The Palm Beach Story · reception & legacy
1942 · Preston Sturges
How The Palm Beach Story has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A hit in 1942 as part of Sturges's astonishing hot streak, it was long treated as the 'fun one' next to The Lady Eve and Sullivan's Travels — but it's since been reappraised as maybe his purest, fastest, most anarchic comedy, a fixture on best-screwball lists.
What's debated
The perennial cinephile fight: is this actually Sturges's best film, and is that famously audacious ending a stroke of genius or a shameless cheat?
Its footprint
Home of Claudette Colbert's much-quoted line 'sex always has something to do with it,' the immortal 'Wienie King,' and the gloriously chaotic Ale and Quail Club — all shorthand among comedy nerds for screwball at full throttle.
Where it stands
A load-bearing pillar of the screwball canon and a Letterboxd darling, routinely invoked as proof that 1940s studio comedy could be faster and weirder than anything made since.