The Palm Beach Story - 1942

The Palm Beach Story (1942) is a hilarious, zany, marital screwball comedy by writer/director Preston Sturges - it was his last romantic comedy and one of the last, classic screwball comedies. The witty, nonsensical film of mistaken identities and deception is a satire on sex as an asset. The farcical plot with cynical satire effectively skewers the idle rich (millionaires) and the pursuit of money, with its story of a penniless, separated couple. [Whether coincidence or not, the couple share the same names as MGM's squabbling cartoon characters Tom (cat) and Jerry (mouse).]

The film's premise is that a pretty, but penniless, fortune-hunting, scatter-brained wife, who is at odds with her inventor husband, may travel to Florida to obtain a divorce, and - with her beauty, ingenuity, luck and appealing charms - live the 'good life' in Florida and obtain monetary support ($99,000) from a multi-millionaire to advance the good of her husband's career. Sturges' original title for the film was Is Marriage Necessary? - to emphasize his challenge to the sacredness of marriage. Its title was a takeoff on the similar film title, The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Dinner at Eight - 1933

Dinner at Eight, 1933 Masterprint
11 in. x 17 in.

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Framed   Mounted


A masterfully-directed, poignant melodramatic comedy by director George Cukor and producer David O. Selznick. This MGM film was based on the popular, dialogue-rich Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. It was studded with a tremendous ensemble cast of stars (inspired by MGM's previous year's Best Picture winner, Grand Hotel (1932)) - who are all invited to a Manhattan formal dinner party during the height of the Depression, by social climbing, flighty hostess Millicent (Burke) and floundering businessman husband Oliver Jordan (Lionel Barrymore). [Three of the stars, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery appeared in both films.] Other guests include crass, crooked rich tycoon Dan Packard (Beery) and his candy-chewing, trampish trophy wife Kitty (Harlow), the family doctor Dr. Talbot (Lowe), washed-up, alcoholic silent-era actor Larry Renault (John Barrymore), and elderly ex-Broadway star Carlotta Vance (Dressler). The witty romantic comedy is filled with choice lines of dialogue, and revolves around various relationships between the characters. Suicide, financial ruin, love, infidelity and adultery, economic pressures, class conflict, the dawn of the talkies, divorce, aging and fading careers, and alcoholism affect their interactions.