The Palm Beach Story

Starring:Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor, Rudy Vallee, Sig Arno, Robert Warwick, Arthur Stuart Hull, Torben Meyer, Jimmy Conlin, Victor Potel, William Demarest, Jack Norton, Robert Greig, Roscoe Ates, Dewey Robinson, Chester Conklin, Sheldon Jett, Robert Dudley, Franklin Pangborn, Arthur Hoyt
Director: Preston Sturges
Studio: Universal Studios
Product Type: DVD
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
Among the earliest writers to set his sights on the director's chair, Preston Sturges brought a frank, unsentimental view of the war between the sexes to his mid-'40s features that exemplify his style, as demonstrated in this prescient 1942 gem. Architect Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and his wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert), further refine the archetypal Sturges couple--the male embodying strength, idealism, and a certain naivete, the female ultimately stronger, smarter, and (as revealed early on in an astonishing speech by Colbert) clearer-eyed and more pragmatic about the subtext of sex. This giddy shaggy-dog story follows the couple's split, and Gerry's subsequent flight to Palm Beach. This head-snapping frolic is paced by double-entendres and lampooning looks at the very rich, with standout performances by the predatory Princess Centimillia (the delicious Mary Astor), who's more than ready to comfort Tom, and the wealthy, dim-witted John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee, staking out a new career, post-crooner, as comic foil), Gerry's new suitor. Even the predictable reunion of the star-crossed lovers is achieved with an antic surrealism. Sturges's strength in building strong character ensembles is matched by his affection for coupling screwball dialogue with physical slapstick, seldom to better effect than in the drunken target practice of the Ale and Quail Club, who make Colbert's train ride to Florida a different kind of shoot-'em-up. --Sam Sutherland
Average customer rating:
- Why aren't the titles available separately?
- The Truly Great McGinty
- Must Have Collection
- Miracle of Morgan's Creek Sold Separately
- A prize package of gems,
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Preston Sturges - The Filmmaker Collection (Sullivan's Travels/The Lady Eve/The Palm Beach Story/Hail the Conquering Hero/The Great McGinty/Christmas in July/The Great Moment)
Starring: Preston Sturges , and June Preston
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
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ASIN: B000HT3Q2S
Release Date: 2006-11-21 |
Amazon.com
Preston Sturges was a 20th-century Renaissance man who, at Paramount Pictures between 1940 and 1943, wrote and directed eight original movies unlike anything before or since. All but one were high-energy, brilliantly detailed, and very, very funny comedies that became instant classics. No one ever dreamed up a more colorful assortment of characters, wrote more lovingly textured dialogue for them, or sent them hurtling and skittering through more outrageous situations, with undertones often darker than most dramatic films. Seven of these pictures comprise this boxed set; The Miracle of Morgan's Creek is missing because it remained with Paramount when most of the studio's pre-1949 inventory was acquired decades ago by Universal/MCA. (It's on DVD via Paramount.) The omission of a single film from the cycle--and one of the very best--is regrettable, but there's plenty here to relish.
Sturges was already an established playwright and screenwriter when he cajoled Paramount into letting him direct one of his own scripts. The Great McGinty won him the 1940 Oscar for best original screenplay, the raffish tale of a bum (Brian Donlevy) who ingratiates himself with the political machine of a heartland city by successfully voting 37 times in one election, then rises to become "reform" candidate for governor. The film is a glowing example of Sturges's penchant for filling the foregrounds as well as backgrounds of his movies with flavorful, mostly nameless character actors and according each of them star status, if only for one world-class line of dialogue. They and Sturges stood by one another throughout the cycle, and the result was a richness variously--and aptly--likened to Dickens or Bruegel.
Christmas in July (1940) followed, a sardonic but big-hearted comedy about a young working-class couple (Dick Powell and Ellen Drew) duped into believing one topsy-turvy afternoon that they've struck it rich by winning a slogan contest. Then came the film widely regarded as Sturges's most side-splitting, The Lady Eve (1941). Barbara Stanwyck is merciless--and breathtakingly sexy--as a second-generation con artist who targets brewing heir Henry Fonda, a clueless amateur herpetologist who has spent entirely too much time up the Amazon.
Then again, there are people who name Sullivan's Travels (1942) among the best films ever made. Joel McCrea plays a successful director of Hollywood comedies who decides he must make a social-consciousness allegory, O Brother Where Art Thou? His exploratory road trip disguised as a hobo, with starlet Veronica Lake for companionship, combines Hollywood satire with starkest drama verging on horror. The film is utterly unique and shatteringly powerful.
