a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Producer: Preston Sturges. Copyright 5 January 1944 by Paramount Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Paramount: 19 January 1944. U.S. release: January 1944. Australian release: 20 April 1944. 10 reels. 8,869 feet. 100 minutes. (Available on an excellent Paramount DVD).SYNOPSIS: In the small town of Morgan's Creek lives Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), who works in a music store and whose father, Officer Kockenlocker (William Demarest) is the traffic policeman and a sergeant of the last war. Little sister Emmy (Diana Lynn) is worldly wise and sharp-tongued and Trudy's boy friend, Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), is a bashful guy who works in the town bank.Norval would like Trudy to go to the movies with him the evening the story opens, but Trudy is sorry, she is going to dance with the soldiers. Norval can't be talked into going to this dance because he's long wanted to be in uniform, but every time he tries to enlist he gets so nervous, up goes his blood pressure and spots appear before his eyes.NOTES: Second to "Going My Way" as Paramount's top domestic box- office successes of 1944. Initial box-office gross: over $10 million. Nominated for a prestigious Hollywood award for Original Screenplay, losing to Lamar Trotti's "Wilson". Number 3 on the National Board of Review's list of the Ten Best Movies of 1944. Betty Hutton was cited by the National Board of Review (along with nine other players) for the year's Best Acting. One of Bosley Crowther's Top Ten for The New York Times, in fact "the year's best farce". Re-made in 1958 as "Rock-a- bye Baby". COMMENT: How this movie got past the Hays Office, was something that puzzled all reviewers from New York to Los Angeles. The answer, of course, is simple. Censorial bodies are not only blind and deaf, they have absolutely no common sense. Did you notice the heroine's name? If you still haven't got the joke, just say her name out loud. And this is just the start. You wouldn't believe how many times this name is repeated in the movie. I would say at least forty times. Maybe even fifty? I first saw this movie at a revival in the early 1950s. To my surprise, the usually half-empty suburban theater was packed to the doors and every time, our heroine's name was mentioned - which, as I aid before, was at least forty times - the whole theater just exploded with laughter. In fact, there was one particularly long scene between the hero and the heroine's dad, in which our hero answered a multitude of questions from his soon to be father-in-law by consistently addressing him as "Mr. Kockenlocker!" The whole theater just exploded with continuous laughter. A few of us even fell off our chairs! OTHER VIEWS: "Excellent. The funniest picture of this year, or any other year within memory." — Archer Winsten in N.Y. Post."Situations spark, dialogue crackles and the Sturges camera works like a playful Peeping Tom." — Bosley Crowther in N.Y. Times."One of the funniest pictures I've ever seen in a long span of viewing and reviewing." — Film Daily."I am still hysterical over The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. It is the funniest picture I ever saw. I'd never laughed so much in all my life." — Lee Mortimer in N.Y. Daily Mirror.P.S. I'd like to give the movie 10/10, but it is so brazen - and this one play-on-words is repeated at least forty times - I just can't bring myself to rub it in!

