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Sullivan's Travels

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Veronica Lake as The Girl and Joel McCrea as John L. Sullivan

Sullivan's Travels is a 1941 American comedy-drama film. A satire of the film industry, it follows a famous Hollywood comedy director who, longing to make a socially relevant drama, sets out to live as a tramp to gain life experience for his forthcoming film. Along the way he unites with a poor aspiring actress who accompanies him.

Directed and written by Preston Sturges.
A Happy-Go Lucky Hitch-Hiker on the Highway to happiness! He wanted to see the world . . . but wound up in Lover's Lane!  taglines

John L. Sullivan

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  • It's a funny thing how everything keeps shoving me back to Hollywood or Beverly Hills, or this monstrosity we're riding in. Almost like, like gravity as if some force were saying, 'Get back where you belong. You don't belong out here in real life, you phony you.!'... Maybe there's a universal law that says, 'Stay put. As you are, so shall you remain.' Maybe that's why tramps are always in trouble. They don't vote. They don't pay taxes. They violate the law of nature... But nothing is gonna stop me. I'm gonna find out how it feels to be in trouble, without friends, without credit, without checkbook, without name. Alone.
  • [last lines] There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.

Other

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  • Burrows: Hello. Information? Eh, have you any freight trains going East this afternoon or early this evening?.. 5:48... Uh, thank you very much indeed, sir. Oh, and could you tell me, does that train carry tramps? And if so, where to they get on?

