The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

The Miracle of Morgan's Creek | |
| Director: | Preston Sturges |
| Cast: | Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton, Diana Lynn, William Demarest, Brian Donlevy, Porter Hall |
| Release Date: | 1944 |
| Genre: | Comedy, Classic |
The beloved Judd Apatow movie machine would be Nowheresville if not for Preston Sturges, and nowhere is this more apparent than in 1944's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Both filmmakers wallow in the mores of their modern times, and they also somehow exhume bony comedy from the ancient tar pits of heterosexual foibles. But the Apatow gang's irony is all worn on their T-shirts; their 40-year-old virgins get literally knocked up. In Morgan's Creek, even the hyperbole is exaggerated, and it's a comedy about everything but the girl. It is instead a merciless lampoon of the Hayes code and all its compulsory euphemisms for sex, booze, and swing dancing--take a drink every time someone says "marriage" when they mean "making love"--ending with a sextuplet virgin birth heard around the world. Made amid WWII, the movie leaves no sacred cows unbroiled as it satirizes the war effort and the related cultural insanity. Apatow's crowd has yet to tell us whether it is still a girl's wartime duty to God and country to party with soldiers, but since we'll always have Sturges, we won't need to hold our breath.