ViewGuide

Created May 25, 2013 10:00AM PST • Edited Apr 01, 2022 03:24PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   The Palm Beach Story hasn’t aged well.

   A Preston Sturges’ classic, funny and loaded with iconic style, its heavy-handed comedy sometimes clanks.

   No? Sue me. I’m into romantic comedies mostly for the comedy, albeit not those with too many pratfalls.

   More egregiously, the use of “colored” characters in The Palm Beach Story pains enlightened sensibilities.

   Sturges spins his fantasy about the Rockefellers. John D. and John Jr. each have an unrelated doppelgänger. That way they fill more story space, the elder one a crotchety Park Avenue millionaire happy to give money to a pretty tenant, the younger an heir to the greatest fortune in the world, happy to marry said gold-digger.

   Claudette Colbert ain’t no Michelle Pfeiffer, but she easily pulls off the role of society subjugating beauty. Funny how she runs into one rich guy after another, from Park Avenue to Palm Beach, each an icon of white male privilege from smack dab in the middle of the WWII era.

   Consider it also an Edith Head fashion show, with one fabulous ensemble after another. Nevermind Colbert and the other grande dames. The men are attired beyond nattily – seriously impressive threads and specs.

   The great Sturges made The Palm Beach Story during a furious five-year burst of activity from ’39 to ’43:

   • One of seven movies he made during that half decade
   • Four – Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story and one other – have been declared among the 100 funniest movies of all time by the AFI. No argument with the first two.

   Don’t start your Tour de Sturges with The Palm Beach Story. Start at the top with Sullivan’s Travels. By the time you get down to The Palm Beach Story, you’ll understand why Preston Sturges is in any conversation about Hollywood’s Greatest Writer-Director. He didn’t need an auteur theory to do it all.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Claudette Colbert is a memorable name from Hollywood’s misty early days, though not in the first rank of legendary screen queens. Her performance as a society gold-digger in The Palm Beach Story confirms why. She’s far from irresistible.

   Joel McCrea isn’t exactly memorable either, though he fulminates well and looks marvelous doing it.

   Other big names stud the cast.

   • Mary Astor as a society Princess
   • Rudy Vallee as a pseudo Rockefeller heir.

   Two other notables:

   • William Demarest as the First Member of the Ale and Quail Club is a Sturges favorite. He later went on to become Uncle Charlie on My Three Sons. That’s him, Bill Demarest opening the nearby trailer.
   • Fred ‘Snowflake’ Toones as the “Colored Bartender” marks The Palm Beach Story as pre-Civil Rights. Toones deserves to be remembered. His Wikipedia page is a good place to start.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Very Good 3.5

    Comedy of marriage where the ultra-tony opening wedding scene ends with “And they lived happily ever after” – society’s main myth.

    The comedy’s a bit heavy handed, not even counting the scene marred by a subservient black bartender – “Colored Bartender” according to the credits.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

12. Play OK 2.5

    “The men who most need beating up are enormous,” is far from a dumb line, but when Sturges is writing elsewhere for the Ale and Quail Club, he’s shackled himself to a ham-handed subject.

13. Music Great 4.0

    Perfect music swelling and waning with every love move.

14. Visuals Great 4.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.6

    Gently Risqué — talks about sex. Well, uses the word Sex, which was no doubt a breakthrough in 1942.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Gentle 1.5

19. Rudeness Salty 1.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.7

    Lots to comment on about this time capsule from 1942. I choose to note that it dates from when America still primarily traveled by rail, complete with sleeper cars, dining cars and club cars.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.6

23. Biological Glib 1.4

24. Physical Natural 1.0