Sightlines · reception
How The Palm Beach Story was received
1942 · Preston Sturges · The Palm Beach Story on Sightlines
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.
Did you know? Sturges wanted to call it 'Is Marriage Necessary?' but the censors at the Hays Office rejected the title, so it became The Palm Beach Story.