Dialogue

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John L. Sullivan: You see? You see the symbolism of it? Capital and labor destroy each other. It teaches a lesson, a moral lesson, it has social significance.
Hadrian: Who wants to see that kind of stuff? It gives me the creeps.
John L. Sullivan: Tell him how long it played at the Music Hall.
LeBrand: It was held over a fifth week.
Hadrian: Who goes to the Music Hall? Communists!
John L. Sullivan: Communists? This picture's an answer to communists. It shows we're awake and not dunking our heads in the sand like a bunch of ostriches!
John L. Sullivan: I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions. Stark realism. The problems that confront the average man!
LeBrand: But with a little sex.
John L. Sullivan: A little, but I don't wanna stress it. I want this picture to be a document. I wanna hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity! A true canvas of the suffering of humanity!
LeBrand: But with a little sex in it.
John L. Sullivan: [reluctantly] With a little sex in it.
Hadrian: How 'bout a nice musical?
John L. Sullivan: Of course I'm just a minor employee here, Mr. LeBrand...
LeBrand: He's starting that one again.
John L. Sullivan: I wanted to make you something outstanding... something you could be proud of, something that would realize the potentialities of film... as the sociological and artistic medium that it is. With a little sex in it. Something like...
Hadrian: Something like Capra. I know.
John L. Sullivan: What's the matter with Capra?
LeBrand: Look, you want to make O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Hadrian: Now, wait a minute!
LeBrand: Then go ahead and make it! For what you're getting, I can't afford to argue with you.
John L. Sullivan: That's a fine way to start a man out on a million-dollar production.
LeBrand: You want it, you've got it! I can take it on the chin. I've taken it before.
John L. Sullivan: Not from me you haven't.
LeBrand: Not from you, Sully, that's true. Not with pictures like So Long Sarong, Hey, Hey, In the Hayloft, Ants in Your Plants of 1939... But they weren't about tramps, lockouts, sweatshops, people eating garbage in alleys and living in piano boxes and ash cans.
Hadrian: And phooey!
LeBrand: They're about nice, clean young people... who fell in love... with laughter and music and legs. Now take that scene in Hey, Hey, In the Hayloft...
John L. Sullivan: But you don't realize conditions have changed. There isn't any work. There isn't any food. These are troublous times.
Hadrian: What do you know about trouble?
John L. Sullivan: What do I know about trouble?
Hadrian: Yes, what do you know about trouble?
John L. Sullivan: Well, what do you mean, what do I know about trouble?
Hadrian: Just what I'm saying. You wanna make a picture about garbage cans. What do you know about garbage cans? When did you eat your last meal out of one?
Hadrian: Well, what's that got to do with it?
John L. Sullivan: He's asking you.
Hadrian: You wanna make an epic about misery. You wanna show hungry people sleeping in doorways.
LeBrand: With newspapers around them!
Hadrian: You wanna grind out ten thousand feet of hard luck - and all I'm asking you is, what do you know about hard luck?
John L. Sullivan: What do you mean, what do I know about hard luck? Don't you think I've...
Hadrian: No.
John L. Sullivan: What?
Hadrian: You have not. I sold newspapers till I was 20, then I worked in a shoe store and put myself through law school at night. Where were you at 20?
John L. Sullivan: I was in college.
LeBrand: When I was 13, I supported three sisters, two brothers and a widowed mother. Where were you at 13?
John L. Sullivan: I was in boarding school. I'm sorry!
LeBrand: Well, you don't have to be ashamed of it, Sully. That's the reason your pictures have been so light, so cheerful, so inspiring.
Hadrian: They don't stink with messages.
LeBrand: That's why I paid you five hundred a week when you were 24.
Hadrian: Seven hundred and fifty when you were 25.
LeBrand: A thousand when you were 26.
Hadrian: When I was 26, I was getting 18.
LeBrand: Two thousand when you were 27!
Hadrian: I was getting 25 then!
LeBrand: I'd just opened my shooting gallery. Then three thousand after "Thanks for Yesterday."
Hadrian: Four thousand after "Ants in Your Plants."
John L. Sullivan: I suppose you're trying to tell me I don't know what trouble is.
Hadrian: Yes!
LeBrand: In a nice way, Sully.
John L. Sullivan: Well, you're absolutely right. I haven't any idea what it is.
Hadrian: People always like what they don't know anything about.
John L. Sullivan: I had a lot of nerve wanting to make a picture about human suffering.
LeBrand: You're a gentleman to admit it, Sully, but then, you are anyway.
Hadrian: We'd better insure him for a million.
LeBrand: He's worth more.
Hadrian: The bonehead.
LeBrand: Yes, but what a genius.
Burrows: You see, sir, rich people and theorists - who are usually rich people - think of poverty in the negative, as the lack of riches - as disease might be called the lack of health. But it isn't, sir. Poverty is not the lack of anything, but a positive plague, virulent in itself, contagious as cholera, with filth, criminality, vice and despair as only a few of its symptoms. It is to be stayed away from, even for purposes of study. It is to be shunned.
John L. Sullivan: You seem to have made quite a study of it.
