Film scholar's book looks at the creative process of noted director

Sturges' reputation rests on a number of remarkable pictures produced by Paramount Studios or 20th Century-Fox between 1939 and 1948. He was the only major Hollywood director to direct only his own original screenplays and 10 of his 12 pictures have continued to enjoy critical acclaim, scholarly attention and popular admiration for more than 50 years.

In his new book "Four More Screenplays by Preston Sturges," published this month by the University of California Press, Brian Henderson, professor of media study at UB, continues his effort to illuminate Sturges' creative process through a series of introductory essays on the screenplays for some of his finest films.

Included are the original screenplays and Henderson's commentaries for four of Sturges' best works: "The Palm Beach Story," "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," "Unfaithfully Yours" and the biographical film "Triumph Over Pain/The Great Moment," which dramatizes the career of W.T.G. Morgan, the doctor who revolutionized surgery through the use of ether.

The last was one of the most important biographical works of the 1940s. Because the film was recut and rearranged by Paramount before it was released, Henderson's book, which reprints the original script and explains its transformation, offers, in an important sense, a "new" work by Sturges.

The book provides background information on the origins of the pictures and examines every important aspect of script composition, analyzing variant drafts and draft fragments to illuminate the process of revision.

William Nestrick of the University of California, Berkeley, notes that "Henderson has a fine feel for the emotional implications of the slightest changes in the story lines of the scripts and consequently one has great confidence in the significances he attributes to the various states of each film."

Henderson, a longtime scholar of Sturges' work, is the author of the 1985 book, "Five Screenplays by Preston Sturges," applauded at the time of its publication for offering readers access to some of the filmmaker's best work during the golden days of Paramount. It included the scripts for, and commentaries on, "The Great McGinty," "Christmas in July," "Sullivan's Travels," "Hail the Conquering Hero" and the wickedly funny "The Lady Eve."