I am really at a loss to understand how this movie gets the reputation it has earned. Just because Preston Sturges' name is involved doesn't make it profoundly funny or profoundly insightful. Claudette Colbert was a charming cutie and all that. But born in 1903 and at nearly 40 years old when this picture was made, the motivations and emotional responses she is asked to exhibit in Palm Beach Story are way too immature for who she actually is. IMO, that can be said of nearly everyone involved in this coarsely unfunny movie. Mary Astor, another lovely and wonderful actress, is also made to act the complete noisy air-head. When the film was made there no doubt were other criteria to judge her character by. These days however, again IMO, Astor's constant screeching and especially her relationship with Toto, her annoyingly unattractive hanger on, who understands nothing, is actually offensive. Cringe-worthy to be honest. (Toto's character and how he is treated reminds me of the part played by Asta or one of those other terrier dogs that were popular in screwball comedies.) Only Rudy Vallee, who later in his career perfected the Teflon-coated stooge role, seemed to me to almost transcend the material. Everyone is entitled to enjoy whatever movie or star or whatever they like. As for me,I'm darned if I know what the attraction is in Palm Beach Story.

I just discovered the movies of Writer-Director Preston Sturges, thanks to TCM. More outrageous and preposterous than even a W.C. Fields film, and who would ever thought that was possible! Subtitled "And they lived happily ever after...or did they?" The breakneck-speed wedding at the start (choreographed to the tune of "The William Tell Overture"), makes no sense at all until the surprise ending of the other two identical twins getting married! A crackpot inventor's beautiful blonde wife (Claudette Colbert) decides that her husband will never amount to any good until she divorces him and marries a millionaire, because he needs $99,000 to build a space-saving airport, where the runways are short and the planes are "snagged" like on Navy aircraft carriers. So she runs into eccentric young Rudy Vallee while she is a "stowaway" on a train to Palm Springs, to get a divorce, after being "adopted" by a group of 8 Hunt Club millionaires. They shoot up the club car, and their baying hounds run wild. The "Wienie King" (also an eccentric millionaire) finances both her and her husband, to some extent. Of course the whole thing makes no sense whatsoever, and that's what's so wonderful about it! 90 minutes of madcap screwball comedy,and I will look for more "Sturges" films on TMC. (Almost) Nobody else plays black and white movies, anymore. You may have to watch it twice to "get" all the jokes and social comments, including one about Roosevelt!.

I guess I had higher expectations from this movie because of the introduction. The introduction was funny, a lot of running around. IPp especially liked the words flying by, and how the camera flows out from the church scene, to the border, to the words then the years flying by.I liked the obnoxious old man who is the "Wienie King". He gives away money at both husband and wife.  I was bored with the movie for the first half hour, then it started to pick up. The story is okay, but I didn't think it was that funny.  I didn't really like the whole lust and greed aspect. And how she was going to divorce him but try to still give him money for his airport

The opening credits were rather confusing, showing little bits of the story, like a lady tied up in a closet. The movie had some rather dramatic characters and also held a lot of qualities of a silent film, with the big over exaggerated facial expressions and hand gestures. The music was also very similar to that of a silent film. The journey the lead woman goes on to help her poor husband is incredible. The train scene was definitely my favorite. The passion between the Gerry and her husband as they try to face getting a divorce and the money for her husbands airport project is nothing short of modern, with a few classic touches.