together and ostensibly live happily ever after. Between the zany scenes of Jean and Amy deceiving Charles and Norville respectively there’s the occasional tender moment between them. These tender moments still are full of jokes of course, but those jokes are tempered by the sincere and visible affection between the characters. There are a pair of scenes in the two films which mirror each other in this way as well. As Jean and Charles stand on the bow of the ship, Charles tells Jean that he feels like he’s always known her, describing a hypothetical scene in a forest with them both as children holding hands, monologuing awkwardly but sincerely about how he feels about her. Similarly so in Hudsucker as Amy and Norville duck out of the Hudsucker fancy dress ball they likewise stand in front of a railing gazing out together, and Norville launches into his own spiel about how he and Amy could have known each other in a past life in the forest, with Amy as a gazelle and Norville as an antelope or an ibex. Both scenes manage to be equal parts awkward sincerity and comic silliness, and both scenes importantly culminate in the couple’s first kisses. The Coens aren’t exactly known for their romance in their films, but when they need to be, they could have picked a worse model than Preston Sturges.
A good deal of The Hudsucker Proxy’s thematic content likewise comes from another Sturges classic. 1940’s Christmas In July is a story about a man working a dead end job for a large corporation in New York City who is suddenly and unexpectedly elevated to new heights, not for his own merits, but because of men running a scheme. The scheme backfires when it turns out that the man is actually excellent at his new job. The film is also a satire of the everyday dysfunction of corporate America. The Hudsucker Proxy is a film about the same thing. Christmas In July opens on a replica of the Manhattan skyline, with a prominent fictional skyscraper looming in the background, which eventually the camera closes in on, as it does in Hudsucker, and it’s tough not to notice the structural similarities between the fictional Hudsucker building and Christmas In July’s Maxford House Coffee building.
Maxford House is looking for a new slogan, apparently having worn out their last one “Grand to the last gulp”***. To this end they’ve commissioned a contest, where the person who comes up with the best new slogan will win a $2500 prize. Wide eyed hero Jimmy MacDonald earnestly believes he can win the contest with his slogan “If you don’t sleep at night, it isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk”****. After Maxford House loses their on-air announcement time due to the prize jury being deadlocked, Jimmy’s coworkers decide to prank him by forging a telegraph saying he’s won. Jimmy’s boss at a rival coffee company finds out about Jimmy’s “win” and decides if he can write a slogan good enough to win a prize, he deserves a job in marketing rather than the crummy clerk’s job he has now, and it turns out he’s surprisingly good at his new gig. Just as Norville Barnes is elevated beyond what his experience would dictate and accidentally turns out to have something truly up his sleeve with his circular dingus, so too does Jimmy MacDonald with his new “It’s bred in the bean” slogan for E. Baxter & Sons Coffee. Both films as well illustrate a kind of comic dysfunction of the corporate world, where powerful and important men are duped and made fools of by entry level rubes who don’t even know they’re bringing their superiors low. Norville’s success with the hoop — which was supposed to be the great flop that tanked Hudsucker’s stock — shows the inherent foolishness of Mussburger and the Hudsucker board. Jimmy’s success in accidentally duping Dr. Maxford with his phony telegram, and as a result accidentally duping a very fancy department store into thinking he’s loaded lays those rich and powerful men low. Neither Jimmy nor Norville wish to be the person speaking truth to power, and yet they accidentally succeed in being the fools who tell the world that the corporate world that the CEO has no clothes.
