Director: Preston Sturges
Writers: Preston Sturges, Ernst Laemmle
Photography: Victor Milner
Music: Victor Young
Editor: Stuart Gilmore
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Rudy Vallee, Mary Astor, Sig Arno, Robert Dudley, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, Al Bridge
The Palm Beach Story is packed to the rafters with loony comedic character actors, and it also has some of my favorite stars of the time, including Mary Astor and Claudette Colbert. And Rudy Vallee is a revelation here, smooth, self-possessed, and knowing. But there are points in this movie—the opening scenes, for example—when I wonder how director and cowriter Preston Sturges was ever allowed to make movies. It's so clumsy in its frenetic attempt to establish a premise, with quick cuts, mugging for the camera, pointless freeze-frames, people fainting, someone escaping from a closet. Madcap! Zany! Wackadoodle! But can someone please tell me what's going on?
Eventually the antics settle into a story—a marriage that has lasted five years is now foundering because hubby Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea, a Sturges regular) sees himself as a stone failure. And he might be, considering his ambitions. His dream is to build an airport in the downtown of a city above the buildings, made out of steel mesh—I think we're actually intended to believe he's some kind of inventor-prophet without honor in his own land. But the main point of the story is the souring marriage, which of course will be saved by picture's end in a wrap-up nearly as frenetic as the picture's opening, and more pleasantly unlikely. Symmetry.
The Palm Beach Story is packed to the rafters with loony comedic character actors, and it also has some of my favorite stars of the time, including Mary Astor and Claudette Colbert. And Rudy Vallee is a revelation here, smooth, self-possessed, and knowing. But there are points in this movie—the opening scenes, for example—when I wonder how director and cowriter Preston Sturges was ever allowed to make movies. It's so clumsy in its frenetic attempt to establish a premise, with quick cuts, mugging for the camera, pointless freeze-frames, people fainting, someone escaping from a closet. Madcap! Zany! Wackadoodle! But can someone please tell me what's going on?
Eventually the antics settle into a story—a marriage that has lasted five years is now foundering because hubby Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea, a Sturges regular) sees himself as a stone failure. And he might be, considering his ambitions. His dream is to build an airport in the downtown of a city above the buildings, made out of steel mesh—I think we're actually intended to believe he's some kind of inventor-prophet without honor in his own land. But the main point of the story is the souring marriage, which of course will be saved by picture's end in a wrap-up nearly as frenetic as the picture's opening, and more pleasantly unlikely. Symmetry.
I assume these Sturges pictures made money, if he got to keep making them. There's no point denying a certain likability to them. I am already a fan of his most highly regarded, The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels (and some others too, such as Christmas in July), but it still seems like a steep decline from there to The Palm Beach Story. Nevertheless, the picture sits in the top 500 movies ever made on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?, where it's also apparently considered the third-best Sturges. I appreciate the raggedy DIY quality, and certainly the high spirits that in many ways carry it. The last time I looked I was impressed all over again with Mary Astor's shtick as the Princess Centimillia (is it some kind of joke about the metric system?). It's routine for the Princess to have a husband and a couple of lovers in tow. Of course she's mad for Jeffers and his manly inventor ways.
What stands out most in The Palm Beach Story are all the character actors crowding in—Sturges really loads up on them here. The story is that Jeffers's wife Gerry (the wonderful Claudette Colbert) is traveling to Palm Beach, Florida, to get a fast divorce. She starts out on a train that is also carrying members of the Ale and Quail Club on their way to a hunt, a rogue's gallery of hey-that-guys: Roscoe Ates, Chester Conklin, William Demarest, Robert Greig, Jack Norton, Dewey Robinson, and more, getting drunk and rowdy on the train and starting to shoot off their shotguns.
It's ridiculous and goes on for a long time, at least to Virginia from New York. Sturges and presumably audiences of the time seem to particularly go for these roughhousing ways of men. All his pictures seem to include scenes where they are wrestling around on the floor and often spilling over and falling down staircases, still wrestling. They also sing a lot, as in the image above, where they are serenading Gerry with, I kid you not, "Sweet Adeline." I couldn't stand myself or living for several minutes.
At the same time, sure, it's all a lot of boisterous fun—I'm not trying to be a curmudgeon about this. But when these 1940s fellas relax and let loose it also leads to a lot of cringy business with women and race, whole parades of outdated notions that are clearly assumed to be shared by all. I mention them because they are there and they detract from the picture. The Palm Beach Story is closer to what we would now call a bro episode, but there's a marriage story at the center of it, so romantic comedy is the best approximation after perhaps classic slapstick.
Movies like this have their point and purpose. Consider, as something of a left-field comparison, the 1991 picture Soapdish, starring Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Elisabeth Shue, and Robert Downey Jr. alongside a boatload of '80s and '90s character actors. The plot doesn't really matter. It's more important that all on board are having a blast. The mood is infectious and before you know it you're accepting the most ridiculous things—because it's entertaining. That's the best shot The Palm Beach Story has—that it can sweep you up in its mood, make everything seem a little lighter for an hour and a half, and send you on your way with no regrets. I won't say The Palm Beach Story (or Soapdish) always works that way, but when they do it's the kind of movie experience I'm most grateful for. It's at least worth taking the chance that The Palm Beach Story will hit you right.
What stands out most in The Palm Beach Story are all the character actors crowding in—Sturges really loads up on them here. The story is that Jeffers's wife Gerry (the wonderful Claudette Colbert) is traveling to Palm Beach, Florida, to get a fast divorce. She starts out on a train that is also carrying members of the Ale and Quail Club on their way to a hunt, a rogue's gallery of hey-that-guys: Roscoe Ates, Chester Conklin, William Demarest, Robert Greig, Jack Norton, Dewey Robinson, and more, getting drunk and rowdy on the train and starting to shoot off their shotguns.
It's ridiculous and goes on for a long time, at least to Virginia from New York. Sturges and presumably audiences of the time seem to particularly go for these roughhousing ways of men. All his pictures seem to include scenes where they are wrestling around on the floor and often spilling over and falling down staircases, still wrestling. They also sing a lot, as in the image above, where they are serenading Gerry with, I kid you not, "Sweet Adeline." I couldn't stand myself or living for several minutes.
At the same time, sure, it's all a lot of boisterous fun—I'm not trying to be a curmudgeon about this. But when these 1940s fellas relax and let loose it also leads to a lot of cringy business with women and race, whole parades of outdated notions that are clearly assumed to be shared by all. I mention them because they are there and they detract from the picture. The Palm Beach Story is closer to what we would now call a bro episode, but there's a marriage story at the center of it, so romantic comedy is the best approximation after perhaps classic slapstick.
Movies like this have their point and purpose. Consider, as something of a left-field comparison, the 1991 picture Soapdish, starring Sally Field, Kevin Kline, Elisabeth Shue, and Robert Downey Jr. alongside a boatload of '80s and '90s character actors. The plot doesn't really matter. It's more important that all on board are having a blast. The mood is infectious and before you know it you're accepting the most ridiculous things—because it's entertaining. That's the best shot The Palm Beach Story has—that it can sweep you up in its mood, make everything seem a little lighter for an hour and a half, and send you on your way with no regrets. I won't say The Palm Beach Story (or Soapdish) always works that way, but when they do it's the kind of movie experience I'm most grateful for. It's at least worth taking the chance that The Palm Beach Story will hit you right.
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