Preston Sturges #5: "The Palm Beach Story" (1942)

Throughout the first four films in this series, we've seen Preston Sturges lean heavily on the various inconsistencies of big business, the movie industry and class differences, but never before has he dwelled on the paranoia, jealousy and outright hypocrisy of marriage as he does here in "The Palm Beach Story". 

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Like a sassier, edgier "The Awful Truth," the film takes a cheekily broken marriage at the on-set, sends the two partners to sample the alternatives, then finally (to no surprise) brings them back together. 

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As is commonplace amongst the many comedies of Preston Sturges, the dialogue is swift and sharp-witted and the sexual innuendo barefaced and painfully honest. Claudette Colbert plays Gerry, a frustrated but sympathetic wife to the struggling Tom (played by Joel McCrea) who insists a divorce is the only way to treat her penniless existence as she is courted by a rich tycoon in transit to Palm Beach. 

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In many ways, the film is a critique of class roles, not unlike "Christmas in July" in the way it examines the futility of monetary or professional success or "Sullivan's Travels"  in how the rich view the weak. 

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Sturges was familiar with the allure of aristocratic beauty, seeing as how one of his many ex-wives, Eleanor Hutton, was an heiress who ran in circles of high society herself, so far as to even be wooed by Prince Jerome Rospigliosi-Gioeni. (This can be clearly seen in the character played by Mary Astor, a silly rich playgirl and sister to John D. Hackensacker, Gerry's wealthy courter.)

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And indeed much of Sturges' work was based on fact or personal experience (which could perhaps explain why so much of it is downright clinical in its honesty), even the wacky train sequence, in which the Quail and Ale Club are unhitched from the remaining cabins en route, is based partly on first-hand experience.

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In the end, Sturges' suggested pessimism loses out again to an ironic ending, although this one manages to be frightfully silly. Still though, "The Palm Beach Story" serves as a frenzied segue into Sturges later works, which would examine small-town hypocrisy and yet again, the oncoming threats of infidelity. [B]