Admission $2.50 for 5:30 screening

The deleterious mental effects of idle wealth are hilariously exposed in Palm Beach Story. Preston Sturges pits the billionaire Hackensacker family--Rudy Vallee, his sister (the “princess”) Mary Astor, and her pet beau, Toto, a latin-lover from some undesignated land who speaks a peculiar Sturges gibberish--against the wits of those who, with fine-tuned brains, must connive for a living. A distraught Claudette Colbert announces to her impoverished-inventor husband, Joel McCrea, that she is but a “milestone” around his neck, and takes off in search of a more financially hearty companion. She finds him on the train to Palm Beach, in the feeble form of Vallee, whose acquaintance she makes when she steps on his face--
shattering his perennial glasses--en route to her berth. What follows is a series of surprise turns, with twists cleverly engineered by Colbert. In his book, The Fabulous Life and Times of Preston Sturges, James Ursini compares the film to a Shakespearean comedy of errors--complete with matching sets of twins and a multiple-wedding ending--undercut with Sturges cynicism: our heroes, according to the titles, “Lived Happily Ever After--Or Did They?”