The Palm Beach Story (1942), a return to screwball comedy, dances a goofy tarantella on the American obsession with wealth. There are a couple of dozen millionaires at large in this movie, every one of them insane: Robert Dudley as a comic deus-ex-machina ("the Wienie King"), a railroad club car filled with Sturges stalwarts ("the Ale and Quail Club"), and '20s crooner Rudy Vallee ascending to character-actor immortality as the devoted suitor of Joel McCrea's runaway wife, Claudette Colbert. At that point (still in 1942) Sturges embarked on his most tortuous project, Triumph over Pain, the fact-based chronicle of the Boston dentist (Joel McCrea) who discovered the use of ether for anaesthesia. Instead of being canonized, he was destroyed. Sturges, whose 1933 screenplay The Power and the Glory had anticipated the fractured time scheme of Citizen Kane by eight years, tried for even more complicated narrative-in-reverse here--and also studded the tragic story with startling bursts of slapstick humor. Paramount recut the film drastically and changed the title to The Great Moment; the fitful results would not be released till two years later.
Meanwhile, Sturges scored a pair of best-screenplay Oscar nominations in 1944 for The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero, two small-town comedies starring Eddie Bracken as a nebbish ill-made for heroism yet obliged by wartime circumstance to rise to the occasion. Each of these films is a comic masterpiece, each asking discomfiting questions about cherished, arguably destructive American values, yet finding its own cockeyed way to affirmation. Miracle isn't available here, but Hail the Conquering Hero casts a lingering spell, beyond satire. To quote its last line: "You got no idea." --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews:
Why aren't the titles available separately?.......2007-05-19
Being a major fan of Preston Sturges' comedies, I bought all of the separate releases when they came out: Sullivan's Travels, The Lady Eve, Hail the Conquering Hero and The Palm Beach Story (and also Miracle of Morgan's Creek which is not in this set). I need only Christmas in July and the Great McGinty to complete my collection. DVD manufacturers: I challenge you to explain why you think I should pay for the whole set just to get those two movies. One star given as an expression of my disgust at this totally transparent and cynical strategy to rob movie fans of their money.
The Truly Great McGinty.......2007-03-20
I think I can blurt out here without any great fear of embarrassment my conviction that Brian Donlevy's five-alarm check suit ought to at least have gotten some kind of screen credit of its own there at the end. Ain't it a dang shame this motion picture isn't in colour for just those times when that arrestingly spiffy ensemble walks on? Send me back to school but I'd pay dearly to see the real cut of that horseblanket's jib. And Dan McGinty's priceless double take on the jasper who orders the orange juice? Are you nuts? I've always thought The Palm Beach Story was the very best of Preston Trousers--Mary Astor, if you're out there, beep me--but this first lap in the writer slash director seat is a riot on wheels.
Must Have Collection.......2007-03-11
This collection of Preston Sturges classic films is a must for any serious film collector. Prior to viewing this entire set I had only seen The Lady Eve and CHristmas in July. I must say Sullivan's Travels, Palm Beach Story, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Great McGinty as well as The Great Moment were all must see movies. I think more attention should be paid to Preston Sturges as a director by classic film collectors-he was truly before his time!
Miracle of Morgan's Creek Sold Separately.......2007-01-30
Let's get the negatives out of the way: 1) Mysteriously, "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" is not included in this set; 2) There are no special features to speak of.
That's one big and one small quibble and now that they're out of the way I am delighted to heartily endorse and cheerfully recommend this most wonderful collection of films.
Preston Sturges (for whom the term mercurial may have been coined) had a short and absolutely brilliant career as a successful writer-director. From "The Great McGinity" (1940) and "The Great Moment" (1944) -- the presence of the adjective "great" in both titles seems appropriate -- Sturges produced the films inthis collection and the one notably excluded. He had a scattering of successes a few years later but his brief brilliantly shining moment had all but flickered.
Be that as it may we do have this absolute treasure of seven films, some available on DVD for the first time. They combine high brow social satire with bawdy slapstick -- not just in the same picture, sometimes in the same scene!
Political corruption in "McGinity" con artists in "The Lady Eve" the role of film in society "Sullivan's Travels" heroism in "Hail the Conquering Hero" and more are all subjects of Sturges' fun. And the stars do come out. Barbara Stanwyck, Joel MCrea, Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lake and Brian Donleavy appear along with Sturges' regularly featured ensemble players. And what an ensemble, highlighted by the redoubatle William Demarest.
