Trailer
Plot summary
A young Hollywood director, John L. Sullivan, has grown dissatisfied with the profitable comedies he makes. He tells his studio chief, Mr. LeBrand, that his next picture should be a serious study of human suffering, taken from the novel O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and LeBrand would rather he made another comedy. Convinced he cannot write about trouble he has never known, Sullivan dresses as a tramp and sets out, with studio staff following in a bus for his safety. He persuades them to leave him alone until a meeting in Las Vegas. In a diner in Los Angeles, an actress who cannot find work and is ready to go home takes him for a penniless tramp and buys his breakfast. When he tries again, she comes along against his wishes, dressed as a boy.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sullivan's Travels (1941)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Veronica Lake was six months pregnant when Sullivan's Travels began filming and did not tell Preston Sturges until production started; he was furious and, according to Lake, had to be physically restrained. He consulted her doctor, hired former Tournament of Roses queen Cheryl Walker as her double, and set costume designer Edith Head to conceal the pregnancy.
- Preston Sturges wanted a clip from a Charlie Chaplin film for the church scene, but Chaplin turned him down, so a Disney cartoon was substituted instead.
- When the film was released, the U.S. Office of Censorship refused to approve it for export overseas during wartime, because of the long sequence showing life in a prison chain gang and its brutality and inhumanity. The producers declined to make suggested changes that could have altered the film's status.
- The fictional book Sullivan wants to adapt on screen, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, gave its title to the Coen brothers' 2000 film of the same name.
- Preston Sturges wrote the film with Joel McCrea in mind but found Veronica Lake through the casting process; before Lake was cast, Barbara Stanwyck and Frances Farmer were both considered for the female lead.
- Veronica Lake was disliked by some co-stars: Joel McCrea refused to work with her again and turned down a lead role opposite her in I Married a Witch, a part Fredric March took and did not much enjoy either.
- The Hays Office censors objected to the script: they warned that the word "bum" would be rejected by British censors and that there should be no suggestion of sexual intimacy between Sullivan and The Girl in the mission scenes where they sleep together.
