Preston Sturges ranks as one of the American cinema's most gifted and talented screenwriters and directors. His writings featured astringent dialogue that was both cosmopolitan and jargonistic. Sturges also excelled in staging scenes with razor-sharp wit but was willing to include broad slapstick. As Terrence Rafferty put it, "he was one of the true wild men of movie comedy, a legitimate successor to the improvisatory gagmen of the silent era. ..."Born on August 29, 1898, Edmund Preston Biden spent his early childhood shuttling between his native Chicago (where his adoptive father, Solomon
