The Palm Beach Story (1942)

The Palm Beach Story is an American comedy romance film first released in 1942, directed by Preston Sturges.  The film stars Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee and Sig Arno.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


After five years, Tom and Gerry Jeffers find that the spark has gone out of their marriage.  Their life together is a constant struggle to make ends meet whilst Tom looks around for a backer to finance his ambitious project to build a rooftop airport in New York City.  Finally, Gerry decides that a divorce is the only way out and so she heads off to Palm Beach, believing this is the best place to file a divorce.  In the course of an eventful train journey to Florida, she unwittingly snares a timid young man, who turns out to be none other than John D. Hackensacker III, one of the richest men in America.  Fate appears to have sent Gerry the solution to all her problems, but will Tom ruin it all...?

Preston Sturges’s prodigious talent for wild comic absurdity, well-honed satire and lightning fast dialogue reaches its zenith in this wonderfully mad screwball comedy, one of the last of its kind made in Hollywood.   The Palm Beach Story is warm, slick and hilarious, a relentless barrage of comic situations which just about manage to keep one foot in reality whilst veering off in the most unexpected directions, some with an oddly surreal tang.  The madness begins in a frenzy as the opening credits are played over a silent slapstick sequence that is unfathomable until the last minute of the film, which resolves everything with probably the most outrageous and yet brilliant deus ex machina ever conceived for a Hollywood motion picture.  The dividing line between genius and raging insanity has never looked so microscopically narrow.       

The success of a screwball comedy depends just as much on the performances as on the writing and direction, and all three are excellent here.  Joel McCrea, the star of Sturges’s previous (and somewhat weightier) Sullivan’s Travels (1942) is effectively partnered with the Claudette Colbert, who is not only stunningly beautiful but also revels in the film’s zany humour and unflagging pace.  Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee are equally impressive in their substantial supporting roles.  Astor had previously featured in the defining film noir The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Vallee had been a hugely successful singer and bandleader in the 1930s - his vocal chords are put to good use in this film.

Preston Sturges is often described as a one off.  He is almost unique in combining sophisticated, keenly observed satire and believable characterisation with an almost maniacal sense of anarchic schoolboy fun.  His films are funny but they are also truthful, taking serious themes and passing them through the gently distorting prism of comedy.  That is why his films are so entertaining, so highly regarded and rarely appear dated.  Whilst many popular film comedies have a tendency to become flat and stale with the passing of time, Sturges’s have retained their sparkle and mischievous appeal, like a delicious and slightly dizzying champagne cocktail.

© James Travers 2008

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