barevfilm Light Screwball Comedy with a heavy dark streak and a scintillating Veronica Lake Screwball comedies with absurd premises and popular stars were a staple of thirties Hollywood to help make people temporarily forget the misery of the great depression. Sullivan's Travels made at Paramount in 1941 when World War II was already raging in Europe was one of the last of the genre, and one of the most lasting. A film I have heard about for ages but was only able to catch now at a single night film club screening. The film starts out on a fluffy slapstick footing until the delayed appearance of Veronica Lake almost a quarter of the way through, but then takes off into classic space. Going in Joel McCrae, 36, was the big star but after this he was outshone by Lake who stole the show with her timely wisecracks, cascades of platinum blonde hair and sheer youthful beauty --she was nineteen at the time! Lake went on to become one of the most popular wartime stars with her trademark peekaboo hairstyle. In this film the camera lingers lovingly on her incredible long wavy tresses in multiple scenes. One reason to hang in there. Lake plays a down on her luck rejected film actress wannabe -- hard to believe with her looks! -- who offers McCrae a meal in a rusty spoon diner -- - but Sullivan realizes her potential and drops his hobo act taking her back to his Hollywood estate. There she pushes him into the pool to punish him for trying to pull the wool over her eyes. All others follow suite and take amusing tumbles fully clothed into the drink. From here she joins him in his hobo travels with a borderline risqué roll in the hay of a freight train they gave hopped in true hobo style. Having learned what he needs to know about trouble from the bums met along the way Sullivan decides to reward all by handing out five dollar bills. One vicious tramp clobbers him and takes all the money and steals his shoes (which contain his real I.D, sewn into the soles) whereupon Sullivan wakes up in a freight yard and clobbers a railway guard in self defense. For assaulting an officer and refusing to reveal his name in court he is sentenced to hard labor in a chain gang. Here the comedy veers into deadly serious territory. By a quirk of his ID. found concealed in the exchanged shoes Director Sullivan is reported dead, not the hobo who stole his shoes and then got killed by a train, whereupon his retinue including Lake all go into deep mourning. Meanwhile, as a respite from their hard labors the chained prisoners are granted a night of watching movies in a Negro church. The film is a cartoon featuring Pluto the dog and brings roars of laughter from the forlorn chain gangers. Now comes the most touching scene in the entire picture. Sympathizing with the desperate plight of the weary chain gang the Preacher of the congregation (tremendous black actor, Jess Lee Brooks -- inexplicably Uncredited ! ) leads the gathering of worshipers in a stirring rendition of the Negro spiritual, "Go down Moses -- Let my people Go!" Subsequently, with the help of an older chain gang convict, Sullivan hits upon the idea that will lead to his salvation and release. Can't give such a potential spoiler away. here, Suffice it to say that all's well that ends well, but the last scene is a serious comment on the importance of laughter. Sullivan, it might be observed, is named after John L. Sullivan, one of the most famous heavyweight boxing champions of the early century with implications that the director played by McCrea, is the kind of champion the downtrodden need while the implied critique of chain gang justice is no mere throwaway joke. All in All Sullivan's Travels, if not quite a masterpiece, is a unique film of it's kind -- a hilarious comedy with a serious message of the need for humor to see us through the darkest of times. . Not to mention the solid arrival of that amazing blonde bombshell, Veronica Lake. In her very next film, "This Gun For Hire", She received top billing above newcomer Alan Ladd, then went on to make six more films with Ladd, one of which, "The Blue Dahlia" will be shown next week in the Upcoming Noir festival at the Egyptian. Most unfortunately Ms. Lake's career did not last long after this and was basically cut short by a combination of alcohol and a disastrous private life. She ended up working as an unsung bar room waitress and died broke at fifty in 1973 of acute hepatitis. SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, 1941 Review By Alex Deleon <filmfestivals.com> Viewed at Egyptian Theater, Hollywood. April 11, 2018

richard-1787 Others have written on what makes this a great movie, which it is. I won't repeat them.I will say, though, that the end very much came as a surprise to me. Once Sullivan begins his travels to discover what life is really like in the America of 1941, headed into war and still not out of the Depression, he sees the terrible poverty of the hobo. No attempt is made to glamorize the hobo life, as had been done in earlier 1930s movies.Then Sullivan ends up in a Southern workcamp and sees the injustices there, the sort of thing we would not really see again until some of Sidney Poitier's movies in the early 1960s.When Sullivan gets back to Hollywood at the end of the picture, I was sure he was going to make a movie that would denounce those inequalities and injustices. Instead, he wants to go back to making comedies. I found that, to say the least, very surprising.

rickdumesnil-55203 excellent movie that we can easily proclaim a masterpiece. before i go into it...i want to tell you how proud i am to be Canadian. the bickering and hate love of whits and blacks is so infantile and gross. it has been going on for years...stop it already. the black man on the yacht car was not laughed at because of being black.....it was his situation that was funny. one other person said how can grown men laugh at a mickey mouse film....darn it they hadn't seen films for months and were locked up in the dark. veronica lake for the first time surprised me....she is small i see it now. an OK actress who was beginning to show promise but it didn't last. Joel a super star that rendered his role real well. superb supporting cast....and a top notch storyline and director Preston sturges

jc-osms An ambitious mix of comedy and social comment, Preston Sturges' fine film works so well in my opinion just because it so often confounds expectations as it progresses, but still carrying the viewer along with it each step of the way. Yes, occasionally it gets a little slow and over-serious in the middle but Sturges is trying to out over some serious points about caring capitalism, in particular society's outlook towards the poor, the incarcerated and blacks and can be forgiven for occasionally dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's" with his crusading zeal.It starts paradoxically with an ending, an allegorical fight to the death between capital and labour, as luridly directed by what we'd today call a rom-con director of hit movies, played by Joel McCrae, keen to show his serious-side and exercise his social conscience. His bluff is called by his producer and associate who both mock his wish to make a film celebrating the disadvantaged in society and challenge him to live it before he films it. Initially, a film crew is hired to film his every move as he dresses down and seeks to temporarily become a hobo, however with the help of quite literally a boy-racer, he outpaces them and leaves his pursuers in a heap in his wake. So far, so typical screwball-comedy.However, as the slapstick and wisecracking are more or less gradually moved out the way, Sturges vision grows darker with McCrae finally thinking he's on a level with his subject and ready to film it, until real-life events, in the form of a crack on the head from a greedy tramp who robs him while he's in the act of patronisingly distributing largesse to the local down-and-outs, which sees him end up convicted of his own "death" and condemned to hard labour on the chain- gang. Of course he eventually extricates himself from his plight but chastened by his experience, he eschews the moribund preachy fable in favour of the light comedies to the better lift spirits.McCrae is excellent in the lead role and gets a great foil in his travels with the diminutive Veronica Lake in a breakthrough role as the hard-bitten wannabe actress who likewise forgoes her relative comfort and privilege to join him on his walk on the wild side. They make a fine pairing which really is the long and the short of it. Behind them are Sturges' crew of stock actors, giving able and intuitive support. Sturges' direction is frequently imaginative and occasionally gets the pacing wrong but his central moral of charity and brotherhood emerge intact by the end of this warming and disarming feature.