Madcap

Writer-director Preston Sturges began writing his memoirs in February 1959 and finished the last chapter on August 6, in his room at the Algonquin Hotel. He died later the same afternoon. He was 60. Sturges appears four times in A Book of Ages.

He came from the American Midwest, but spent most of his childhood traipsing around Europe with his mother, who ran a string of upmarket perfumeries, and her best friend Isadora Duncan. Preston's mother gave the famous dancer the scarf that got tangled i