The Power and the Glory (1933 film)

The Power and the Glory
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	William K. Howard
Written by	Preston Sturges
Produced by	Jesse L. Lasky
Starring	Spencer Tracy Colleen Moore Ralph Morgan Helen Vinson
Narrated by	Ralph Morgan
Cinematography	James Wong Howe
Edited by	Paul Weatherwax
Music by	J.S. Zamecnik
Production company	Fox Film Corporation
Distributed by	Fox Film Corporation
Release date	August 16, 1933
Running time	76 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$563,323.88[1]

The Power and the Glory is a 1933 pre-Code film starring Spencer Tracy and Colleen Moore, written by Preston Sturges, and directed by William K. Howard. The picture's screenplay was Sturges' first script, which he delivered complete in the form of a finished shooting script, for which he received $17,500 ($411,900 today) and a percentage of the profits. Profit-sharing arrangements, now a common practice in Hollywood, were then unusual and gained Sturges much attention.^[2]

The film, told through flashbacks, was cited by Pauline Kael in her essay "Raising Kane", as a prototype for the narrative structure of Citizen Kane (1941). (Screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who along with Orson Welles won an Oscar for the screenplay of Citizen Kane, was a friend of Sturges.)^[3]

The Power and the Glory was loosely based by Sturges on the life of C. W. Post, his second wife's grandfather, who founded the Postum Cereal Company, which later became General Foods. Like Tom Garner, the lead character of the film, Post worked his way up from the bottom, and ended his own life. Otherwise, according to Sturges, their lives did not correspond.^[4]

In 2014, The Power and the Glory was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.^[5][6] The film's copyright was renewed.^[7]

The film is unrelated to the 1940 novel of the same title by Graham Greene.