Sturges’ career capstone, though, might be his playful 1942 film-about-a-film, Sullivan’s Travels, in which the director explores the popular artist’s duty to the paying public.  Joel McCrea plays the Sturges stand-in who wants to stop making escapist entertainment—like the Busby Berkeley-invoking Ants of 1933—in order to produce a movie-with-a-message, O, Brother Where Art Thou?  But to conjure something with “social significance,” the mansion-residing McCrea embarks on an art-and-life-informing odyssey among the hoi polloi with the usual Sturges mischief, like a stint on a chain gang or poor Veronica Lake as the down-and-out siren.  With the Great Depression in collective memory, Sullivan’s Travels stands as the golden boy’s clever, polyphonic contribution to the cause (which he states at the beginning of the feel-good classic): simply, to make you laugh your worries away.  

Of course, as we’ve seen with the economy of late, after the bubble comes the bust. Sturges fell into the caution-taped area for has-beens with several flops, breaking the unwanted streak once with his brilliant black-and-bitter comedy, Unfaithfully Yours.  Adapted from the 1933 short story that Sturges hoped would lead to his directorial debut, “Symphony Space,” the madcap concerto spotlights a famous, razor-witted conductor (Rex Harrison parodying Sir Thomas Beecham) who, in between volleying verbose barbs, reckons that his young wife has made him a cuckold.  While orchestrating Rossini, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky, Harrison envisions some truly rapturous scenes to resolve the hearsay (murder, money, and Russian roulette, respectively), but executing his schemes becomes an exercise in slapstick—albeit one with dark undertones.  It’s his final salute to his self-declared rule: “that a pratfall is better than anything.”

_{note: for Screening times go to the Film Forum site. Or for more info to plot your own home fest on DVD see Sturges on IMDB.}