THE PALM BEACH STORY

Preston Sturges made some of the wildest comedies in Hollywood history, but even by his standards THE PALM BEACH STORY is a remarkable piece of lunacy. Claudette Colbert has a perfectly good husband (Joel McCrea), whom she loves very much, but unfortunately he has no money. Convinced that the best thing she can do for both of them is marry a millionaire, she files for divorce and heads to Florida, where she promptly attracts the attention of one of the richest men in America (Rudy Vallee). Her husband, understandably reluctant to accept this arrangement, follows her south and soon finds himself entangled with the millionaire's spectacularly man-hungry sister (Mary Astor).

Sturges takes this already preposterous situation and keeps pushing it further, finding room along the way for a train full of drunken sportsmen with shotguns and some of the most gloriously eccentric supporting characters in American comedy. Beneath all the madness is a surprisingly frank understanding of how money complicates love, and how little good sense has to do with either. THE PALM BEACH STORY is a movie of such sustained comic invention that even its completely outrageous ending feels like the only possible way to finish it.