Sturges’s landmark Hollywood satire remains one of the richest and most truthful screen studies of the responsibilities and insecurities of the industry’s dream merchants. Fed up with churning out wildly successful but artistically negligible studio comedies, director John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) sets out to make a socially conscious drama, and ventures out into the poverty-stricken real world to gain the relevant insight: what follows is a wicked cautionary tale for any filmmaker weary of his own audience.