Burrows: Quite unwillingly, sir. Will that be all, sir?
Burrows: Good morning, sir. I don't like it at all, sir. Fancy dress, I take it?
John L. Sullivan: What's the matter with it?
Burrows: I have never been sympathetic to the caricaturing of the poor and needy, sir.
John L. Sullivan: Who's caricaturing? I'm going out on the road to find out what it's like to be poor and needy and then I'm going to make a picture about it.
Burrows: If you'll permit me to say so, sir, the subject is not an interesting one. The poor know all about poverty and only the morbid rich would find the topic glamorous.
John L. Sullivan: But I'm doing it for the poor. Don't you understand?
Burrows: I doubt if they would appreciate it, sir. They rather resent the invasion of their privacy, I believe quite properly, sir. Also, such excursions can be extremely dangerous, sir. I worked for a gentleman once who likewise, with two friends, accoutered themselves as you have, sir, and then went out for a lark. They have not been heard from since. May I close, sir, by warning you against the entire expedition, which I envision with deep apprehension and gloomy foreboding.
John L. Sullivan: Thanks, same to you.
Policeman at Beverly Hills station: Are you sure this is Sullivan?
Sullivan's Valet: Oh, quite, sir.
Policeman at Beverly Hills station: What are you doing in these clothes?
John L. Sullivan: [wearing rags from a studio wardrobe] I just paid my income tax.
Policeman at Beverly Hills station: How does the girl fit in this picture?
John L. Sullivan: There's always a girl in the picture. Haven't you ever been to the movies?
The Girl: You know, the nice thing about buying food for a man is that you don't have to listen to his jokes. Just think, if you were some big shot like a casting director or something, I'd be staring into your bridgework saying 'Yes, Mr. Smearcase. No, Mr. Smearcase. Not really, Mr. Smearcase! Oh, Mr. Smearcase, that's my knee!' Give Mr. Smearcase another cup of coffee. Make it two. Want a piece of pie?
John L. Sullivan: No thanks, kid.
The Girl: Why, Mr. Smearcase, aren't you getting a little familiar?
John L. Sullivan: But nothing is going to stop me. I'm going to find out how it feels to be in trouble. Without friends, without credit, without checkbook, without name. Alone.
The Girl: And I'll go with you.
John L. Sullivan: How can I be alone if you're with me?
The Girl: You're so simple, you're apt to get into a lot of trouble.
John L. Sullivan: What do ya think I'm out here for?
The Girl: Gee, I like that about you. You're like those knights of old who used to ride around looking for trouble.
Las Vegas Diner Counterman: [Giving the obviously broke Sully and girl each coffee and a donut] I'll never get rich.
The Girl: Oh, gee.
John L. Sullivan: You're a little richer than you were. Hundreds of miles from everything. Cut off from the world, a taste of human kindness. I'll never forget it as long as I live. What town is this?
John L. Sullivan: Look they don't sentence picture directors to a place like this... for a little disagreement with a yard bull.
Trustee: Don't they?
John L. Sullivan: No.
Trustee: Well, then, maybe you ain't a movie director. Maybe that idea just come to you... - when you got hit on the head, maybe.
John L. Sullivan: Huh?
Trustee: Maybe that idea just come to you... when you got hit on the head, maybe.
John L. Sullivan: Now look...
Trustee: We used to have a fella here once that thought he was Lindbergh. He used to fly away every night... but he was always back in the morning.
John L. Sullivan: Don't I look like a picture director?
Trustee: Course I never seen one. You look more like a soda jerk, or maybe a plasterer, maybe.
John L. Sullivan: But... If ever a plot needed a twist, this one does.
The Girl: I liked you better as a bum.
John L. Sullivan: I can't help what kind of people you like.
The Girl: [Sullivan and the girl are walking through his palatial mansion] Where's the swimming pool? You must have a swimming pool.
John L. Sullivan: Right out here.
[They walk out of the house]
John L. Sullivan: Outside dining room, barbecue.
The Girl: Hmm.
John L. Sullivan: Pretty, isn't it?
The Girl: Yeah.
John L. Sullivan: There's the tennis court up there, grape arbor there, and the grove there. Well, I guess that's about all. What are you looking at me that way for?
[she pushes Sullivan.]
John L. Sullivan: Ooh! [falls into the swimming pool]
The Girl: Hey, you big fathead!
John L. Sullivan: What's the big idea?
The Girl: That's for your swimming pools and your tennis courts and your limousines and your barbecues. That's for making fun of a poor girl who only tried to help you, you big faker!
John L. Sullivan: Who made fun of you?
The Girl: You did, with your stories of being a washed-up director, you big clunk!
John L. Sullivan: Oh I did, did I?
[Sullivan pulls her into the swimming pool. She screams as she falls in while Burrows and the valet arrive with breakfast, then laughs as she and Sullivan splash around.]
Burrows: Breakfast is served, sir.

Taglines

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  • A Happy-Go Lucky Hitch-Hiker on the Highway to happiness! He wanted to see the world . . . but wound up in Lover's Lane!
  • Veronica Lake's on the take!
  • The Creator of "Lady Eve" brings you his latest and most lilting laugh-fest!

Cast

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Wikipedia
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