User Reviews

Knowing that "The Palm Beach Story" was listed in AFI's top 100 Comedies, I had high hopes going in. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met. While the script, by director Preston Sturges, is sharp and amusing at times, it is often dragged down by schticky scenes that are overlong, unfunny and annoying to watch.

The performances are mostly spot-on, particularly the leads: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor and, surprisingly the best, Rudy Vallée, who is remarkably natural and sympathetic.

***SPOILER ALERT***

However, the schtick really drags "The Palm Beach Story" down. The opening sequence, shown with the credits and presented in pantomime (reminiscent of the start of "The Philadephia Story"), is thoroughly confusing, yet is supposed to provide exposition. One could argue that all was explained at the end of the picture, but even upon reviewing the opening after watching the entire film, it still left me puzzled. (For a plausible explanation, see the Wikipedia article on "The Palm Beach Story.")

Early on, the schtick involving the Wienie King's poor hearing is tiresome and predictable, yet it continues on and on. Later, the raucousness of the Ale and Quail Hunting Club on the train is WAY over the top, unbelievable, unfunny, grating, and goes on for 10-15 minutes.

***END OF SPOILERS***

Were it not for the above annoyances, which unfortunately account for a significant portion of the movie, I would have rated "The Palm Beach Story" higher, as it does have its share of clever dialogue, an unusual premise, and gifted actors.

This has been one of my favorites for thirty years, since the Village Voice critics turned me on to Sturges. It's a loony world where loony things happen, and it's important to realize that the central loony joke is that Claudette Colbert's Gerry gets things from men without having to put any effort into it at all. No, she's not prostituting herself -- she never trades anything for her prizes, she just keeps on looking pretty. Joel McCrea with Colbert is sexy and just right. He's not supposed to be silly -- he is the sane anchor in the chaos (and the romantic leading man). Rudy Vallee -- absolutely perfect deadpan delivery of some really great lines. Hurrah for the Ale and Quail Club, for Toto and for the Wienie King.

But the mystery -- I have always believed that there is an unfinished story in here, a movie that didn't get produced, about the twins. It's almost like Palm Beach is a sequel to that movie. If you don't know that Gerry and Tom are twins, the opening frantic sequences makes no sense at all; as it is it is difficult to make sense of, but this is the gist of it -- Gerry and Tom's twins want Gerry and Tom, Tom and Gerry want each other, so in order to get married Gerry and Tom have to lock their twins in closets and run to their wedding. This means the unwanted twins must have been up to some business before the wedding, but we never see any of it. Something's missing here, and I think that is the flaw in Palm Beach Story. I have never been able to find out where this story element came from. Does anyone know?

But still, watch and enjoy this great movie over and over. There was no other like Preston Sturges -- no one as honest or real. Or funny.

This movie has madness and a few zany scenes. But I think the accolades of many for Preston Sturges having a great comedy here are overblown. "The Palm Beach Story" is funny, but only in parts. And, some of those are strained. The goings-on of the Ale and Quail Club soon wear out. And Claudette Colbert's hiding from the gang on the train isn't worth any howls.

The premise for the story is OK, and far out. Unfortunately, Colbert's Gerry Jeffers is too "logical" and explanatory with hubby Tom, played by Joel McCrea. And, McCrea is just too dour for most of the comedy. That always serious, almost stern look of his was OK for Westerns, but it wasn't great for most of his comedy efforts. The one exception being, "Adventure in Manhattan" of 1936. Colbert and McCrea don't have much chemistry in this film. Someone like Fred MacMurray would be able to play the straight face, serious look for real comedic effect.

I think the best comedy of this film comes from Rudy Vallee as J.D. Hackensacker III, and from Mary Astor as his sister, Princess Centimillia. Vallee's character is funny in himself – fast-talking and always writing costs of items in his little black book. And Astor's princess has some of the funniest lines in the movie.

The movie is okay and enjoyable. But it's not full of laughable scenes and lines. It's not up there with the best comedies of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Here are a couple examples of the witty dialog.

J.D., "Chivalry is not only dead, it's decomposed."

Gerry, "No, I don't want to listen to anything that begins with 'Look, darling,' so that you can get off another noble saying."

J.D., "That's one of the tragedies of this life – that the men who are most in need of a beating are always enormous."

Simply stated...one of the funniest, craziest and most brilliant comedies of all-time....for shear laughs....it's Preston Sturges' funniest movies.

You can easily read the plot-line from the other reviewers, but I want to make a point about some of the performances.