There's not a clunker in this reasonably priced set. What you get is some of the best films of the early 1940's replete with memorable scenes (Stanwyck seducing Fonda in "Eve" the dialogue between MCrea and his producers at the beginning of "Sullivan's" the Ale and Quail Club in "Palm Beach.) What you don't get...okay so I can't get over the omission of "Morgan's" sue me.
be that as it may we do have this absolute tresure some availbe on DVD for the first time. They combine high brow social satire with bawdy slapstick -- not just in the same picutre, in the same scene!
Political corruption in "McGinity" con artists in "The Lady Eve" the role of film in society "Sullivan's Travels" herois in "Hail the Conquering Hero" and more are all subjects of Sturges fun. And teh stars do come out. barbara Stanwyck, Joel MCrea, Henry Fonda, Claudette Colbert, Veronica Lakeand Brian Donleavy appear along Sturges' regualry featured ensemable players.
There's not a clunker in this reasonably priced set. What you get is some of the best films of the early 1940's repleete with memorable scences (Stanwyck seducing Fonda in "Eve" the dialogue between MCrea and his producers at the eginning of "Sullivan's" the Ale and Quail Club in "Palm Beach.) What you don't get...okay so I can't get over the ommission of "Morgan's" sue me.
A prize package of gems, .......2007-01-20
While others have noted that some of these films are already available in expensive but very worthwhile Criterion editions, it is terrific that they are now available together in a good value set for all to enjoy. The fact that there are no extras except trailers is fine at the price. It's the films themselves which I want to revisit not the extras. Commentaries etc really do only have a limited audience and there are many essays and books available about these films which you could borrow from your local library; "Romantic Comedy in Hollywood" by James Harvey would be a great place to start.
If you are seeing them for the first time, I recommend you watch them in release date order, with one exception, so you can observe how Sturges progressed. By way of a summary, the set includes:
- Sturges first directorial effort, the excellent political satire, "The Great McGinty", released in 1940. Brian Donlevy was cast in one of his few leads and he is perfect as the roughneck who becomes Governor. The framing device for the film is amusing and Akim Tamiroff is another character actor who gets a great opportunity as the crooked politician. The film won an Oscar for best screenplay. This is not a B film by any means but Sturges cleverly made it on a tight budget, partly by avoiding expensive stars in the main roles.
- "Christmas in July" is a charming film about a regular guy who thinks he has won a slogan competition due to a poor practical joke played on him by some work colleagues. Dick Powell is outstanding in the lead and there is the usual mixture of slapstick, cynicism about capitalism and greed and even some touching sentiment.
- By 1941, Sturges hit solid gold with 2 great films with big stars and generous budgets. "The Lady Eve" is the timeless tale of the seduction of a wealthy nerd by a card sharp. Sturges liked Barbara Stanwyck and wrote the script for her. In the course of the film, she does a breathtaking parody of the English gentry as the Lade Eve Sidwich. It is hard to imagine who could better capture the humour and the cynicism than Stanwyck and Henry Fonda is the perfect foil with some hilarious pratfalls. This film may be the perfect comedy.
- "Sullivan's Travels" is an extraordinary film which starts as a comedy and ends as a very moving drama. There is lots said about capitalism and poverty, themes already referrred to in the previous films. Joel McCrea plays a successful Hollywood director, maybe Sturges himself, who sets off as a hobo to learn about poverty in order to plan a script called "Brother Where Art Thou". Along the way, he meets out of work actress Veronica Lake and she joins him on his adventures. The film takes an unexpected turn towards the end and demonstrates that harsh realism was not beyond Sturges's abilities. McCrea is perfectly cast as Sullivan and Veronica Lake really comes across as a person instead of the zombie she projected in so many of her films.
- In 1942, "The Palm Beach Story" is an hilarious out an out marital romp with the magnetic Claudette Colbert and the charming Joel McCrea. The film is filled with great one liners, an hilarious framing device and a great supporting cast especially Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee. It is probably the closest Sturges came to screwball comedy.
- in 1944, "Hail the Conquering Hero" is one of 2 excellent films Sturges made with Eddie Bracken. Bracken perfected the regular guy who becomes swept up in situations beyond his control. The film takes a poke at small town gullibility as Bracken returns home to a hero's welcome in spite of being tossed out of the marines due to chronic hay fever. All the Sturges regulars are on hand but gruff William Demarest has a larger part than usual.