Eddie Bracken delivers rapid-fire and humorous lines as Norval Jones. Dianna Lynn has some of the wittiest one-liners as Emmy, Trudy's younger sister. William Demarest is their dad and constable Kockenlocker. He does some very good pratfalls, and has some very snappy lines of his own. Betty Hutton is Trudy who dances the night away with lots of GIs due to ship out the next day. The next morning she can't remember anything except that she got married and doesn't know to whom. That is the substance of the story that meets the eye in "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek." It's a wonderful comedy that Preston Sturges wrote and directed during World War II. There's more to the film, of course, and most of the humor and laughs come from what follows. Some critics of that time (and viewers today) wonder how the film was made at all. How did it "get by" the Hays Commission? Also known as the Hays Office, the Breen Office and the Production Code, it was set up by Hollywood as its own censoring office beginning in 1934. A number of books and video references have good background on this. The DVD I bought has two short special documentaries on it. Film historians, authors and people close to this film are interviewed. I highly recommend these videos (see more below). They clear up common misinformation about the Hays Office. In "Censorship: Morgan's Creek vs the Production Code," author and film historian Ed Sikov says, "In the early 30s, Hollywood was producing a whole bunch of racy, racy pictures. There was drug addiction, there was sex outside of marriage, adultery. There was sex suggestiveness all over the place." Author and Sturges biographer Andrew Dickos says, "There were scandals in Hollywood that reflected badly on the movie industry. The Fatty Arbuckle murder, for example, and movies were becoming more and more risqué … showing crime not losing but winning and showing sex being available, not within the confines of marriage and family finding." Sikov says, "So, people became concerned that they were going too far — that Hollywood was just pushing things a little too far." And, Dickos concludes, "The government was beginning to hear outcries and they decided that maybe they needed to look into the movie industry. The movie producers decided, 'No! We will monitor our own films.' Hence, the establishment of the Hays Commission. Hays was the former Postmaster General of the U.S..."Joseph Breen was a newspaperman who was hired to develop the code. So, there we have the Hays Office, established by the industry to monitor itself. At the same time, this industry expects its directors to get movies made. For most genres – drama, adventures, mysteries, Westerns, musicals, the code often posed only minor or no hitches. But comedy- romances were another matter. They often had elements that could push hot buttons with the censors. Morgan's Creek was a story that pushed many hot buttons. In the short specials with the DVD, Eddie Bracken in late life said that the troupe of Morgan's Creek laughed at the Hays Office. He said Sturges changes made the Hays people "look like idiots." But, some film experts saw the result in another light. Sikov says, "What the code did was to force directors like Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder, or any of the great writers and directors, to mold their scripts around the code. In other words, it was kind of like a poet writing a sonnet. There's a form to follow, and if you follow the form then you make a great poem. Well, the form here was 'You can't do this and you can't do that;' but what you could do became richer because of the imposition of the code."So, if there had not been a Hays Office, would this movie be what it is today? No, because it was rewritten. Would it be as funny? Not likely, because most of the funniest parts were revisions or additions. Some say that the marriage of Norval and Trudy was unnecessary. Others say it as the funniest part. Strike it out and you lose big chunks of the funniest film time. That includes several scenes and much dialog leading up to the marriage. How about the GIs drinking lemonade all night, and not a single one in the brig the next day? What a hoot. This film clearly pokes fun at many things. I don't know if Preston Sturges was a genius. He came from a wealthy but dysfunctional family. His last name is from his third father. He was married four times himself. He slept very little, was a workaholic and died of a heart attack at age 60. I think he was a gifted writer and excellent director. He knew how to make his films much richer because of the restrictions. Some reviewers were bothered by the film's theme. Indeed, if one took out the obviously funny and unreal parts that got the film past the code group, it would not have resembled a comedy. In the 1940s, a girl who got pregnant out of wedlock was not a matter of humor. That she may have been raped by a soldier would, likewise not be something funny. So, Morgan's Creek turned out to be a great comedy – not so much in spite of the Hays Office, but because of it. Sturges knew what he was doing all along – even though the specific scenarios and scenes had to be worked out in steps from the Hays Office interceptions. When he chose the name, Kockenlocker, Sturges was signaling that we were in for a rollicking laugh-fest in this film. And the nice surprise closing makes a wonderful madcap and happy ending.