Rudy Vallee, previously rather stiff on film, is simply hysterical in this movie. For my money, he should have at least been nominated for the Best Supporting Actor category for the Academy Awards. One of the most brilliant supporting comedy roles I've ever seen.

Mary Astor and Sig Arno are brilliant as well.

It's also amazing that those idiots at Paramount allowed Sturges to slip through their fingers....not long after this film was finished.

It's now available on DVD....a strip-down edition with no features whatsoever...and also part of the Preston Sturges boxset.

By the way, if the frantic opening over the credit are confusing, just note that both of them are identical twins!

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.

What looks like it could have been a sequel to a movie that was never made, this delightfully funny screwball comedy was Preston Sturges' follow-up to "The Lady Eve" and every bit as memorable. The credits show the comical rush rush for Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert to get to the alter and several questions are left unanswered concerning a frantic maid and a woman locked in a closet.

This fast-forwards five years and they are practically broke, on the verge of losing their apartment. Thanks to the sudden presence of weenie king Robert Dudley, Colbert is able to pay the rent and other bills then leaves for Palm Beach to get a divorce, simply because she thinks that if she were to separate, she could find a wealthy man she could marry and give him the money he needs to find his invention.

McCrea chases her out and then to Penn station (in a very frenetic sequence that is noisy but very funny), and that leads to an even noisier sequence involving a group of elderly hunters along with their howling dogs. When Colbert encounters Rudy Vallee in the sleeper car, her luck seems to change, and the seemingly lowkey Vallee ends up being one of the wealthiest men in the world, taking her on a delightful shopping spree, hysterically shown by the log book he keeps of his expenses.

The story gets wackier with the introduction of his much married sister, Mary Astor, and her current squeeze "Toto" (Sig Arno), and McCrea showing up out of nowhere messes up her plans but there's a lot of twists and turns and a delightful twist at the end that not only resolves those pesky little questions from the beginning but adds on the possibility of a follow-up that I wouldn't have minded.

While some viewers might find the premise absurd and the film far too loud for their tastes, there's so much here to get laughs that it could easily have been called "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". Character actors like Franklin Pangborn, Jack Norton, Roscoe Area, William Demarest, Jimmy Conlin and Chester Conklin show up to aide in the wackiness, making this one of the most fresh and original comedies ever made which should never be remade because it would be a disaster.

Preston Sturges was at the top of his craft when he directed this film. The wonderful cast he put together for " The Palm Beach Story" exceeds all expectations and made this a winning screwball comedy, typical of the times.

Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea made a fantastic couple. Both of the leading actors were excellent comedians; they do amazing work together. The supporting cast is first rate. Mary Astor and Rudy Valee are excellent as the rich siblings falling in love with the estranged Jeffers. In minor roles, Sig Arno, Robert Dudley, and the rest of the cast perform wonders and respond to Mr. Sturges' direction.

The only things that don't work as well with the rest of the film are the prologue and the ending. The end seems to indicate that Preston Sturges was running out of ideas. The multiple weddings are a bit hard to accept as they don't seem real. The existence of a pair of twin siblings we knew nothing about while watching the film, appear to have been added out of desperation and thus make an ending to accommodate both rich Hackensackers.

As a curiosity note, throughout the film Ms. Colbert is seen only on the right hand side of the screen because of her desire of being photographed from the left side only. This actress had the uncanny ability to change herself to that side of the screen without anyone realizing what she's doing. She might start with her whole face in front of the camera on the left hand side of the screen, but she always does something to change places with whoever is playing opposite her and wind up with her left profile for us to see.

Still, this is one of the best films by Preston Sturges, perhaps a notch behind "Sullivan Travels" and "The Lady Eve".

Interesting that a couple of reviewers for the film on IMDb call this picture 'one of Sturges's best' and 'Sturges at his worst'. I guess that goes to the old saying that it takes all kinds. From the outset I had a pretty good idea that this was intended to be a screwball comedy, and the story did have it's share of quirky, fast paced dialog, but for me there was an element missing to get it over the top as a credible story. What I really couldn't understand was why Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Cobert) thought the answer to all her marital problems was to run away and get a divorce, and then behave in ways that resulted in insuring the marriage.

I'll say this though - for 1942, seven hundred dollars sure went a long way. The Weiner King's generous hand out to Jerry managed to cover all the back rent, dinner, a theater show, supper, the butcher, grocer and drugstore, a trip to the hairdresser and still managed fourteen dollars left over for husband Tom (Joel McCrea) to have fun with. There were good old days and then there were good old days, but man, I sure would love to stretch a buck that far.

