Palm Beach Story, the

This gem of a feature boasts total excellence in all areas, sparkling performances from a top notch cast, superb writing, delicious one liners delivered with relish, rapid fire direction and a beautiful overall look to the proceedings. Indeed so rapid is the pace of this film that it almost requires repeated viewings to be able to fully appreciate the genius of the comic situations and dialogue.

To describle the plotline as being involved and complex is a definite understatement. Convoluted in an endearing way is the best way to describe it. It tells the story of young married couple Tom and Geraldine "Gerry" Jefferswho are struggling financially as Tom is an inventor who has difficulty in getting his original ideas to sell. Gerry being of a harder nature is fed up with being poor and when they are in danger of being evicted from their apartment Gerry decides to do the only thing that a girl like her knows; divorce Tom and find herself a rich husband who can keep her in the style she would like to become used to, while also helping Tom to obtain the financing for his new airport project. What develops from this point onwards adds up to one crazy comic situation after another. Gerry firstly encounters the unforgettable "Wienie King" (Robert Dudley in an absolutely scene stealing performance) an elderly gentleman who is hard of hearing and who gives Gerry a stack of money to get her out of her troubles because he likes her. Gerry heads for Palm Beach as that is "the second best place to get a divorce" according to the Taxi driver! What happens along the way is what classic comedies are made of as Gerry finds herself firstly "adapted" by the crazy members of a hunting club, the Ale and Quail Club that are travelling on the same train and who in a drunken state proceed to take over the train causing complete chaos for all concerned including the terrified barman who sees his whole workplace demolished around him. To escape them Gerry then slips into the sleeping compartment area where she then encounters John D. Hackensacker 111 (Rudy Vallee in a non crooner role) who just turns out to be one of the richest men in America and predictably falls instantly for Gerry. Once in Palm Beach pursued by an angry Tom Gerry is thrown into a whirlwind of deception and comic misunderstandings as she encounters the amazingly eccentric Countess Centimillia (Mary Astor in one of her most hilarious roles ever) John's man hungry, much married sister who takes an instant shine to Tom who is introduced to her as Gerry's brother Captain McGlue!! The comic goings one between the 4 main leads are a sight to behold and eventually end up with each person pairing off with the most suitable partner, Gerry with Tom, the Countess with Tom's identical brother and John with Gerry's twin sister!! Total madness indeed but so delightfully done that it almost takes on a logic of it's own!

Rarely have the cast here been in finer form. Under Sturges's sure direction each of them are outstanding. Claudette Colbert, a favourite actress of mine has rarely been better than here and she can say more with a sideways glance or a twinkle of her eyethan most actresses could do with 5 pages of dialogue. Her Geraldine is both calculating and refreshingly practical and cool headed in the bizzare situations she finds herself. Her scenes with the Ale and Quail club members are brilliant and real rib ticklers as her normally refined way of performing is put to the test with these loud and over the top performers. Joel McCrea has never been better than in his playing here as the harried husband who goes on a mad chase to reclaim his wife. His reactions to be dubbed "Captain McGlue" are priceless and his entanglement with the man hungry Countess who quickly earmarks him as her next husband will make you laugh out loud. Mary Astor, always an interesting actress literally steals the show as the Countess with her rapid hundred words to the minute type of delivery. Some of the most hilarious lines in the film belong to her and she delivers them with relish for example in a retort to Tom about the length of all her marriages she states "nothing is forever....except Roosevelt!!" In her memoirs Astor stated how she did not enjoy working for Preston Sturges in "The Palm Beach Story" and felt she never really got her characterisation right in this film. Interesting really as I think she has never been better than here and is the comic centre of the whole crazy proceedings with her playing. Rudy Vallee as the hapless millionaire is also a revelation in his playing of the fumbling man besotted with the much more world wise Geraldine. His different style of playing contrasts beautifully with the more over the top playing of Mary Astor. His scenes on the train with Colbert are classic where she continues to break his sets of glasses as he tries to give her a boost up into the top bunk of the sleeping compartment.

"The Palm Beach Story" is what classic screwball comedy is all about.The pace of the film is like a rocket and the one liners which hold many perceptive views on the rich and on our money consious society are a clever reflection of societies values at the time. Like all Sturges vechicles under the comic nonsense there is actually alot being said that can be applied to any age or time. Enjoy "The Palm Beach Story" and definately treat yourself to repeat viewings of this 1942 masterpiece as you will, like me, find new things to admire, laugh at, and reflect on with each visit.

One of Preston Sturges four or five masterpieces, and IMHO his most masterly piece. The beautiful Geraldine (Claudette Colbert) and Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) are your (seemingly) normal everyday working-class married couple in financial straits; Tom needs some cash to develop his invention, a suspension-airport-tennis-racket, but this being 1942 and venture capital more difficult to raise in those days, Geraldine helps her husband and does the next sensible thing, deciding to divorce Tom, marry someone rich, and then invest in Tom's project. She hies herself to Palm Beach, touted to her by a helpful cab driver as the second most popular divorce resort next to Reno, "but for my money Palm Beach is your best bet for this time of year, you got your beaches, you got your hotels." Tom for some reason disagrees with her plan, valuing their marriage over his fortune, and hies himself Palm Beach-ward to fend off his divorce-minded wife. But Gerry, who's left her husband without taking any money, sells herself to a band of gun-toting ale-drinking millionaires in exchange for a train passage, meets another multimillionaire by repeatedly grinding his pince-nez into his face with her foot (it's all right, he carries an inexhaustible supply of them) and becomes adopted by her smitten mutlimillionaire and his sister the Duchess or Princess Centimellia (oh, it's Princess, she divorced the Duke two husbands ago, or was it three?). This becomes complicated when Tom shows in Palm Beach and is taken up by the Princess in the guise of Gerry's brother, one Captain McGlue ("Captain of what? The Boy Scouts?" Tom shrieks. "And why is my name McGLUE?!") and the multimillionaire, who goes by the nickname Snooty, attempts to befriend him, all the while imprecating Gerry's dastardly soon-to-be-ex-husband.

The plot, as you can see, is another of Sturge's marvelously convoluted structures, and is rife throughout with much of his trademark one-liners ("It is the tragedy of this world that the men most in need of a beating are always enormous"; "Nothing is forever, dear. Except Roosevelt.") and dazzling design. What makes this concoction the creamiest of Sturge's crop are the wonderful performances; McCrea's stolidness doesn't trip him up as it did in the coda of "Sullivan's Travels," and actually gives his Tom Jeffers a warm growly dog quality I find endearing. Mary Astor perfects her chatterbox heiress performance in this film. Rude Vallee is a revelation as the persnickety Snooty, abandoning his teenybopper-crooner fame to play the role of a parsimonious googolplexaire falling disastrously in love.

And Claudette Colbert, wow. Barbara Stanwyck may be more sexy in "The Lady Eve," Veronica Lake more mysterious and stylish in "Sullivan's Travels," but Claudette Colbert.... wow.

That said, I took a star off because of the sequences of the drunken millionaire's gun club and the black railroad servicemen. I know that the film was made in 1942 and one should make allowances, but the scene where the millionaires are shooting randomly around the train, forcing the black bartender to dance around their bullets made me wince. It was funny, but too sadistic for our sensitivities 50 years later. This goes too for the extended scene where the only joke is that the (black) train attendant continously pronounces "yacht" as "yachit."

The film's abrupt happy ending was an out-of-left-field delight, and of course made me watch the beginning credit sequence again. I'm not altogether sure what happens there in the beginning, does anyone out there have any ideas?