The Great Moment

“Paramount's escapist laugh tonic! Hilarious as a whiff of laughing gas!”

William Morton (Joel McCrea) is a Boston dentist in the 19th century, a young man with a wife, Elizabeth (Betty Field), and a trade that mostly means causing pain. He becomes convinced that ether can spare his patients the agony, and Preston Sturges follows him as he tries to win over the doctors and the public. The idea is that a man can do the most good in the world and still be the one nobody wants to listen to.