The Great McGinty Preston Sturges won the 1940 Academy Award for "Best Original Screenplay" for "The Great McGinty", which was named as one of the "10 Best Films of 1940" by both "The New York Times" and "Film Daily". The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: Streaming audio The Great McGinty The Great McGinty is a 1940 political satire comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, starring Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff and featuring William Demarest and (in her final screen appearance) Muriel Angelus. It was Sturges's first film as a director; he sold the story to Paramount
Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 75 based on six reviews. Richard Gere was praised by both "Variety" and "The Guardian" for his "strong performance" portraying a "Court Jew" archetype. Indeed, Cedar's fictional character 'Norman Oppenheimer' was inspired in part by the real life court Jew Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, whose life in turn inspired the 1934 British film Jew Süss, as well as the 1940 Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß. Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer