Panic!: The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek

Preston Sturges’ The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) is a fast-paced screwball comedy that satirizes wartime America with madcap energy. The film follows Trudy Kockenlocker (Betty Hutton), a wayward young woman who attends a raucous all-night farewell party for departing soldiers in her small town. The next day, Trudy awakens to find herself married and pregnant, with no memory of her new suitor’s identity. As she scrambles to untangle the mess, the well-meaning but hapless Norval Jones (Eddie Bracken) offers to help, leading to a series of increasingly absurd complications.

In its portrayal of scandalous small-town panic, the film both provoked the Hays Code and rankled the United States War Department. Sturges transforms anxieties surrounding marriage and patriotic duty into a whirlwind of comedic chaos, exposing the absurdity of rigid societal expectations. A daring and subversive take on small-town mores, the film remains one of Sturges’ most sharply satirical comedies.

Charles Wolfe (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) will join Patrice Petro (Dick Wolf Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center) for a post-screening discussion of The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.