The Great McGinty (1940)

Director:

Preston Sturges

Writer:

Preston Sturges (writer)

Release Date:

23 August 1940 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Dan McGinty has great success in his chosen field of crooked politics. But endangers it all in one crazy moment of honesty...

Plot Keywords:

Mayor | Political | Solitaire | Election | Dachshund

Awards:

Won Oscar.

Cast

Brian Donlevy	...	Daniel 'Dan' McGinty
Muriel Angelus	...	Catherine McGinty
Akim Tamiroff	...	The Boss
Allyn Joslyn	...	George
William Demarest	...	Skeeters - The Politician
Louis Jean Heydt	...	Tommy Thompson
Harry Rosenthal	...	Louie (bodyguard)
Arthur Hoyt	...	Mayor Wilfred T. Tillinghast
Libby Taylor	...	Bessy (maid)
Thurston Hall	...	Mr. Maxwell
Steffi Duna	...	The Dancing Girl
Esther Howard	...	Madame Juliette La Jolla
Frank Moran	...	The Boss' Chauffeur (as Frank C. Moran)
Jimmy Conlin	...	The Lookout
Dewey Robinson	...	Benny Felgman

Also Known As:

Biograhy of a Bum (USA) (working title)
Down Went McGinty (UK)

Runtime:

82 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Mirrophonic Recording)

Certification:

Sweden:15 | UK:U (re-rating) (2005) | UK:A (original rating)

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

On August 19, 1939, Paramount issued a check to contract writer Preston Sturges to buy the story and screenplay of this movie, in the amount of $10. Sturges promised to sell the script for that amount if he could direct. The studio took him up on it and the film was a hit and won an Academy Award for the screenplay, probably making it the cheapest Oscar-winning script in history.

Quotes:

The Politician: If it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics, men without ambition, jellyfish!

Movie Connections:

Featured in 100 Years of Comedy (1997) (V)

Soundtrack:

Louise

"This Is A Land of Opportunity"

In his debut as a director Preston Sturges turned in one of the brightest political satires ever done for the cinema in The Great McGinty. Sturges allegedly got the idea for the film and the various scenes therein from talking to a judge from Chicago who filled them in one the various shenanigans pulled there back in the day and still being pulled in some parts of the USA.

Preston Sturges though he had a successful Broadway play, The Good Fairy, and had written several sparkling screenplays for Paramount, the moguls that ran Paramount were a bit uneasy about giving him his own film to direct as well as act. The Great McGinty was a B film when it was released, playing the lower half of double features. It had a competent cast of players, but none of them you could say were big box office.

Imagine the surprise the following year when The Great McGinty won an Oscar for Preston Sturges, not for directing, but for Best Original Screenplay in 1940. The Great McGinty returned a tidy profit for a film they had not spent all that much money on. Sturges was given greater autonomy and control after that and for the next four years turned out a series of comedy classics with much larger budgets. But he was in constant warfare with the money people at Paramount for the rest of the time he was there.

The film is told in flashback as Brian Donlevy as a philosophical bartender tells a distraught Louis Jean Heydt his life story after preventing Heydt from shooting himself. There both in an unnamed South American country without extradition to the USA.

Donlevy was the epitome of the American dream as Preston Sturges sees the American dream. In Sturges's view any bum with nerve enough to seize opportunity before him, there's no telling how far he can go in America.

When we meet Donlevy he's exactly that, a hobo. He's on a soup line and ready to earn a few bucks by being a repeat voter for some people who for one reason or other are still on the voting rolls, but just can't make it to the polls. By earning $74.00 a vote by voting 37 times at $2.00 a vote, he comes to the attention of boss Akim Tamiroff.

Though they are immediate antagonists, Tamiroff sees potential in Donlevy and he begins a great political career and then has a very big fall.

Preston Sturges was starting to assemble his stock company of players who were in most of his films at Paramount, like William Demarest, Jimmy Conlin, Robert Grieg, etc. Although Sturges was only at Paramount for four years his stock company rivaled that of John Ford for that brief period.

Seen 67 years after its debut, The Great McGinty is a fresh as the day it was first made. It's dated in that the political bosses like Akim Tamiroff are not what they used to be in the age of information. Still though the ethics or lack thereof are still present in the age of television and the internet.