Sullivan’s Travels

film by Sturges [1941]

Written by

Lee Pfeiffer

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

Sullivan’s Travels, American dramedy film, released in 1941, considered by many to be director Preston Sturges’s finest film. The title is taken from Jonathan Swift’s classic tale of self-discovery, Gulliver’s Travels (1726).

The plot involves John Lloyd Sullivan (played by Joel McCrea), a pampered Hollywood director who decides to make a film about the downtrodden of society. He researches the subject by setting off with only a dime in his pocket. His adventures and misadventures lead to some unexpected consequences, including his arrest for his own murder. He learns to identify with the masses and their everyday stuggles through the disastrous string of events that befall him. Veronica Lake (who was six months pregnant at the time of filming) played a struggling actress who accompanies McCrea on his “travels.”

Reception was mixed when Sullivan’s Travels was released, though it later received greater recognition. Sturges’s films were often more acclaimed in retrospect than they were in his day, and the same holds true for McCrea, whose work as an actor is often considered undervalued. The title of the pretentious epic that McCrea’s fictional director threatens to make is O Brother, Where Art Thou, which, in homage to Sturges, became the title of a 2000 Coen brothers film.