"For a brief period of about five years in the early 1940s, Preston Sturges sat on the top of Hollywood. At the time, he was one of the few people, along with Orson Welles and Frank Capra, who both wrote and directed his films. Sturges's films including The Great McGinty (1940), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan Creek (1942), and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) have become classics of American comedy and...