- the last film in the set is the "The Great Moment". The film was made in 1942 but sat on the shelf due to misgivings about its box office appeal. It tells the story of H T Morton, the discoverer of the use of ether as an anaesthetic for surgery. The film was re-edited after completion and is made up of 2 flashbacks. The main cuts were made in the first flashback and it is extremely hard to follow exactly what is happening. The second flashback is much more coherent and the result is a cogent and entertaining story. The film does not have a good reputation but that is more due to what was done to it than the end result. What remains is still a most interesting story with Joel McCrea perfectly capturing the preoccupation and irritation of a clever mind. It is worth seeing.
All the prints are excellent.
Average customer rating:
- The Palm Beach Story
- "Useless wife" in demand (recommended)
- Not Sturges' best, but still pretty great
- Claudette Colbert and writer-director Preston Sturges: it doesn't get better
- A Romantic Farce
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The Palm Beach Story
Starring: Claudette Colbert , Joel McCrea , Mary Astor , Rudy Vallee , and Sig Arno
Director: Preston Sturges
Manufacturer: Universal Studios
ProductGroup: DVD
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Similar Items:
- The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
- Laura (Fox Film Noir)
- The Lady Eve - Criterion Collection
- Twentieth Century
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ASIN: B0006H32DY
Release Date: 2005-02-01 |
Amazon.com essential video
Among the earliest writers to set his sights on the director's chair, Preston Sturges brought a frank, unsentimental view of the war between the sexes to his mid-'40s features that exemplify his style, as demonstrated in this prescient 1942 gem. Architect Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and his wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert), further refine the archetypal Sturges couple--the male embodying strength, idealism, and a certain naivete, the female ultimately stronger, smarter, and (as revealed early on in an astonishing speech by Colbert) clearer-eyed and more pragmatic about the subtext of sex. This giddy shaggy-dog story follows the couple's split, and Gerry's subsequent flight to Palm Beach. This head-snapping frolic is paced by double-entendres and lampooning looks at the very rich, with standout performances by the predatory Princess Centimillia (the delicious Mary Astor), who's more than ready to comfort Tom, and the wealthy, dim-witted John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee, staking out a new career, post-crooner, as comic foil), Gerry's new suitor. Even the predictable reunion of the star-crossed lovers is achieved with an antic surrealism. Sturges's strength in building strong character ensembles is matched by his affection for coupling screwball dialogue with physical slapstick, seldom to better effect than in the drunken target practice of the Ale and Quail Club, who make Colbert's train ride to Florida a different kind of shoot-'em-up. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews:
The Palm Beach Story.......2007-06-25
Preston Sturges's inspired romantic romp remains delightfully kooky and fresh. McCrea and Colbert create divinely combustible chemistry, and Astor almost steals the picture as the zany heiress (her title alone is priceless). And watch out for Sturges's peerless group of comic stock players (including stand-by William Demarest), seen here in the guise of "The Ale and Quail Club". Irresistible fun.
"Useless wife" in demand (recommended).......2006-03-28
Penniless Geraldine "Gerry" Jeffers (Claudette Colbert), knows how far her good looks can take her in the world. She loves her husband, Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) but doesn't like being poor and he is unwilling to pimp her innocent feminine wiles. The solution? Leaving her husband for Palm Beach to file for a divorce with nothing more than the clothes on her back, she becomes one of the world's best dressed women before she can even set foot in the divorce captiol of the day. (If you know anything about Colbert's movies, you realize she can wear some stunning outfits.) Her gallant husband heads her off to convince her how irrational she is but is surprised to find her stepping off a yacht with a 1940's counterpart to Bill Gates, John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee). So as not to foil her apparently successful plans, she introduces Tom as her brother -- which makes him an all-the-more attractive flavor of the week to a wealthy man's excentric sister, Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). What is more important, love or money? Find out who ultimately wins Gerry's heart in this screwball romance story.
Movie quote: "Just because I'm a useless wife doesn't mean I couldn't be very valuable to you as a sister."
Not Sturges' best, but still pretty great.......2006-03-16
This film featuring Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert, as a couple seeking out new life partners for the sake of the other, came in the middle of the peak of writer/director Preston Sturges' career. (For the record, I consider that the peak began in 1940 with The Great McGinty, ended in 1944 with Hail the Conquering Hero, and includes The Lady Eve [1941], Sullivan's Travels [1941], and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek [1944]. That's quite a roll for anybody!) The Palm Beach Story doesn't quite match up to his best work, but it still has a lot more going for it than at first it seems.
