The Palm Beach Story (1942)
Grade: 70
One of a series of successful comedies written and directed by Preston Sturges, "The Palm Beach Story" is funny and entertaining throughout. The depiction of the wealthy as eccentric and generous doesn't always ring true, and sometimes the silliness gets out of hand, such as when the rowdy gun club members go on a rampage. Still, all is forgiven in the film's second half, which has Mary Astor and her pet Toto (Sig Arno) in hilarious form.
Joel McCrae plays a struggling entrepreneur, whose marriage to gold-digger Claudette Colbert is failing due to money troubles. Colbert leaves him with nothing but the dress on her back, but through her feminine wiles soon ends up in Palm Beach as the love interest of bookish zillionaire John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee). The eternally grouchy McCrae arrives to win her back, but instead is foisted upon Hackensacker's aggressive, outrageous sister (Mary Astor).
I have always identified Astor with her role as the femme fatale in "The Maltese Falcon". But comedy is her true genre, and she is given a marvelous character and some great lines in this film. Toto, her gibberish speaking sidekick, is a marvelous comic invention, and the sight of him with a tennis racket is a side-splitter. McCrae's slow burn is also entertaining. He spends the entire film seething.
Colbert is not quite as effective, but her character is more problematic. She has the dual goals of leaving her husband and making his fortune, and she has to walk the line between keeping her honor and perpetuating a con on Vallee. The story would work better if Colbert would dump grumpy McCrae and instead marry wealthy airhead Vallee, but such an ending would break the code of 1942 Hollywood. Sturges gets around this problem with a last minute plot twist, which I won't spoil for you.
kollers@mpsi.net http://members.tripod.com/~Brian_Koller/movies.html
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