Preston Sturges was an amateur inventor in his spare time. He actually came up with the idea for an urban airport suspended above the city's skyscrapers long before including it in the screenplay for The Palm Beach Story. He eventually developed the idea into a helipad and unsuccessfully petitioned the City of Los Angeles for permission to build one over his restaurant, The Players, to make deliveries of fresh seafood easier.

The Palm Beach Story was the seventh of ten films written by Sturges to feature William Demarest. His most memorable role for the writer-director was as the harried father of Betty Hutton and Diana Lynn in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944).

Sturges ordered the costume designer to build Rudy Vallee's pince nez to echo the droop of his eyes, thereby making the dress prop funnier.

Sturges cameos as the leader of a group of men seen in the background carrying Claudette Colbert's luggage from Vallee's yacht as Joel McCrea and Mary Astor stroll along the pier.

When Vallee serenades Claudette Colbert, he sings "Good Night, Sweetheart," a song he had popularized in 1931.

Memorable Quotes from The Palm Beach Story(1942)

"And They Lived Happily Ever After. Or Did They?" -- Title cards following opening titles

"I'm the Wienie King! Invented the Texas Wienie! Lay off 'em, you'll live longer." -- Robert Dudley, as the Wienie King

"Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly but without pity that which yesterday was young. Alone our memories resist this disintegration and grow more lovely with the passing years. Hah! That's hard to say with false teeth!" -- Dudley, as the Wienie King

"So this fellow gave you the look?"
"At his age it was more of a blink."
"Seven hundred dollars! And Sex didn't even enter into it, I suppose?"
"Sex always has something to do with it, dear." -- Joel McCrea, as Tom Jeffers, questioning Claudette Colbert, as Gerry Jeffers.

"Anyway, men don't get smarter as they get older. They just lose their hair." -- Colbert, as Gerry Jeffers.

"You're not being rude, dear, you're just being yourself." -- Colbert, as Gerry

"When money reaches certain proportions you can't ignore it any more than you can..."
"A horse in a bedroom.
"I wasn't thinking exactly of that, but it'll serve." -- Rudy Vallee, as John D. Hackensacker III, and Colbert.

"Tipping is un-American." -- Vallee, as John D. Hackensacker III

"...she said that he said that he was going to take her down on his boat. I suppose she means yach-it, but I don't see how no gentleman can give me a dime from New York to Jacksonville can have a yach-it. Maybe a canoe o' a bicycle." -- Charles R. Moore, as Train Porter

"Why, chivalry is not only dead, it's decomposing!" -- Vallee, as Hackensacker

"That's one of the tragedies of this life -- that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous." - Vallee, as Hackensacker

"Nobody who's been married to me for five years is going to be a flop. You're going to get your airport if I have to build it myself. After I'm married."
"After you're married...It's a funny thing to hear your wife say." -- Colbert and McCrea, as Tom Jeffers

"Captain, we should have met sooner, and if I'd seen you around, we would have!" -- Mary Astor, as Princess Centimillia

"You will care for me, though. I grow on people. Like moss." -- Astor, as Princess Centimillia

"I'd marry Captain McGloo tomorrow, even with that name."
"And divorce him the next month."
"Nothing is permanent in this world -- except for Roosevelt." -- Astor, as the Princess, and Vallee

"You don't marry someone you just met the day before; at least I don't."
"But that's the only way, dear. If you get to know too much about them you'd never marry them." -- Vallee and Astor

"Don't you ever talk about anything but Topic A?"
"Is there anything else?" -- McCrea, as Tom, and Astor

"Of course, I'm crazy, I'll marry anybody." -- Astor

"What's knittin', kittens?" -- Astor

"What's buzzin', cousins?" -- Astor

"I don't suppose you have a sister?" -- Vallee, reacting to losing Colbert to McCrea

By Frank Miller