The Palm Beach Story (1942)

The Palm Beach Story 
Written and Directed by Preston Sturges
1942/USA
Paramount Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#159 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Wienie King: I’m the Wienie King! Invented the Texas Wienie! Lay off ’em, you’ll live longer.[/box]

This may not be the best Preston Sturges but it is my favorite.  Of course that means I love it more than words can say.

Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) has invented a way to build airports downtown (that obviously will never work).  He spends all his time trying to get the $99,000 needed to build a model. Consequently, he and his wife Gerry (Claudet Colbert) are about to be evicted from their apartment.  In the first of a series of happy coincidences, the Wienie King, a prospective tenant, is taken with Gerry and gives her the money to pay the rent and more.  The chronically jealous Tom is not happy about this.

Gerry decides the best thing for both of them is to divorce.  This is easier said than done since they are clearly still gaga about each other after five years of marriage.  But Gerry musters up the will power to take off for the railway station with no money or ticket.  She believes, from experience, that with her looks she doesn’t need them.  Of course, the appearance of a bunch of crazy hunters in the Ale and Quail Club gets her on the train. Her goal is Palm Beach, Florida where she hopes to meet a rich bachelor.

She doesn’t have to go that far.  He appears on the train in the form of J.D. Hackensaker III (Rudy Vallee) who immediately starts buying her ruby bracelets and takes her the rest of the way to Palm Beach on his yacht.  Tom is on Gerry’s trail, courtesy of the Wienie King, and Gerry introduces him as her brother, Tom McGlue.  J.D.’s sister the wacky and man-hungry Princess Centimillia wants to make Tom the next of her serial marriages.  Will love conquer all?  With William Demerest as President of the Ale and Quail Club, Sig Arno as the Princess’s refugee protogee Toto, and the rest of Sturges’s stock company in small parts.

The fact that this is McCrea’s second sexiest performance (the first being in The More the Merrier) guarantees that I would love this movie but there is so much more!  It also contains my very favorite performance by Astor – she and Vallee are really wonderful.  And then there are all those great small parts,  Practically the whole screenplay is quotable.  The part when the Quail and Ale Club starts trap shooting inside the train is a little too much but otherwise this is practically perfect.  Highly recommended.

Clips from the movie set to “Isn’t It Romantic?” (I prefer this to the trailer)