The Great McGinty is a 1940 American political satire comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, starring Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff and featuring William Demarest and (in her final screen appearance) Muriel Angelus.

Dan McGinty, a bartender in a banana republic, recounts his rise and fall to the bar's dancing girl and a suicidal American customer, Tommy.

McGinty's career begins when he is a tramp who, offered $2 to vote under a false name in a rigged mayoral election, does it thirty-seven times at different precincts.

[3] According to film historian Kevin Brownlow, Sturges was inspired by the career of William Sulzer,[citation needed] who was impeached and removed from office as governor of New York.

After trying to sell the story to Universal in 1935, and the Saturday Evening Post in 1938 under the title Biography of a Bum, Sturges finally sold it to Paramount on August 19, 1939, for $10 on the condition that he be allowed to direct it.

[3] Paramount agreed, and provided Sturges a budget of $350,000, a three-week shooting schedule,[4] and inexpensive stars to work with.

Production stopped on January 25, 1940, with one day's shooting left to do, which was accomplished on April 15, after the first cut of the film had already been made.

Donlevy also appeared in a television adaptation on Lux Video Theatre, broadcast on 28 April 1955, with Thomas Gomez and Jesse White.