TFF Cinematheque: Screwball Comedies

Join the Telluride Film Festival for the last night of our Screwball Comedies Cinematheque series on Monday, August 6 at 5:00 p.m. as we screen BALL OF FIRE and THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK

BALL OF FIRE (1941, 111 min): Directed by Howard Hawks with screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, this four-time Oscar nominated film features Barbara Stanwyk as Sugarpuss O’Shea, a burlesque dancer on the run from the law, and Gary Cooper as Professor Bertram Potts. A professor of language, Potts meets the beautiful O’Shea because he wants to hear how real people talk, but finds himself falling for her. As he attempts to help her avoid police and escape from the mob, he realizes that before meeting her "the only thing I could care for deeply...was a well-constructed sentence."

THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK (1944, 98 min): Director Preston Sturges’ Oscar nominated film tells the tale of small-town girl, Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), who wakes up to find herself married and pregnant, but with no memory of her husband’s identity, after an all-night party with a group of soldiers headed overseas. In regard to his film challenging the Hays Production Code of the era (at which he takes many jabs in the film), Sturges says in his memoir, “I wanted to show what happens to young girls who disregard their parents’ advice and who confuse patriotism with promiscuity. As I do not work in a church, I tried to adorn my sermon with laughter so that people would go to see the picture instead of staying away from it.”  To learn more about these films visit Telluride Inside for an article about the evening or watch a few scenes from the films below.