The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

A timid 4-F clerk becomes the goat when a woman gets pregnant and can’t recall the GI father. Brilliant WWII home-front spoof., FilmFour presents a two week season of comedy films, starting with Preston Sturges’ film which was somewhat risqué for its time, starring Betty Hutton as a small town girl who finds, after a night out drinking, she’s married to one of six sailors she’s never met before, can’t remember which one and is pregnant! But the one-liners, satires on some of America’s sacred cows of the time and fast pace carry it through as does Eddie Bracken as the adoring dope who stands by her while the town gets up in arms., This wild, once-controversial comedy stars Betty Hutton as Trudy Kockenlocker, a man-crazy single girl whose favorite pastime involves entertaining every visiting GI in town. One morning after a particularly wild night, Trudy labors under the apprehension that last eve, she’d married a soldier named Ratzkywatzky or something. Evidently something had happened that night, for soon Trudy discovers that she’s pregnant. She hides this information from her bombastic policeman father (William Demarest), and before long, Trudy’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, hapless bank clerk Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), gets tapped to be the father of the unborn child. He takes the assumed name Ratzkywatzky and poses as a GI (in a World War I uniform!). Unfortunately, this only leads to further complications. Disasters pile up thick and fast, and before long Norval is facing arrest on a variety of charges. Then the miracle of the title occurs. This vintage Preston Sturges farce plays so fast and loose with the censorial restrictions of mid-1940s Hollywood that critic James Agee was moved to comment that, “the Hays office must have been raped in its sleep.” As usual, Sturges populates his cast with steadfast members of his stock company– including, in guest roles, Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff, the stars of his previous film, The Great McGinty. Originally filmed in 1942, Miracle was held from release for an inordinate period of time. The picture was remade (and considerably laundered) as the 1958 Jerry Lewis vehicle Rock-a-bye Baby., After an all-night send-off party for some American troops, a girl discovers she got married and is now pregnant, but has no memory of her husband.