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Les Carnets du Major Thompson was the final film effort of producer-director-writer Preston Sturges. Once a Hollywood wunderkind of the 1940s, Sturges had fallen on hard times in the 1950s, and was forced to finance and film his last picture in France. Jack Buchanan plays the title character, a crusty, middle-aged British widow who falls in love with, then marries, alluring Frenchwoman Martine (Martine Carol). The scandal of near-international dimensions erupts, culminating in a comic contretemps over whether Major and Mrs. Thompson's child will be brought up as a proper Englishman or a "swinging" Frenchman. Sturges struggles manfully to recapture the satiric spirit of his earlier classics (The Palm Beach Story, Miracle of Morgan's Creek et. al.), but it is clear that he has lost his touch. Les Carnets du Major Thompson is better known by its American title, The French They are a Funny Race.