A charmingly hyperactive film that's still pretty funny if you're in the mood for a screwball comedy, The Palm Beach story is also noteworthy for providing a window into American culture before World War II changed everything.
This movie has one of the weirdest beginnings you'll ever see. It starts out by recapping the story of how Geraldine and Tom Jeffers (Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea) got married as though The Palm Beach Story is a sequel to that film. But that movie was never made. There was no film about Gerry and Tom before this one. Writer/director Preston Sturges just put together a montage of the absurd fashion in which these two people got together and then jumped forward 5 years to start this story. Imagine if George Lucas hadn't made Star Wars, but then made The Empire Strikes Back and tacked a 2 minute montage as the beginning of that movie that told the entire story of A New Hope. That's how The Palm Beach Story begins.
Anyway, after 5 years of marriage Gerry and Tom are broke. Tom has an idea for a revolutionary airport design (which looks utterly ludicrous in retrospect) and needs 99 thousand dollars for it. Gerry decides to get him that money by divorcing Tom, latching onto a rich husband and then getting her new hubby to give Tom the financing for his design. The matter-of-fact way that Gerry discusses essentially whoring herself out to benefit her true love is a stark reminder of how much pragmatism used to dominate the American character.
Gerry sets out for Palm Beach to divorce Tom but without any money, she's forced to rely on the kindness of a traveling hunting club of millionaires. The Ale and Quail Club are the sort of rambunctious guys who can be singing one moment and then blasting away with their shotguns inside a moving train car the next. They're eventually too much even for Gerry to go along with. Fortunately, she then steps on the face of John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Valee), an impossibly rich man in an emotional straight jacket who offers to take Gerry to Palm Beach on his private yacht.
While that's going on, Tom gets some financial assistance from a cranky old man who got rich selling hot dogs (don't ask, it's a screwball comedy) and flies down to Palm Beach to stop the divorce. When he arrives he finds Hackensacker already sidling up to Gerry, which Tom would have put a stop to if he wasn't almost instantly attacked by Hackensacker's amorous shark of a sister, the Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). Gerry passes Tom off as her brother, Hackensacker proposes a try-out marriage with Gerry, Princess Centimillia tries to rid herself of her foreign lover Toto (Sig Arno), and Tom basically looks on in bemused disgust as all this nonsense spins round and round and round.
Like most screwball comedies, The Palm Beach story is silly, absurd, occasionally labored and you've got to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. In the proper mindset, however, there's a lot here to love. The beautiful Claudette Colbert as Gerry is almost a forerunner to Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, if Lucy Ricardo had been a good-hearted sexual grifter. Mary Astor is wonderful as the sort of decadent socialite that used to be easy for poor people to like. If Paris Hilton were really smart and really funny, she'd be the Princess Centimillia. Rudy Valee gives sort of a one-note performance and mixture of John D. Rockefeller by way of Franklin Deleano Rosevelt, but his benign eccentric is exactly the sort of foil needed to let Gerry shine. Joel McCrea has the least flashy part, but projects more than enough strength to keep the normal Tom from being overwhelmed by the larger-than-life personalities around him. The dialog has that rat-a-tat cadence everyone loves from 1940s comedies and humor ranging from one liners to slapstick and almost everything in between comes firing at you like an artillery barrage.
As for it's use as a telescope into the past, you really can't appreciate how much has changed in American society until you see it in films like The Palm Beach Story. The sexist idea that men and in charge and women can only get their way through a man is central to this story and its sensibility. The rather amoral and mercenary nature of Gerry's scheme also reminds you that the formative experience for this movie's original audience was The Great Depression and they were more receptive to the idea that life is a crooked game and you can only get ahead through dumb luck or a little larceny. The American Dream of success had a much darker tinge to it before the half-century economic boom after WWII polished it up to a blinding sheen.
The screwball comedy genre can be a bit of an acquired taste. If you've acquired it, though, The Palm Beach story is definitely worth seeing.
This movie has one of the weirdest beginnings you'll ever see. It starts out by recapping the story of how Geraldine and Tom Jeffers (Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea) got married as though The Palm Beach Story is a sequel to that film. But that movie was never made. There was no film about Gerry and Tom before this one. Writer/director Preston Sturges just put together a montage of the absurd fashion in which these two people got together and then jumped forward 5 years to start this story. Imagine if George Lucas hadn't made Star Wars, but then made The Empire Strikes Back and tacked a 2 minute montage as the beginning of that movie that told the entire story of A New Hope. That's how The Palm Beach Story begins.
Anyway, after 5 years of marriage Gerry and Tom are broke. Tom has an idea for a revolutionary airport design (which looks utterly ludicrous in retrospect) and needs 99 thousand dollars for it. Gerry decides to get him that money by divorcing Tom, latching onto a rich husband and then getting her new hubby to give Tom the financing for his design. The matter-of-fact way that Gerry discusses essentially whoring herself out to benefit her true love is a stark reminder of how much pragmatism used to dominate the American character.
Gerry sets out for Palm Beach to divorce Tom but without any money, she's forced to rely on the kindness of a traveling hunting club of millionaires. The Ale and Quail Club are the sort of rambunctious guys who can be singing one moment and then blasting away with their shotguns inside a moving train car the next. They're eventually too much even for Gerry to go along with. Fortunately, she then steps on the face of John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Valee), an impossibly rich man in an emotional straight jacket who offers to take Gerry to Palm Beach on his private yacht.
While that's going on, Tom gets some financial assistance from a cranky old man who got rich selling hot dogs (don't ask, it's a screwball comedy) and flies down to Palm Beach to stop the divorce. When he arrives he finds Hackensacker already sidling up to Gerry, which Tom would have put a stop to if he wasn't almost instantly attacked by Hackensacker's amorous shark of a sister, the Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). Gerry passes Tom off as her brother, Hackensacker proposes a try-out marriage with Gerry, Princess Centimillia tries to rid herself of her foreign lover Toto (Sig Arno), and Tom basically looks on in bemused disgust as all this nonsense spins round and round and round.
Like most screwball comedies, The Palm Beach story is silly, absurd, occasionally labored and you've got to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy it. In the proper mindset, however, there's a lot here to love. The beautiful Claudette Colbert as Gerry is almost a forerunner to Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, if Lucy Ricardo had been a good-hearted sexual grifter. Mary Astor is wonderful as the sort of decadent socialite that used to be easy for poor people to like. If Paris Hilton were really smart and really funny, she'd be the Princess Centimillia. Rudy Valee gives sort of a one-note performance and mixture of John D. Rockefeller by way of Franklin Deleano Rosevelt, but his benign eccentric is exactly the sort of foil needed to let Gerry shine. Joel McCrea has the least flashy part, but projects more than enough strength to keep the normal Tom from being overwhelmed by the larger-than-life personalities around him. The dialog has that rat-a-tat cadence everyone loves from 1940s comedies and humor ranging from one liners to slapstick and almost everything in between comes firing at you like an artillery barrage.
As for it's use as a telescope into the past, you really can't appreciate how much has changed in American society until you see it in films like The Palm Beach Story. The sexist idea that men and in charge and women can only get their way through a man is central to this story and its sensibility. The rather amoral and mercenary nature of Gerry's scheme also reminds you that the formative experience for this movie's original audience was The Great Depression and they were more receptive to the idea that life is a crooked game and you can only get ahead through dumb luck or a little larceny. The American Dream of success had a much darker tinge to it before the half-century economic boom after WWII polished it up to a blinding sheen.
The screwball comedy genre can be a bit of an acquired taste. If you've acquired it, though, The Palm Beach story is definitely worth seeing.