Preston Sturges and four by Elliott J. Clawson.) Though he had a thirty-year Hollywood career, Sturges' greatest comedies were filmed in a furious five-year burst of activity from 1939 to 1944, during which he turned out "The Great McGinty", "Christmas in July", "The Lady Eve", "Sullivan's Travels", "The Palm Beach Story", "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and "Hail the Conquering Hero". Half a century later, four of these – "The Lady Eve", "Sullivan's Travels", "The Palm Beach Story" and "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" – were chosen by the American Film Institute as being among the 100 funniest American films. The film
Preston Sturges would be surprising if I weren't. Sturges married four times and had three sons: Sturges died of a heart attack at the Algonquin Hotel while writing his autobiography (which, ironically, he'd intended to title "The Events Leading Up to My Death"), and was interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. His book, "Preston Sturges by Preston Sturges: His Life in His Words", was published in 1990 by Simon & Schuster. In 1975, he became the first writer to be given the Screen Writers Guild's Laurel Award posthumously. He has a star dedicated to him on the Hollywood Walk