McCrea (John Sullivan in Sullivan's Travels) stars as Tom Jeffers, an architect who doesn't make a lot of money, but has a big dream: to build his own airport. His wife, Gerry (Colbert), wants to support his dream ... by divorcing him so she can marry rich and give him money on the side. Her argument is that they don't love each other anymore, and all that is left is love and respect (their behavior towards each other says otherwise).
Then the first implausible thing happens: he goes along with her idea. Posing as her brother (they look alike because everyone marries his/her own face), he will have approval over who his wife marries. On her way to Palm Beach to meet a millionaire, she meets one on the train, John D. "Snoodles" Hackensacker, III (Rudy Vallee, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer), who falls for her is his own milquetoasty way. (Being Vallee, he even serenades her in one scene.) Snoodles also has a sister, who has been married five times and "will marry anything." She is played by Mary Astor (the femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon), whose saucy reputation is thoroughly covered in Kenneth Anger's tinsel-town expose, Hollywood Babylon.
The Palm Beach Story doesn't come across as very original, but it has a lot of charm. McCrea and Colbert make an ideal couple, and you just know that they will end up together (just like in The Awful Truth, the original Mr. and Mrs. Smith [the only pure comedy directed by Alfred Hitchcock], Phffft!, and all the other loving-couple-tries-to-stay-apart-but-realizes-they-really-love-each-other films of that screwball subgenre). Astor plays her character as a mix of Angelica and Cornelia Bullock (Alice Brady and Gail Patrick, respectively) from My Man Godfrey, and her hanger-on, Toto (Sig Arno), resembles no one more than that film's Carlo (Mischa Auer). Of course, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn, and Robert Greig show up in smaller roles to complete the full Sturges picture (the three were in a number of his films, always in memorable roles). My only real complaints with The Palm Beach Story are the slow pace and the fact that the happy ending requires such a ridiculous deus ex machina, but I can't help but admire Sturges for actually going through with it.
Claudette Colbert and writer-director Preston Sturges: it doesn't get better.......2006-03-08
By 1942, screwball comedies had become quite old-fashioned, nevertheless when THE PALM BEACH STORY was released it became one of the top box-office winners of the year, and garnered much praise for it's stars, and writer-director Preston Sturges.
Married-but penniless couple Gerry and Tom Jeffers (Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea) decide to divorce, so Gerry hops the train to Palm Beach to make all the proper arrangements. Realising his big mistake, Tom follows Gerry but when he arrives in Palm Beach, he discovers that Gerry has already moved on with eccentric zillionaire J.D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee). Things take another zany turn when Tom is chased by J.D.'s man-eating sister Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). Hilarious slapstick sequences and the rapier dialogue of Preston Sturges makes this film one of the greatest of classic Hollywood comedies.
Claudette Colbert's performance as Gerry is easily one of her best, evoking fond memories of her Oscar-winning role in "It Happened One Night". Joel McCrea, who spent most of his career idling in B-movie territory, is the perfect straight-man to Colbert's comedic whirlwind. Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor steal every scene in which they appear, with great support from Sig Arno (as the Princess' latest conquest), Robert Warwick, William Demarest, Chester Conklin and Frankin Pangborn.
A Romantic Farce.......2006-02-18
Claudette Colbert plays a woman married to a struggling architect played by Joel McCrea. She loves him but not the lifestyle. She also thinks that he can do better without her so she takes it into her head to run away to Palm Beach to get a quickie divorce. He, on the other hand, is not so fickle. He loves her and does not want to lose her. He takes off chasing after her to stop the divorce. While en route, she is aided by a gentleman who not only turns out to be one of the richest men in the world, he also falls for her. Mr. Rich Guy has a socialite sister who happens to fall for the jilted husband as he tries to woo back his wife. The issue is complicated because the runaway bride lies and says that her husband is in fact her brother. It's a story of guys chasing gals and vice versa with nothing sacred or too serious.
This film has some light moments and is evocative of a long past style. It brought back memories even though I was not even born in the era it portrayed. There is nothing overly memorable about the film but it was an enjoyable experience. If you like old movies, especially romantic comedies, this is a good bet.
Product Description
INTERACTIVE MENUS with SCENE SELECTION
Product Description
INTERACTIVE MENUS with SCENE SELECTION
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