SYNOPSIS

At the end of their rope financially, inventor Tom Jeffers and his wife Gerry split up "while we're still young enough to make other connections." Convinced that a smart, good-looking woman doesn't need money to survive, Gerry hitches a ride on a train where she catches the eye of millionaire J. D. Hackensacker III. He takes her to his Palm Beach mansion with marriage on his mind. But a jealous Tom follows, only to have Gerry pass him off as her brother and try to fix him up with J.D.'s sister, the much-married Countess Centimillia. With J.D. offering to back Tom's latest invention, an urban airport using steel nets to land planes in the big city, can the young marrieds resolve this romantic quadrangle without sacrificing happiness for success? CAST AND CREW

Director: Preston Sturges
Producer: Paul Jones
Screenplay: Preston Sturges
Cinematography: Victor Milner
Editing: Stuart Gilmore
Art Direction: Hans Dreier, Ernst Fegte
Music: Victor Young
Cast: Claudette Colbert (Gerry Jeffers), Joel McCrea (Tom Jeffers), Mary Astor (The Princess Centimillia), Rudy Vallee (J.D. Hackensacker III), Sig Arno (Toto), Robert Warwick (Mr. Hinch), Jimmy Conlin (Mr. Asweld), Robert Dudley (The Wienie King), William Demarest (First Member Ale and Quail Club), Robert Greig (Third Member Ale and Quail Club), Roscoe Ates (Fourth Member Ale and Quail Club), Chester Conklin (Sixth Member Ale and Quail Club), Franklin Pangborn (Manager), Esther Howard (Wife of Wienie King), Monte Blue (Mike the Doorman), Frank Faylen (Taxi Driver), Bess Flowers (Gerry's Maid of Honor), Mantan Moreland (Diner Waiter)
BW-88 m.

Why It's Essential Critics have hailed The Palm Beach Story as Preston Sturges's funniest film. Despite complaints from some that the plot wears thin at the end, the laughs never stop coming, from the slapstick opening played beneath the credits to the cascade of one liners delivered by a galaxy of witty, eccentric characters.

The Palm Beach Story is one of the last great screwball comedies. Though there would be returns to the genre in later years, the U.S.'s entry into World War II left audiences in a more serous frame of mind, with little patience for comedies about how daffy the rich were and little interest in the genre's subtle jabs at social conventions. By the war's end, the way of life depicted in the film was also largely a thing of the past. The idle rich were being replaced by rising business tycoons as postwar taxes ate into inherited estates.

The film transformed Rudy Vallee from a singing star turned bland leading man in minor films into an eccentric comic performer who could steal a scene with a single line. His performance as J.D. Hackensacker III led to similar roles in dozens of films, including Sturges's own Unfaithfully Yours (1948) and his Broadway turn in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

With the release of this, Sturges's fourth film as a writer-director, critics began to notice the number of supporting players who kept turning up repeatedly in his pictures, giving rise to the concept of the "Preston Sturges Stock Company." Among the actors in The Palm Beach Story who had appeared in his other films were William Demarest, Jimmy Conlin, Robert Dudley, Robert Greig, Chester Conklin, Roscoe Ates, Esther Howard, Robert Warwick and Franklin Pangborn. Actors like them provided Sturges a group of seasoned veterans who knew his way of working and for whom he could create tailor-made roles.

By Frank Miller