One redeeming note to the story, I thought Hackensacker (Rudy Vallee) was a stand up guy at the finale when he got jilted by Gerry and still decided to offer the loan to Tom for the airport project. Goes to show that business doesn't have to mix with pleasure for a businessman to recognize a profitable deal. But that triple wedding!?!? What were the odds?

Many of the movies made by Preston Sturges could be classed as "comedies of error." The Palm Beach Story is no exception. The credit titles are alarmingly and delightfully interspersed with daringly abbreviated clips of Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea rushing around madly, evidently priming themselves for their wedding. As each title card credit appears, the action suddenly freezes briefly. Although these clips are all brief, they do show us some alarming scenes. For example, we see Colbert getting herself primped up for the wedding in one shot, and Colbert, bound up with rope and imprisoned in a closet in another.

Every time I see this film I seem to like it better. When I first saw it at a cinema, I was about 20 years old. I was disappointed. Was this the comedy riot I had been led to expect? I thought it was strained and artificial and far too talky. 15 years later I saw it on TV and a few months after that I enjoyed it at a theater. In fact, this third time, I liked it enormously.

"Palm Beach Story" is the comedy of manners par excellence. The dialogue crackles with wit and sophistication and the premise of the film (that a pretty woman can get anything anytime, anywhere, from any man for no payment whatever other than a wistful or helpless glance) is as cynical as it is true. The film follows the adventures of a young wife dedicated to proving that proposition correct — and she does just this, through contact with some of the most delightful eccentrics ever to people a Sturges comedy.

For full impact, however, these larger-than-life characters must be seen on a theater screen — the Ale and Quail Club is a case in point.

There are the usual long but effective Sturges' takes, mostly in medium shot, showing the characters standing full-length. And I like the witty way the plot conclusion is foreshadowed in the sharply cut, old- time, send-up credit titles.

Preston Sturges was one of those meteoric auteurs whose career is comparable only to Jean-Luc Godard in the Sixties: half-a-dozen masterpieces crammed in as many years, along with several other movies within that same span of time that weren't up to the usual brilliant standard. Unlike certain flops by Godard, however, *The Palm Beach Story*, while obviously not up to the standard of his other World War II-era comedies, is definitely not a flop.

I mean, you COULD miss this one and concentrate on the other acknowledged masterpieces in Sturges' oeuvre, but you'd be missing a lot. For one thing, you'd be missing the startling depiction -- for 1942 -- of a marriage based on sheer carnality. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert clearly have nothing in common other than healthy sets of glands: he's a straight-laced inventor-type who's promoting a pie-in-the-sky airport idea that entails laying run-ways ON TOP of a city like a tennis racket; she's a bored socialite and incipient con-artist who's had enough of McCrea's virtuous poverty (poverty engendered, obviously, by trying to sell ideas such as airports built on top of cities). Since the socialite aspect of her personality has failed to yield dividends, Colbert decides to give her inner con-artist a try. She demands a divorce, and absconds on a south-bound train to divorce-friendly Palm Beach, with McCrea in bewildered pursuit. Ever the hustler, Colbert sweet-talks a group of drunken millionaires -- "The Ale and Quail Club" -- into buying her a train-ticket, with predictably raucous results. On board, she meets Rudy Vallee, a shy billionaire who shelters her from the rowdy party of drunken boobs. Soon enough she's parting the fool from his money as he escorts her to his palatial manse in Palm Beach.

Colbert, of course, has no intention of really divorcing McCrea -- she merely happens to know that Palm Beach is full of wealthy marks like Vallee who can be counted on to be credulous enough to put up the seed investment for "brother" McCrea's ridiculous airport scheme. On the one hand, Sturges harbored no illusions about the fundamental "decency" of women. On the other hand, this is what makes *The Palm Beach Story* so refreshing. It must have been especially refreshing for Colbert (never lovelier than here, by the way, with long flowing locks and gowns ascribed to "Irene", according to the opening credits), who clearly enjoyed playing an amoral woman for laughs. She was BORN for this type of role. McCrea, on the other hand, is surprisingly all wrong for the part of the husband. So perfect in other Sturges comedies, particularly *Sullivan's Travels*, in which his natural darker edges were required, he seems dour and out-of-place in this straight-up farce. Frankly, he looks like a man with other things on his mind than a Preston Sturges comedy. (There was a War on, you know.) The husband-role fairly screams for a Cary Grant to inhabit it: that is to say, an actor who didn't take himself very seriously. As it stands now, Vallee's billionaire has no proper foil, with the result that we root for Colbert to just marry him, already, while keeping the unsmiling but far more manly McCrea as an occasional sexual hors d'oeuvre.

