Comic Tour in 'Sullivan's Travels' on the Paramount's Screen -- 'A Yank on the Burma Road' Feature at Loew's Criterion

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: January 29, 1942

Preston Sturges need make no excuses for the dominance of comedy on the screen, since he has done more than any one over the last two years to give brightness and bounce and authority to this general type of fare. But apparently he thinks it time that some one break a lance in the muse's defense—and maybe he also is anxious to quiet a still, small voice within himself. For his latest film, "Sullivan's Travels," which rolled into the Paramount yesterday, is a beautifully trenchant satire upon "social significance" in pictures, a stinging slap at those fellows who howl for realism on the screen and a deftly sardonic apologia for Hollywood make-believe.

Sardonic? How comes that word to creep in so slyly there? The answer is simple. Mr. Sturges is a charmingly sarcastic chap, and his pokes are not aimed exclusively at the "deep-dish" in screen attitudes. He also makes pointed sport, in his own blithely mischievous way, of Hollywood's lavish excesses, of baldly staged publicity stunts and of motion picture producers whose notion of art is "a little sex." As a writer and director, Mr. Sturges believes in pictures which will make the customers laugh, but he obviously has his own opinions about the shams of showmanship. And thus this truly brilliant serio-comedy which makes fun of films with "messages" carries its own paradoxical moral and its note of tragedy. Laughter, it says, is "better than nothing in this cock-eyed caravan."

The hero of "Sullivan's Travels," you see, is a film director, too—a sheltered and earnest young fellow who has been highly successful with frivolous fare ("So Long Sarong," "Hey-Hey in the Hay" and "Ants in Your Plants of 1939"). But then he gets the notion that this is no time for comedy—that the public is not in a mood for cut-ups with things as they are. So he wants to make a grimly serious picture—"O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

To acquaint himself with hardship in order to do the job right, he puts on a trick tramp outfit and starts out solemnly to "see life." The fact that a studio retinue of publicity men follows close behind is but a minor annoyance. The fellow really thinks he's tramping the hard road. Nor are his illusions shattered when he picks up a despondent extra-girl and, with her as a cynical companion, makes a brief excursion among the down-and-outs. However, he truly finds trouble when a trick of fate robs him of identity—when his ties with a secure world are cut—and he learns about cruelty and poverty in a brutal convict camp. There he discovers that laughter is the only anodyne for grief—and subsequently returns to Hollywood, a gladder and wiser man.

This brief and sketchy outline of the story may—but should not—lead you to suspect that the film is heavy with "trouble" and bleak reality. Far from it. It has the blessing of Mr. Sturges's artful comic comment, and it crackles with extraordinary humor for most of its ninety-minute length. In the early part of the picture there is a wild, hilarious "chase" which outdoes any of the romping that Mack Sennett ever conceived, and even the "slumming" episodes are filled with ironic fun. The scenes in the prison camp are harsh and relentless, it is true, but they carry the point of the picture with sharp and incisive clarity.

One might wish that the ending had been a little more boldly conceived, for Mr. Sturges lets an obvious climax fall uncomfortably flat. He should have emphasized the bitter irony of Sullivan's return to Hollywood, of his willing acceptance of a mission which he had so elaborately eschewed. In short, Sullivan should have been more affected by his experience than he seems to be.

But that is a passing criticism of a picture which is expertly made and acted, under the direction of Mr. Sturges, with eminent artistry. Joel McCrea as the questing traveler is more of a human character than he has ever been in a film, and Veronica Lake as the little girl he picks up is a person when she comes out from behind her hair. William Demarest, Robert Warwick, Eric Blore, Robert Greig and a host of Sturges puppets fill out the lesser roles superiorly.

"Sullivan's Travels" is one of the screen's more "significant" films. It is the best social comment made upon Hollywood since "A Star Is Born." And that, we quietly suspect, is exactly what Mr. Sturges meant it to be.

SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS; written and directed by Preston Sturges; produced by Paul Jones for Paramount. At the Paramount.
John L. Sullivan . . . . . Joe McCrea
The Girl . . . . . Veronica Lake
Mr. LeBrand . . . . . Robert Warwick
Mr. Jones . . . . . William Demarest
Mr. Casalsis . . . . . Franklin Pangborn
Mr. Hadrian . . . . . Porter Hall
Mr. Valdelle . . . . . Byron Foulger
Secretary . . . . . Margaret Hayes
The Doctor . . . . . Torben Meyer
Sullivan's Butler . . . . . Robert Greig
Sullivan's Valet . . . . . Eric Blore
Mr. Carson . . . . . Al Bridge
Miz Zeffie . . . . . Esther Howard
Ursula . . . . . Almira Sessions
Tough Chauffeur . . . . . Frank Moran
Old Bum . . . . . Georges Renevant