Preston Sturges was one of those meteoric auteurs whose career is comparable only to Jean-Luc Godard in the Sixties: half-a-dozen masterpieces crammed in as many years, along with several other movies within that same span of time that weren't up to the usual brilliant standard. Unlike certain flops by Godard, however, *The Palm Beach Story*, while obviously not up to the standard of his other World War II-era comedies, is definitely not a flop.
I mean, you COULD miss this one and concentrate on the other acknowledged masterpieces in Sturges' oeuvre, but you'd be missing a lot. For one thing, you'd be missing the startling depiction -- for 1942 -- of a marriage based on sheer carnality. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert clearly have nothing in common other than healthy sets of glands: he's a straight-laced inventor-type who's promoting a pie-in-the-sky airport idea that entails laying run-ways ON TOP of a city like a tennis racket; she's a bored socialite and incipient con-artist who's had enough of McCrea's virtuous poverty (poverty engendered, obviously, by trying to sell ideas such as airports built on top of cities). Since the socialite aspect of her personality has failed to yield dividends, Colbert decides to give her inner con-artist a try. She demands a divorce, and absconds on a south-bound train to divorce-friendly Palm Beach, with McCrea in bewildered pursuit. Ever the hustler, Colbert sweet-talks a group of drunken millionaires -- "The Ale and Quail Club" -- into buying her a train-ticket, with predictably raucous results. On board, she meets Rudy Vallee, a shy billionaire who shelters her from the rowdy party of drunken boobs. Soon enough she's parting the fool from his money as he escorts her to his palatial manse in Palm Beach.
Colbert, of course, has no intention of really divorcing McCrea -- she merely happens to know that Palm Beach is full of wealthy marks like Vallee who can be counted on to be credulous enough to put up the seed investment for "brother" McCrea's ridiculous airport scheme. On the one hand, Sturges harbored no illusions about the fundamental "decency" of women. On the other hand, this is what makes *The Palm Beach Story* so refreshing. It must have been especially refreshing for Colbert (never lovelier than here, by the way, with long flowing locks and gowns ascribed to "Irene", according to the opening credits), who clearly enjoyed playing an amoral woman for laughs. She was BORN for this type of role. McCrea, on the other hand, is surprisingly all wrong for the part of the husband. So perfect in other Sturges comedies, particularly *Sullivan's Travels*, in which his natural darker edges were required, he seems dour and out-of-place in this straight-up farce. Frankly, he looks like a man with other things on his mind than a Preston Sturges comedy. (There was a War on, you know.) The husband-role fairly screams for a Cary Grant to inhabit it: that is to say, an actor who didn't take himself very seriously. As it stands now, Vallee's billionaire has no proper foil, with the result that we root for Colbert to just marry him, already, while keeping the unsmiling but far more manly McCrea as an occasional sexual hors d'oeuvre.
Perhaps this had been Sturges' intention, anyway, as the denouement is thoroughly unsatisfying (TWINS?), which in turn forced the director to tack on a striking but rather senseless "prologue" over the opening credits. Basically, the logic of the story demands that Colbert should move on to greener pastures, but the morality of the time (OUR time, too, by the way) wouldn't permit that, so we're left with a non-ending. But this, along with the movie's other faults, is atoned for when Vallee's husband-devouring sister, a motor-mouthed Mary Astor, offers the following immortal observation to a non-English-speaking Sig Arno: "Why don't you go AWAY someplace. Surely someone else can use a house-guest; I can't be the only sucker in the world."
6 stars out of 10.
I mean, you COULD miss this one and concentrate on the other acknowledged masterpieces in Sturges' oeuvre, but you'd be missing a lot. For one thing, you'd be missing the startling depiction -- for 1942 -- of a marriage based on sheer carnality. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert clearly have nothing in common other than healthy sets of glands: he's a straight-laced inventor-type who's promoting a pie-in-the-sky airport idea that entails laying run-ways ON TOP of a city like a tennis racket; she's a bored socialite and incipient con-artist who's had enough of McCrea's virtuous poverty (poverty engendered, obviously, by trying to sell ideas such as airports built on top of cities). Since the socialite aspect of her personality has failed to yield dividends, Colbert decides to give her inner con-artist a try. She demands a divorce, and absconds on a south-bound train to divorce-friendly Palm Beach, with McCrea in bewildered pursuit. Ever the hustler, Colbert sweet-talks a group of drunken millionaires -- "The Ale and Quail Club" -- into buying her a train-ticket, with predictably raucous results. On board, she meets Rudy Vallee, a shy billionaire who shelters her from the rowdy party of drunken boobs. Soon enough she's parting the fool from his money as he escorts her to his palatial manse in Palm Beach.
Colbert, of course, has no intention of really divorcing McCrea -- she merely happens to know that Palm Beach is full of wealthy marks like Vallee who can be counted on to be credulous enough to put up the seed investment for "brother" McCrea's ridiculous airport scheme. On the one hand, Sturges harbored no illusions about the fundamental "decency" of women. On the other hand, this is what makes *The Palm Beach Story* so refreshing. It must have been especially refreshing for Colbert (never lovelier than here, by the way, with long flowing locks and gowns ascribed to "Irene", according to the opening credits), who clearly enjoyed playing an amoral woman for laughs. She was BORN for this type of role. McCrea, on the other hand, is surprisingly all wrong for the part of the husband. So perfect in other Sturges comedies, particularly *Sullivan's Travels*, in which his natural darker edges were required, he seems dour and out-of-place in this straight-up farce. Frankly, he looks like a man with other things on his mind than a Preston Sturges comedy. (There was a War on, you know.) The husband-role fairly screams for a Cary Grant to inhabit it: that is to say, an actor who didn't take himself very seriously. As it stands now, Vallee's billionaire has no proper foil, with the result that we root for Colbert to just marry him, already, while keeping the unsmiling but far more manly McCrea as an occasional sexual hors d'oeuvre.
Perhaps this had been Sturges' intention, anyway, as the denouement is thoroughly unsatisfying (TWINS?), which in turn forced the director to tack on a striking but rather senseless "prologue" over the opening credits. Basically, the logic of the story demands that Colbert should move on to greener pastures, but the morality of the time (OUR time, too, by the way) wouldn't permit that, so we're left with a non-ending. But this, along with the movie's other faults, is atoned for when Vallee's husband-devouring sister, a motor-mouthed Mary Astor, offers the following immortal observation to a non-English-speaking Sig Arno: "Why don't you go AWAY someplace. Surely someone else can use a house-guest; I can't be the only sucker in the world."
6 stars out of 10.