Sternberg had Dietrich, and Godard had Anna Karina—malleable, mysterious subjects whose faces eagerly absorbed the light their directors shone upon them. Preston Sturges had William Demarest. A short-fused powder keg of a character actor, with the pungent, excitable voice an onion might have if it could talk, the beetle-browed Demarest always looked like a man catching a whiff of an off-screen polecat. He specialized in skeptical mugs, surly sergeants, irate constables, and belligerent dads—hair-triggered authority figures whose tolerance for jive is zero but whose big-lug... More >>>