Perhaps this had been Sturges' intention, anyway, as the denouement is thoroughly unsatisfying (TWINS?), which in turn forced the director to tack on a striking but rather senseless "prologue" over the opening credits. Basically, the logic of the story demands that Colbert should move on to greener pastures, but the morality of the time (OUR time, too, by the way) wouldn't permit that, so we're left with a non-ending. But this, along with the movie's other faults, is atoned for when Vallee's husband-devouring sister, a motor-mouthed Mary Astor, offers the following immortal observation to a non-English-speaking Sig Arno: "Why don't you go AWAY someplace. Surely someone else can use a house-guest; I can't be the only sucker in the world."

6 stars out of 10.

From director Preston Sturges (The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels), I found this film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, it was well rated by critics, the title didn't suggest anything particular to me, but I was hoping I would agree with the positive opinions. Basically in New York, Gerry (Claudette Colbert) and Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) have been married for five years, but with a lack of money coming in they are due to be evicted from their apartment, Tom is an architect and inventor near bankruptcy and unable to find an investor for his latest idea. As time has gone by Gerry finds herself unable to cope and realises that their marriage has been over for some time, so she leaves him and is heading to Palm Beach for a quick divorce and marry a millionaire to help Tom's project, but Tom is determined to do whatever he can to stop her. It is boarding a train when Gerry meets one of the richest men in the world, eccentric billionaire bachelor J.D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee), and travelling on the yacht to Palm Beach she also meets his sister, Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor), eventually Tom catches up to his wife, but introduces himself to them as her brother. The situation becomes more complicated with Hackensecker falling in love with Gerry, and the Princess falling in love with Tom, after some embarrassing and near ridiculous situations, the truth is eventually revealed that Tom is actually Gerry's husband, but the other siblings come into it, in the end Hackensecker marries Gerry's twin sister and the Princess marries Tom's twin brother. The cast all do their parts well, Colbert being the wife who thinks the husband would be better without her, and McCrea as the husband trying to better himself and reignite her feelings, I did laugh at the moments with the mildly deaf man mistaking what is being said, and the mixed relationships and absurdities are funny, I admit it might not be something I would want to see again, but it is a likable enough screwball comedy. Good!

Joel McRea and Claudette Colbert are man and wife, but he's having a hard time finding money to build his airport and she's feeling useless, just another added expense. Things are so rough that they're being evicted from their New York apartment.

Though they still love each other, Colbert runs off to Palm Beach for a divorce. On the train she meets Rudy Vallee as John D. Hackensacker III. Any resemblance to John D. Rockefeller III is intended. They meet accidentally, while she is fleeing the drunken members of the Ale and Quail Gun Club who are shooting the lights out. While trying to climb into an upper berth in the sleeping car, she steps on his face and crushes his eyeglasses. "Oh, that's alright," he says, "Just pick out the little pieces of glass, will you?" He falls for Colbert and she allows his attraction to deepen in hopes that she can squeeze a bundle of money out of him for McRea's airport.

McRea hasn't been idle. He manages to find an airline ticket to Palm Beach and meets Colbert and Vallee there. Colbert introduces him as her brother, Captain McGlue, hiding his real identity because she still hopes to wheedle a hundred thou out of the good-natured and thoroughly smitten Vallee.

In Valee's Art Moderne mansion, his flighty sister, Mary Astor, attaches herself to McRea, believing him to be single.

The identities are finally untangled at the end. The married couple are reunited, their love renewed. Vallee is disappointed but is firm about investing in McRea's airport venture. Astor is a little disappointed too. But -- voila! Both McRea and Colbert have identical twins and the film ends with their marriages to Astor and Vallee. The twin that married Astor is getting the worst of the deal.

It's pretty funny -- wildly so at times. The Ale and Quail Gun Club are a hoot, with their shotguns and hunting hounds, roaming the corridors of the train, shooting out windows. The scene comes at a point at which the plot needs a little livening up because the script has already spent twenty minutes on a couple whose marriage is falling apart.

One of the better comedies of its time -- 1942. I've seen it twice, over the years, and enjoyed it more the first time round. Some of the characters seemed not so much inspired as silly. Toto, Mary Astor's boyfriend, for instance, has little to add once his shtick of inventing a new language is grasped. And there are few of Sturges unexpected felicities in the script. No galumphing proletarian says, "It's watcha call a paraphrase." However, everything rolls along at such a pace that there isn't much time for dwelling on fallen gags. It lifts the spirits, like a martini too quickly consumed.