The Palm Beach Story (1942)

“That's one of the tragedies of this life – that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous.” — John D. Hackensacker III

After back-to-back masterpieces Sullivan’s Travels and The Lady Eve, director and screenwriter Preston Sturges pulled off a comedy trifecta in 1942 with The Palm Beach Story. At this time, there was still a tradition, inherited from live theatre, of titles that simply presented a programme, with the director, producer, cast, and crew listed in some appropriate typography on an appropriate background, backed by some appropriate theme music. All very static, all very much what the folks taking their seats expected.

The Palm Beach Story’s title sequence is something very different: a fast-paced mystery prologue in pantomime, propelled by a breathless mash-up of the “William Tell Overture” and the “Wedding March”. Given the classical theatre convention that comedies end in marriage, this could easily be the finale of a prequel to the film we’re about to see – a bride and groom racing separately to the altar in taxis, overcoming perils along the way, the breakneck action punctuated by freeze-frame shots.

As soon as the Paramount logo fades, we are plunged right into the story: a lady’s maid, telephone in hand, jabbers at someone off-screen – then shrieks in panic and falls into a ludicrously dramatic faint at the sight of…

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