“I gave up not drinking and not smoking, and have not been troubled with pneumonia since.”
An all-time great of film comedy, on the family tree of wits, Preston Sturges is routinely named as the branch between Oscar Wilde and Woody Allen. After Sturges’s second play, Strictly Dishonorable, was a tremendous hit on Broadway, he moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of money. The deal for his first original screenplay, The Power and the Glory (1933), included a percentage of profits—an unheard of arrangement for screenwriters of the time. But Sturges grew increasingly frustrated with the quality of films made from his scripts. He sold what became The Great McGinty (1940) to Paramount for the sum of ten dollars in exchange for the right to direct and, in doing so, became the first established screenwriter to direct his own material. The film went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. He followed with a string of critical and commercial hits over the next five years: Christmas in July (1940), The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels (both 1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and finally, Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (both nominated for screenwriting Oscars in 1945). Sturges left Paramount after repeatedly tussling with studio heads and entered into a partnership with Howard Hughes that disintegrated after just one picture (The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, 1947). His next two movies for Fox proved to be flops, and Sturges’s career never recovered.
STURGES FOUND CURIOSITY TO be overrated, but maybe that was because it nearly killed him. From his earliest days as Hollywood’s most successful screenwriter through his creative peak as its foremost writer-director, Preston Sturges had maintained the same steady schedule: a late riser, he’d putz around at home throughout the morning, then venture off to his studio office, where he’d sip tea spiked with applejack and maybe take a nap. Afternoon activities varied, but one thing they didn’t include was work. Evenings began at the fights and were capped off with dinner and drinks, typically at the Brown Derby or, when Sturges opened it in 1940, his own place, the Players Club. When the bars finally closed, he returned home, where he’d bang out pages until the sun came up.
Unconventional as it may have been, this routine had made Sturges one of the richest men in the business. But pressure has a way of making even the most skilled professionals question themselves, and in Sturges’s case, when the pressure mounted on his directorial debut, The Great McGinty, he endeavored to change his ways. Gone were the late nights, the drinking and the smoking. “After I started shooting,” he wrote in his memoir (Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges), “I had a masseur waiting for me every night and I had dinner in bed. I saved my strength. I treated myself like an egg.” And for this newfound discipline he was promptly rewarded, during the second week of shooting, with a nasty case of pneumonia.
Sturges had actually developed pneumonia once before, while living in Paris with his mother at the age of three. Based on his own personal history, Sturges feared he would be laid up for six weeks while the sickness ran its course—a major problem, given the clause in his contract that allowed Paramount to replace him should he be “unable to fulfill his duties.”
Funny thing is, during his first bout with pneumonia in Paris, the one remedy that had pulled him through was booze. Though only a toddler, he was spoonfed champagne, which Preston’s mother credited with bringing down his fever. This in mind, Sturges must have been tempted to start drinking again, just a little. But then fortune smiled on him: Paramount executives, thrilled with what they’d seen of his rushes so far, assured him he could take the time to recover. Ten days later, he was back on set. From then on, he would drink as much as wanted, turning his back on sobriety forever.
APPLEJACK, NICKNAMED “JERSEY LIGHTNING,” is a strong but sweet spirit distilled from apples that tastes not unlike Calvados (a French brandy). Until recently, there was only one brand produced in America—Laird’s. The oldest licensed distillery in the country, Laird’s originated in New Jersey and dates back to the American Revolution. Apparently, George Washington once requested some.
Fancy pedigree aside, Applejack provided Preston Sturges with the necessary energy to get through his workday—which is another way of saying, it helped him nap.
WHEN WRITER-DIRECTOR PRESTON STURGES opened this three-story complex in 1940, he was one of the wealthiest men in Hollywood. With two films already in release and a third (The Lady Eve) on the way, plus a stake in a promising engineering company specializing in diesel engines, he was flush. Or so it seemed.
From the start, Sturges ran the Players less like a business and more like his own personal clubhouse. Named after the New York theatrical club, it attracted both the East Coast and the Hollywood set. Among the regulars were Humphrey Bogart, Ernst Lubitsch, Orson Welles, Howard Hughes, William Faulkner, and Robert Benchley. According to Billy Wilder, dinners often ended with Sturges offering a complimentary shot of yellow or green Chartreuse (his favorite liqueur) to his guests, while he himself polished off another bourbon Old-Fashioned. Rarely did a night pass when he wasn’t on hand to shut the place down. Sometimes, he even shut down early, closing the doors to the public so he could entertain his pals. This couldn’t be good business, but then money wasn’t Sturges’s principal concern—drinking was.
Half the time, Sturges was happy to run a tab, which more often than not meant he simply picked up the check. And when Sturges did charge, he was so determined to keep prices in line with those at the Brown Derby (despite having way more overhead) that he ended the competition by effecting his own demise. In 1944 the Players grossed more than $650,000; its actual profit was just under $26,000. With such an unconcerned management style, it’s surprising Sturges turned a profit at all. And soon enough he no longer would.
By the early 1950s, the club’s debts and taxes were enormous, and the mounting pressure had sucked so much life out of Sturges that his film career was floundering. Now he was doubly screwed. Sturges’s solution? To add an expensive dinner theater, complete with orchestra pit and a retractable dance floor. He was an artist after all.
Two years later, he sold the property to his main creditor.
WHATEVER THE BENEFITS of Sturges’s Tea & Applejack, they do not compare to those of his Old-Fashioned. Sturges’s cocktail of choice, the Old-Fashioned enabled him to talk late into the night and to write into the early morning.
In making the cocktail, there is a great deal of debate surrounding the fruit—some say to muddle it, others to just add as garnish. It’s unknown how Sturges took his, but hard to believe he would bother to muddle—even if he had a whole staff of bartenders he was paying to do exactly that.
BOURBON OLD-FASHIONED
1 CUBE OF SUGAR
3 DASHES ANGOSTURA BITTERS
2½ OZ. BOURBON
1 ORANGE SLICE
1 MARASCHINO CHERRY
LEMON TWIST
Place a sugar cube at the bottom of an Old-Fashioned glass. Add bitters, and muddle into cube. Pour in bourbon. Fill the glass with ice cubes, and stir well. Garnish with orange slice, cherry and lemon twist. Add a splash of club soda if desired.
Note that others (though apparently not Sturges) might substitute rye or blended whiskey for bourbon.