A real rouser for war-time audiences with its frenzied pace, sprightly dialogue, and naughty innuendo. Between whirlwind director Sturges and combustible Betty Hutton, I half expected the screen would explode, but Hutton manages uncharacteristic restraint when needed. Her miming in the record shop of a basso voice from a deep well remains a real hoot and a charming use of her bubbly high-spirits. Not to forget poor Eddie Bracken as the hapless, love-struck schlemiel. I love his line that goes something like-- I was born ugly and thought I would grow out of it. But I didn't. I just got uglier! Now, how many of today's big-headed male leads would take on such a line. I hope they paid him a bundle. And, of course, there's roughneck daddy William Demarest and teen sister Diana Lynn who nevertheless looks at least 20. The scenes between pistol-packin' Demarest and comically cringing Bracken are priceless and every boyfriend's worst nightmare.The fact that the cast works so well is testament to Sturges's talent for orchestrating these frenzied farces. I expect it was that very rapid-fire dialogue that got wedlock babies and unmarried mothers past the public watchdogs. By Code standards, these were taboo topics, and notice that not once is the obviously relevant word "pregnant" spoken. Just why that marvelous life-affirming term should be banned alongside real profanity needs some explaining. Note too, how fast and loose the governor (Brian Donlevy) plays with the rules in finessing possible embarrassment. Sturges always liked to poke fun at these political types. However not everything is roses. The "jail-break" scene goes on too long, while the final few scenes barely escape the soggy hanky. And probably some of the humor is lost to changing times. Nonetheless, enough of the crackling dialogue and up-tempo pacing remains to keep viewers awake and chuckling.

Betty Hutton is responsible for "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," a 1944 comedy written and directed by Preston Sturges. A very famous movie and rightly so. Hutton shares the screen with Sturges regulars Eddie Bracken, William Demarest, Brian Donlevy, as well as Diana Lynn, Akim Tamiroff and Porter Hall. Hutton plays Trudy, a small-town girl who lives with her sister (Lynn) and irascible father (Demarest). On the night before a group of soldiers in the area ship out, a big dance is held for them, and Trudy plans on going. Her father forbids it. Instead she makes a movie date with a childhood friend who's crazy about her, Norval Jones. Poor Norval - he can't get into the service because he becomes so overwrought and terrified that they won't take him that he starts seeing - THE SPOTS - before his eyes, and he winds up with a 4-F. The minute they're out of the house, Trudy tells Norval that she wants to borrow his car and go to the dance, leaving Norval watching three features in a movie theater.Once she's there, Trudy dances with practically ever soldier there and goes out drinking and nightclubbing afterward, which she is unaccustomed to. She picks Norval up at 8 o'clock the next morning at the movie theater. Once in the house, she realizes that she got married, but she can't remember to whom except his name had a Z in it. Then she finds out she's pregnant.This is a hilarious film that many people have seen many times - there is an enormous amount of dialogue - if you took three films today and put them together, you probably wouldn't have the amount of dialogue in this film. It also moves at a lightning pace. It's so fascinating to see how this subject was handled in the '40s and how our mores have changed. The Trudy character could never have just gotten pregnant while unmarried and be unsure of the father's identity - or else the censors would have demanded she die at the end. The family goes to such lengths to cover up the pregnancy, even moving out of town to protect Trudy's "reputation." And poor Norval offers to marry her as the soldier, whose name she thinks is Ignatz Ratzkywatzky so she has a marriage certificate, which Ignatz evidently took with him. Since she used a fake name, she won't be able to find it in any documents.Today a young woman getting pregnant and not knowing who the father is has become a common plot. Trudy could have just gone out and had a good time, gotten pregnant, and the father could have been a soldier or one of the guys in town. She'd have the child and remain unmarried if she so chose.A lot of people don't like Betty Hutton - I'm not sure why. She was a vivacious performer and a fantastic singer. She is wonderful as Trudy, showing a great sense of comic timing. Her energy, as usual, jumps off the screen. Eddie Bracken has the better role, and he makes the most of it. He's hilarious as the depressed Norval. Both he and Demarest have some very funny slapstick moments. Demarest comes off as a meanie, but you know deep down he cares. His repartee with Diana Lynn, who plays his other daughter, Emmy, will have you laughing. I think in the movie she said she was 14 - I thought 17 - and sure enough, the actress was 17. Fourteen was really pushing it."The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" is a real gem, made during World War II, a fascinating time in our history. Many women met their husbands while the men were at training camps - so did Trudy - but she never knew his name. I wonder whatever happened to Ignatz Ratzkywatzky - and if he'd try to find her if he knew the result of the honeymoon!