“ANESTHESIA ON FILM”

By Raymond Benson

Preston Sturges’ filmmaking career in Hollywood between 1940-1944 is unparalleled. He is often called the first “writer-director” who would helm his own screenplays (actually this is untrue, since Charles Chaplin had been doing it since 1914, and Orson Welles was also doing it in the early 40s), but there is no question that Sturges became an auteur of sorts in those glorious five years. His flame burned brightly for that short period, and then it sadly weakened and eventually blew out.

One of the reasons for the filmmaker’s demise was the unfortunate production of The Great Moment, a biopic of a 19th Century dentist named Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, who is (mostly) credited as discovering the use of ether as an anesthetic for surgery.

Sturges, who was known for his acerbic comedies like The Great McGinty (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), and Sullivan’s Travels (1942), was apparently obsessed with Morton’s story and had been working on a script as early as 1939 to be directed by Henry Hathaway. That project was shelved, and then Sturges began his run of directing his own scripts in 1940. He resurrected the Morton biopic on his own in 1942. It was based on the book Triumph Over Pain (1940) by René Fülüp-Miller, and that also became the title of Sturges’ script. The film was shot before the making of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero! (both released in 1944). But Paramount, Sturges’ studio, didn’t like the Morton biopic Sturges had made, and they took control away from the writer-director, retitled it The Great Moment, and re-edited it. The film was finally released two years after its production in 1944, after Miracle and Conquering Hero. By then, Sturges had already left Paramount in disgust. The Great Moment bombed at the box office and critics hated it. Sturges made a few more films for other studios, but his career never regained the peak of his earlier Paramount successes.

The Great Moment exhibits how Dr. Morton (Joel McCrea) discovers that ether allows him to successfully pull a tooth from patient Eben Frost (Sturges’ stalwart character actor William Demarest), so he develops a specially shaped bottle from which patients can inhale the ether vapors. History has shown that Morton pulled pieces of his “idea” from other doctors and his mentor, surgeon Professor Warren (Harry Carey), and the story illustrates this. After Morton’s discovery, he endured attacks to his claim, especially when he attempts to patent the process. The medical profession is quick to condemn Morton for what they perceive as “monetizing” the method by patenting it, even though Morton has no intention of making a profit. He simply doesn’t want to reveal the ingredients of what’s in the bottle. Morton and his wife, Elizabeth (Betty Field), withstand hardships as Morton stubbornly pursues his claims in courts and even in a petition to the president of the United States.

Doesn’t sound like a comedy, does it? Well, it isn’t. There are humorous bits and pieces in The Great Moment (mostly from Demarest), but the studio was correct in determining that the film was not in keeping with the previous “Preston Sturges Comedies.” Never mind that Sturges had likely made a good biopic with a message about sacrifice. Paramount deleted scenes, rearranged the narrative flow, and emphasized the few comic bits—and then they marketed the film as if it were a Preston Sturges Comedy. It’s no wonder that audiences were disappointed.

In viewing The Great Moment today, one can see that it’s not a good film. It really is “anesthesia on celluloid.” It is, as the late filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich calls it in a supplement included on the new Kino Lorber disk, a “mess.” The thing is, Sturges can’t be blamed for it. But for Preston Sturges fans, it is an interesting document. We can see that there are indeed Sturges’ fingerprints all through the picture, and many of the Sturges “stock company” are present (such as Franklin Pangborn, Porter Hall, and others). The irony and bite that is pure Sturges is often there in the dialogue.

In short, The Great Moment is a great failure, but one that illustrates how Hollywood tended to squash talented auteurs who bucked the system in the 1940s (like Sturges and Welles).

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition looks pristine and sharp in its glorious black and white. The disk includes the previously mentioned supplement, “Triumph Over Pain: A Celebration of Preston Sturges,” which is a three-way Zoom call between Tom Sturges (Preston’s son), Bogdanovich, and film historian Constantine Nasr. This is a lot of fun and very informative (perhaps more entertaining than the feature film!). Also of interest is a lengthy Introduction by Nasr, which goes into the history of the problematic production. The theatrical trailers for this and other Sturges’ releases round out the package.

The Great Moment is for fans of Preston Sturges, to be sure, but also for historians interested in documentation of Hollywood’s miscalculations and bone-headed decisions when it came to filmmakers who likely knew much more about what they were doing than the studios behind them.

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