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The Palm Beach Story

The Palm Beach Story
The Palm Beach Story postr.jpg
theatrical release poster
Directed by Preston Sturges
Produced by Buddy G. DeSylva (uncredited)
Paul Jones
(assoc. producer)
Written by Preston Sturges
Ernst Laemmle
Starring Claudette Colbert
Joel McCrea
Mary Astor
Rudy Vallee
Music by Victor Young
Cinematography Victor Milner
Edited by Stuart Gilmore
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date
December 10, 1942 (NYC)
January 1, 1943 (US general)
Running time
88 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $950,000 (approx)
Box office $1.7 million (US rentals)

The Palm Beach Story is a 1942 romantic screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor and Rudy Vallée. Victor Young contributed the lively musical score, including a fast-paced variation of the William Tell Overture for the opening scenes. Typical of a Sturges movie, the pacing and dialogue of The Palm Beach Story are very fast.

Tom and Gerry Jeffers (Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert) are a married couple in New York City who are down on their luck financially, which is pushing the marriage to an end. But there is a deeper problem with their relationship, just hinted at under the opening credits in the prologue, and only disclosed at the end.

In the prologue Claudette Colbert is bound and gagged in a closet, but a second later appears in a wedding dress. This scene is cross-cut with groom Joel McCrea hurriedly changing from one formal suit to another while rushing to church for the wedding. The last scenes finally reveal that both of the original fiancés have identical twins. Both twins, trying to steal their sibling's intended, inadvertently married each other instead.

The couple remain married from 1937 until 1942, when this story begins. Gerry decides that Tom would be better off if they split up. She packs her bags; takes some money offered to her by the Wienie King (Robert Dudley), a strange but rich little man who is thinking of renting the Jeffers' apartment; and boards a train for Palm Beach, Florida. There she plans to get a divorce and meet a wealthy second husband who can help Tom. On the train, she meets the eccentric John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallée), one of the richest men in the world.

Because of an encounter with the wild and drunken millionaire members of the Ale and Quail hunting club, Gerry loses all her luggage; after making do with clothing scrounged from other passengers, she is forced to accept Hackensacker's extravagant charity. They leave the train and go on a shopping spree for everything from lingerie to jewelry – Hackensacker minutely noting the cost of everything in a little notebook, which he never bothers to add up – and make the remainder of the trip to Palm Beach on Hackensacker's yacht named The Erl King (a Sturges joke on the Hackensacker family business, oil).


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