Preston Sturges

He is not considered to be one of the great directors I suppose but he brought more joy to the cinema than most others - and that includes Capra and Hawkes. His humour is zany but his chief chharacters are not, only the peripheral ones are. So you get Sullivan in "Sullivan's Travels", played by Joel Mcrae, a man with a social conscience so deeply imbedded in his intelligent director-of-comedies head that he decides to go out on the road to see what it's like to live like a down-and-out. But he is surroundeed by some of the zaniest of characters in moveis - Sturges, like many other directors had a sort of gang of actors he used repeatedly (Franklin Pangborn, Robert Greig - butler usually, Jimmy Conlin and William Demerest - "the two-legged bull-dog"). And they were without fail zany if not crazy.
Some people like slap-stick, some don't. My own kids used to watch Laurel and Hardy films without laughing at all. Sturges was a master of slap-stick. I think the chase scene at the beginning of "Sullivan's Travels" is one of the funniest slap-stick scenes I have ever seen.
But Sturges was also a master of the the "one-liners", or rather, the one-line exchanges.
Here's an example from "The Lady Eve" which Anthony Lane writes is "pure Sturges".
Jane, played by Barbara Stanwyck, is telling Charles, played by Henry Fonda, about her ideal man.

Jean: He's a little short guy with lots of money.
Charles: I shouldn't think that kind of ideal was so difficult to find.
Jean: Oh, he isn't.... That's why he's my ideal.What's the sense of having one if you can't find him? Mine's a practical ideal you can find two or three of in every barber's shop.
Charles: Why don't you marry one of them?
Jean: Why should I marry anybody who looked like that?