The most obvious connection between the work of Sturges and The Hudsucker Proxy is 1944’s The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, despite the fact that the two films share next to nothing when it comes to plotting, setting, or even the staging of individual scenes. What the two films do share is a cheap-but-effective comic tool: a love of silly names. The hero of Morgan’s Creek is Norval Jones, a guileless rube born and raised in a parochial midwest town with a head for business, just like Hudsucker’s Norville Barnes. It’s highly likely that “Norville” is basically just a misspelling of “Norval”. “Norville” has never been in the top 1000 baby names according to the US Social Security administration, which most of the time means it’s not a conventionally used name. It’s a bit beyond the scope of research of this essay for me to say there has never been an American named Norville, but it does not appear to be a more popular name than say “Sandwich”. Norval (unlike Norville) is a conventionally used name, just an unusual one. In the first third of the 20th century “Norval” was around the 800th most popular name for a child, so meeting a 25 year old Norval in 1944 (or 1958 for that matter) would be about as likely as meeting a 25 year old Talon or Efran or Kelby today. Though there’s nothing that happens to Norval Jones that happens to Norville Barnes between the two films, one can see a kind of link between them. Between Norval’s involvement in his childhood friend Trudy’s scheme to produce a fraudulent marriage license and Norville’s involvement in a securities fraud scheme, both men constantly find themselves in situations way above their head that they don’t fully understand. Both men behave in ways that aren’t quite as morally excellent as, say, a Capra character, but both are a bit too silly to really judge harshly. Norval may commit identity fraud and bank robbery and Norville might lay off hundreds of Hudsucker workers, but we as the audience understand that at their cores they’re swell guys, just clumsy and awkward. One gets the sense that Norval Jones is what Norville Barnes might have been had he never left Muncie, or that Norville Barnes is what Norval Jones may have become had he left Morgan’s Creek for the big city.
A way that both Morgan’s Creek and Hudsucker use silly names to get laughs is by making its characters say these silly names with airs of respect and fear. The plot of Morgan’s Creek revolves around its female lead Trudy having gotten married to (and knocked up by) an unseen soldier named Ignatz Radskiwadsky. Radskiwadsky is the source of all of Trudy’s troubles and thus the film’s driving conflict, causing his name to be said amidst sobs or quakes of rage, only making the name Radskiwadsky sound even sillier. Trudy’s father, a man both she and Norval respect and fear is the town policeman, Constable Kockenlocker, and thus the name Kockenlocker is constantly used respectfully and fearfully, again only making the name sound sillier. Likewise the two most powerful men at Hudsucker Industries (until one of them dies of course) are Waring Hudsucker and Sidney Mussburger. Both men are in positions that demand respect. When Norville is tasked with handing over the blue letter to Hudsucker Industries’ Vice President, the senior mail room clerk who hands it to him impresses the importance of getting the letter to him by saying with deadly seriousness “It’s a blue letter! That means you put it right in his hand. No secretaries! No colleagues! No excuses! MUSSBURGER!”. Purely by tone and by virtue of the silliness of his name, one of the great laugh lines of the film is effectively just one character saying another character’s name.
The Hudsucker Proxy’s connection with the films of Frank Capra is big and obvious. Every critic who reviewed the film when it came out and every subsequent revisiting of the film (including this very essay series) has pointed out Hudsucker’s plotting and setting being reminiscent of Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and It’s A Wonderful Life, but unlike those films, Hudsucker is profoundly silly. Capra’s films always have a point to them, how moral rectitude and love for your fellow man can triumph over greed despite adversity. Hudsucker has no such point, it is merely silly. Sure its antagonist is ambitious and greedy, but in his own way, so is the protagonist. Amy Archer isn’t about to renounce her profession to raise 2.4 kids in the suburbs with Norville, having recognized the evil of the journalism profession the way that “Babe” Bennet does in Mr. Deeds. The film is merely full of messy, complicated, and very silly human beings who do things with deadly seriousness to great comedic effect, just like in all the best work of Preston Sturges. Hudsucker may have Capra’s skeleton, but it also has Sturges’s heart.
* Given his start making screwball comedies and his turn into making joyless serious morality plays one might wonder if Sturges’s Sullivan is a stand-in for Frank Capra.
** Of course rendered even more hilarious in the TV edit of the film: “Do you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps”
*** One wonders if in the universe of Christmas In July if the slogan was bestowed upon Maxford House Coffee by president Thaddeus Rosenfeld, hero of the battle of Munition Hill and founder of the Buck Deer party.
**** As a person with 16 years experience in the coffee industry I have heard a great deal of questionable claims about coffee and human health. I have to say though that Jimmy MacDonald’s claim that coffee doesn’t actually cause sleeplessness to be the most profoundly silly one.