I shudder to think who I would have become had I never once been a 13-year-old girl roaming the stacks of a suburban Blockbuster Video. I fell in love with movies mostly because I wanted to impress the older high school boys who worked behind the counter. The nicer ones took time to recommend their favorite films. So I must thank the beautiful, near clone of OC-era Adam Brody who enthusiastically sold me on Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’s 1941 classic. I’ve seen it so many times that I’ve come to consider it an old friend.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, what initially drew me, a boy-crazy middle schooler, to the film is the sheer hotness of its two leads. Even by our current standards of eerily plump, airbrushed faces and Ozempic-toned bodies, Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea sparkle onscreen together. Her peekaboo curls and low, sultry delivery demand attention, making it impossible to half-watch this film. If anything commands you to put down your phone and stop doomscrolling, it’ll be Lake’s dominant, ahead-of-its-time sensuality, the perfect foil to McCrea’s earnest everyman.
