Sullivan's Travels (1941)
This is the first Preston Sturges picture I have been into. It really goes off into a number of different tones - romantic comedy to terror to a really interesting negro church scene. And good god Veronica Lake in a robe.
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Ultimately, it felt like a really daring movie, although you had to give it some leeway due to being 80 years old.
The Secretary of the NAACP, Walter White, wrote to Sturges:
I want to congratulate and thank you for the church sequence in Sullivan's Travels. This is one of the most moving scenes I have seen in a moving picture for a long time. But I am particularly grateful to you, as are a number of my friends, both white and colored, for the dignified and decent treatment of Negroes in this scene. I was in Hollywood recently and am to return there soon for conferences with production heads, writers, directors, and actors and actresses in an effort to induce broader and more decent picturization of the Negro instead of limiting him to menial or comic roles. The sequence in Sullivan's Travels is a step in that direction and I want you to know how grateful we are.[4]