the Hays Office. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek is one of the few Paramount sound films produced before 1950 that do not belong to EMKA, Ltd./NBCUniversal, along with My Friend Irma, Sorry, Wrong Number, and The Buccaneer. The 1958 film Rock-A-Bye Baby, starring Jerry Lewis, was loosely based on The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Sturges received a credit for that film, but did not actually participate in the project. The film was released on DVD and VHS on September 6, 2005. Reception The Miracle of Morgan's Creek received critical praise. Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times: "a more audacious picture—a more delightfully irreverent one—than this new lot of nonsense at the Paramount has never come slithering madly down the path. Mr. Sturges ... has hauled off this time and tossed a satire which is more cheeky than all the rest...It's hard to imagine how he ever got away with such a thing, how he ever persuaded the Hays boys that he wasn't trying to undermine all morals...Maybe the humor is forced a little, and it may be slightly difficult at times to understand precisely what in heck is going on. But that doesn't make any difference. At those times, you can catch your breath." Writing in the Los Angeles Times, reviewer Edwin Schallert wrote: "It is a feature that is intensely, even stridently, a departure from the normal Hollywood output...you can have all the fun you wish out of this picture if you won't try to take it too seriously at any time. It belongs essentially to the screwball comedy school, and goes to most outlandish lengths in its climax, which has the misfortune to show up the whole thing." Critic James Agee noted that "the Hays office has either been hypnotized into a liberality for which it should be thanked, or has been raped in its sleep" to allow the film to be released. In a second review, Agee described the film as "a little like taking a nun on a roller coaster." Although the Hays Office received many letters of protest because of its subject matter, the film was Paramount's highest-grossing film of 1944, taking in $9 million in box-office receipts while playing to standing-room-only audiences in some theaters. Accolades The New York Times named it as one of the 10 Best Films of 1942–1944. In 2001, the film was selected for preservation in the United