Florida on Film: “The Palm Beach Story”

By Paige Stanish

We have Great Depression-era filmmakers like Preston Sturges to thank for our modern-day wacky couple comedies. The screwball comedy genre that developed in the 1930s and 40s turns love and marriage into a lighthearted farce, with men and women often competing against each other. Screwball comedy is a sub-genre of romantic comedy. It operates on the surface level using bizarre circumstances and physical comedy, and then delves deeper to satirize through its ridiculousness and wit. Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story (1942) is no exception.

Then as today, Palm Beach is undoubtedly home to Florida’s high society. Snowbirds, politicians, and gilded Floridians are drawn to this social hub for its luxury and leisurely pace of life. The Palm Beach Story, filmed and set in the 1940s, reflects the coastal town’s enduring extravagance. While the plot is driven by the comedy and the satirizing of love and marriage, the setting of Palm Beach remains the true center around which the farce revolves.

The film follows wife Gerry (Claudette Colbert) and her husband Tom (Joel McCrea), an inventor looking for investors to fund his idea for an airport suspended over a city. Safe to say, Tom is unable to provide financially for himself and his wife, leading to marital woes. When Gerry meets an old millionaire, dubbed the Wienie King, viewing her apartment that she doesn’t have the month’s rent for, he gives her $700 simply because she’s charming. After many purchases, Gerry shares the encounter with her husband, which leads her to the realization that she cannot be a poor man’s wife--she cannot sew, cook, or clean, and she is not interested in economizing. She shares her plan to charm men for money, which meets with Tom’s stern disapproval.

The next morning, Gerry leaves Tom a farewell note as he’s sleeping and tries to slink out the door, only for her to accidentally and very loudly wake him up, in hilarious slapstick style. As Tom jumps out of bed (half-naked) to follow Gerry to the train station, a chaotic cat and mouse chase from New York City to Palm Beach ensues.

On her train ride to Palm Beach, planning to get a divorce from Tom, Gerry meets and charms Mr. John D. Hackensacker III. He just so happens to be the richest man in the world–and a clear spoof of John D. Rockefeller, just with a more ridiculous and rich-sounding name. Gerry plots to persuade Mr. Hackensacker to finance Tom’s idea, but when Tom arrives in Palm Beach intent on winning his wife back, hilarity and hijinks ensue.

The film reinforces and satirizes enduring stereotypes of Palm Beach surrounding wealth and its relationship with love. Gerry easily employs her beauty and wit to allure every man that crosses her path, especially John. Gerry’s natural charm makes other characters fall prey to her blatant yet amusing manipulation, and it makes viewers root for her and her chaotic antics. Gerry is able to attract the richest man in the world without really having to say anything. Although she befriends him before knowing his true identity, once his wealth is revealed, she wants to marry him. A Palm Beach stereotype, that follows wealth anywhere, is that marriage is a business venture, based on money rather than love.

The inverse of this idea, the idea that because one is wealthy they can have whoever they want and discard them at any time, is explored through John’s sister, none other than Princess Maud Centimillia. Upon meeting Tom, who Gerry introduces as her brother, Maud immediately sets out to get him, since marriage is a frivolous act of impulse and amusement to her. With a record of three divorces and two annulments (and technically still married to a prince), Maud serves as a comedic representation of a glamorous life of lovelessness caused by wealth. Her self-awareness about being a serial bride on the hunt for her next victim makes her character even funnier.

Luxury is portrayed in The Palm Beach Story almost as an exaggerated parody of itself. John takes Gerry on a shopping trip that generates an extensive itemized entry in John’s purchase notebook, with some items listed as: “dress…” “dress…” “another dress.” After a trip on John’s enormous yacht, they, along with Maude and Tom, end up at John’s mansion. The foursome attend a gala-style night of dancing and fine dining, similar to a modern night out at the HMF lounge at the Breakers Resort.

Though the film portrays the original classic Palm Beach, present-day Palm Beach still has many notes of that enduring splendor. While the endurance of classic Palm Beach can be attributed to the endurance of its many historic buildings, like the Breakers, classic Palm Beach is more than just its structures –-it is an essence. Aristocratic yet beachy, slow-paced lifestyle yet hyper success--Palm Beach’s charm lies in its unique blend of seeming contradictions. Nick Mele, a modern-day lifestyle and fine art photographer, brings this essence to life through portrayals of classic Palm Beach with flamboyance while drawing out its eccentricity.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for this film that came out in 1942.

The Palm Beach Story depicts Florida as Gerry’s escape from marital woes but also as a calm luxury opposing her former not-at-all-wealthy life in New York City. In line with generalizations of Florida, it appears as a wonderful picturesque escape. Aside from wealth for her and Tom and a possible marriage to a billionaire, Gerry is hoping for a new beginning from Florida.

Amid zany characters marrying for wealth, amusement, or love, the most absurd part of this screwball comedy has to be the discovery at the very end of the film. When Gerry and Tom finally reveal their true identities as husband and wife, John and Maud are beside themselves, but not for long. To their delight, Gerry and Tom both have identical twin siblings up for marriage. Thank goodness. A comedy demands a happy ending.

The Palm Beach Story is an amusing screwball comedy that portrays Palm Beach as a retreat for America’s wealthiest residents, which it was and is. Like Apple TV’s recent series, Palm Royale, there is an emphasis on the absurdity of the place which suggests something about the absurdity of extreme wealth. The Palm Beach in either the show or the movie is not the “real thing,” but the real thing is exactly what a place like Palm Beach exists to avoid. Work trucks must be off the island by a certain time of day and the bridges can be raised to keep people out. Gritty authenticity is undesirable in contrast with perfectly manicured hedges, beachfront property, and stone crab suppers. The inherent departure from reality embodied by such a place is precisely what makes Palm Beach an excellent place to go for a really nice dinner and a perfect setting for a screwball comedy.

Paige Stanish is a history graduate from Palm Beach Atlantic University, where she published poetry in the Living Waters Review. She lives in, and watches movies in, South Florida.