The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

Trudy Kockenlocker goes to a send-off dance for the troops, hits her head, and wakes the next morning knowing she got married but not to whom. She thinks the name was something like Ratzkiwatzki. When she turns out to be pregnant, the town's most hopeless suitor, Norval Jones, steps in. The subject is not the scandal but the chain of lies a town builds to manage a scandal. Everyone is covering something, and every cover-up makes the legal situation worse. The form is fast: lines overlap, scenes cut before sentences finish, and Eddie Bracken's panic becomes something close to a physical routine. Preston Sturges shot it in 1942, but the Hays Code held it back until 1944. Sturges had written the script to defeat censorship from the inside: none of the crucial information is ever stated plainly, all of it slips past in cuts and stammers. It still earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, and the birth-related resolution at the end is generally counted among the boldest evasions of its era. Betty Hutton plays Trudy, with Diana Lynn as her much sharper kid sister Emmy. Who it is for: viewers who enjoy catching what classic American comedy managed to say despite the censors. Who it is not for: anyone who will be uneasy watching what happens to Trudy turned into comic material; the film never entirely dispels that unease.