Miracle Of Morgan’s Creek
Last night, we watched Preston Sturges’ THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK. During WWII, small town girl Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton) goes out to dance the night away with some departing soldier boys. She winds up pregnant, not knowing who the father is. Into this mess walks Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken), who’s loved her since childhood. He agrees to marry Trudy. One big obstacle, however, is that this would constitute an act of bigamy. Betty supposedly married a soldier she barely knew just before he shipped out.
If this stretches credulity, it at least pleased the Hayes office (read: Dept. of Censorship). As a matter of fact, though Trudy appears drunk (albeit on “Victory Lemonade”), it was against the movie code for a young woman to appear so. She said she’d hit her head and thus couldn’t remember anything.
Amazing, the dance writer-director Sturges did with the censors! Nevertheless, at no time was the word “pregnant” used. Further, they couldn’t even show Hutton “great with child.” At this stage of the game, she’s photographed from the behind and, later, swathed in a coat in the back seat of a car.
All these things are interesting, but they do nothing to detract from a delightful film with marvelously funny dialogue. Trudy’s last name is Kockenlocker. She thinks the name of her child’s father is Ratzenkatski. Of course, he has no first name, so Norval supplies one–Ignatz. Ignatz Ratzenkatski. The attempted union of the stammering Ratzenkatski and nervous Kockenlocker before the Justice of the Peace is hilarious. Norval appears disguised as the soldier Trudy had married, but all he’s come up with is a WWI uniform, complete with broad-brimmed boy scout hat. On the virge of fainting throughout the ceremony, his fiancee frequently hefts him by the seat of his pants. It’s one of the greatest scene-stealing contests I’ve ever seen, as Hutton matches Bracken line for line.
Intriguingly, Trudy’s “blessed event” comes on Christmas Day; Christmastime at least. Sturges seems to be drawing a parallel between his heroine’s plight and that of Mary, the mother of Jesus. With her dad having lost his job and the town’s disapproving gaze set firmly on the Kockenlockers, they move to a farm outside of town. At one point, good ol’ William Demarest, who plays her gruff father, says, “Don’t lose your confidence in the Almighty–or whatever turns the wheels. That King was born in a cowshed. You might have a baby who’ll grow up to be president.”
Meanwhile, Norval, who’s gone off to try and find the real father, returns empty-handed–only to wind up in jail on a charge of bank robbery. But he gets out. He has to. For the Miracle of Morgan’s Creek has occurred! The headlines scream and the bullies of the world–Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini–tremble. Trudy’s given birth to sextuplets, all boys! (One newspaper headline shouts CANADA PROTESTS! Get the joke? If not, Google “Dionne quintuplets”) Norval doesn’t learn he’s the father of six boys until after he goes to the hospital. He promptly suffers another of his patented hysterical fits. But, as the epilogue reads, BUT NORVAL SOON GOT BETTER, AS HE REALIZED THAT SOME ARE BORN GREAT, SOME BECOME GREAT, AND SOME HAVE GREATNESS THRUST UPON THEM. THE END.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
