Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on April 27, 2024
TRANSCRIPT
(ALIECE PICKETT:) Here tonight to introduce “The Palm Beach Story” (1942) is legendary film critic, historian, and author, Ms. Molly Haskell.
She hails from Richmond, Virginia.
Tall and willowy, with family affluence and a liberal arts degree, she could have ensconced herself in Southern society.
Instead, she continued her studies at the University of London and the Sorbonne in Paris, immersing herself in the New French Wave and the Cahiers du Cinema (magazine), which celebrated the then forgotten Hollywood Golden Age films.
She worked at the French Film Office, translating for the great French directors of the day.
She started a newsletter on French film for the American press.
She broke into the “men’s club” of film criticism.
She added a personal perspective to her film reviews.
This was new.
She’s an original thinker who recognized that when the film studio system ended, the depiction of women in film changed radically.
Her study on the subject resulted in her book, “From Reverence to Rape, The Treatment of Women in the Movies”, cited as one of the most influential film books of all time (“The Hollywood Reporter”, 2023).
She explored the portrayal of women in film and how it correlates with society’s perception of women and their perception of themselves.
Her writing is insightful and poetic.
It’s eminently quotable.
Her other books include “Love and Other Infectious Diseases, A Memoir”, “Holding My Own in No Man’s Land”, a compilation of essays; “My Brother, My Sister”, which chronicles her sister’s transsexual journey from male birth to becoming female; “Frankly, My Dear, Gone With the Wind Revisited”, which analyzes why Scarlett O’Hara is an iconic American film heroine; and “Steven Spielberg, A Life in Films”, which examines his films through the lens of his Jewish heritage.
She has written for the “New York Times”, “The Guardian”, “Esquire”, “The Nation”, “Town and Country”, “The New York Observer”, “The New York Review of Books”, “The Village Voice”, “New York Magazine”, and “Vogue”.
She has served as Associate Professor of Film at Barnard, and as Adjunct Professor of Film at Columbia University.
Finally, she has written and lectured extensively on Screwball Comedy, noting that “its sensuous veneers and nuanced subtexts still resonate with today’s audiences because we yearn for a world of genuine lightness and grace”.
Ms. Haskell will sign books in the VIP Lounge after our discussion, which follows the screening of tonight’s film.
Please join me in welcoming the patron saint of Screwball Comedy, Ms. Molly Haskell.
>> (MOLLY HASKELL:) Thank you, Aliece, for that overly generous introduction.
First, I think it’s fantastic what Aliece and Ed are doing, to have a Screwball Comedy Festival every year.
I want to move here.
It’s wonderful.
Hats off!
We talk about Screwball Comedy in today’s time.
There’s a cinema of “miserabilism” here, and horror films there.
There’s something that’s not soothing, and not even escapist.
The thing about Screwball, I think it endures because it’s questioning. It’s about marriage.
Stanley Cavell wrote a book calling it “The Comedy of Remarriage”. It’s about couples that break apart and more or less come together in the end.
It’s something we’re still doing.
First, I love the cartoons.
I think they go especially well with Preston Sturges, because it’s something he loved.
He has all these repertory players doing rowdy, physical, boisterous things.
It’s too bad you didn’t have “Tom and Jerry”, because that is the name of the characters.
He based the names of his characters in “The Palm Beach Story” on “Tom and Jerry”.
“Tom” is the Joel McCrea character.
Claudette Colbert is “Gerry” (Geraldine).
The mouse (Jerry) is the enterprising one, and has all the activity.
Sturges began as a playwright, and then as a writer.
He wasn’t doing that well as a playwright on Broadway, so he went to Hollywood to make money.
Money is always there.
There are the two sides of him, the artist, and the moneymaker.
He wrote very successful films, “Easy Living” (1937) and “Remember The Night” (1940).
But he also wanted to direct.
He wanted to write and direct.
He was a great dialogue-writer, but he also wanted to direct.
So he had this idea for a film called “The Great McGinty” (1940).
He told the bosses they could pay him $20 for the script if they would let them direct it.
So they did.
And it was a big hit.
After that came “The Palm Beach Story” (1942). And he was off and running with that.
I think it’s one of the greats.
It starred Claudette Colbert.
Claudette Colbert, who’s starring in it with Joel McCrea, had made a movie called “It Happened One Night” (1934).
I’m sure some of you have seen that.
It was hugely successful.
That’s the one, she’s a runaway bride.
She’s a runaway bride here, and she was a runaway bride there.
She does a famous scene where she’s hitchhiking, and you see her legs.
That’s all anybody could talk about or remember was Claudette Colbert’s legs.
She and Sturges were great friends.
And she said, “I want you to write a film for me.” He said, “Okay, I will.” And that was the impetus of it.
And she was in “It Happened One Night”, she was something like 32. And this is six or eight years later.
So she was older. She had to play a different character in this.
We’ll get into that a little bit more after you’ve seen the film.
Sturges, the original type–this is during the Production Code.
I mean the Production Code, the Hays office came in with these puritanical codes backed by most women’s groups around the country, to keep “dirty” things out of Hollywood.
So movies were really stripped of anything that, not just overtly sexual, but sexual at all.
And anything that challenged the myth of “marriage is forever”.
So, Preston Sturges wanted to call his movie, “Is Marriage Necessary?” (laughter) That didn’t go down too well.
You have to think about that when you’re watching the film.
Because, in a way, it’s the question he’s asking.
Sturges himself has an interesting life. Which I think, a lot of it comes more in this film.
There’s more autobiographical material here than in most of his films.
But it always comes in bits-and-pieces.
He was born–his mother was poor–in Chicago.
He had a ne’er-do-well father that left almost as soon as he was born.
And she, by hook or by crook, had to bring him up.
And at some point, she went to Europe on her own. And she was doing something fairly menial.
And she went to the theater. She had somebody care for him. Preston was like 2-1/2 years old.
And she wanted him over in Europe.
Somehow she met Mrs. Duncan, who was Isadora Duncan’s mother and was a landlord, landlady of a hotel.
She and Isadora Duncan became great buddies.
And she suddenly got invited–I think she’d gotten herself invited.
This is important, how enterprising she was on her own.
She’d gotten herself invited to a fancy party.
She was very alluring, in some way. And I guess she learned to speak French pretty quickly.
She and Isadora Duncan became great pals, and went around Europe.
Going to, covering the art scene, absorbing art, loving art in all its forms. And lugging little Preston around with her.
She then remarried, an inventor who is very much what Sturges is and was and also creates characters after that.
He was very successful. Success was important to Sturges.
He was successful and apparently fairly tolerant of his wife’s activities.
So that’s sort of the background.
Sturges himself went on to marry, I think, four times.
One of his wives was an heiress. One of them he met on the train going to Palm Beach, as you’ll see here.
He had this very colorful background.
And it came through in a lot of the films.
You may have seen “Sullivan’s Travels” (1941), which is the one film that half-mockingly confronts–this is still sort of the end of the Depression.
It’s not just a vivid memory. It’s still there in a lot of places, and among a lot of people.
In all movies, you sense it somewhere.
Some movies confront it directly.
They’re “protest” movies, and how America has to change. But others it comes through more elliptically.
I think “Sullivan’s Travels” is much more overt, and maybe less successful in a way among Sturges’ movies. Though others might disagree with me.
Here, you have the character of “Gerry” (Geraldine), the wife.
At the beginning it’s complete chaos.
It’s madcap.
Nobody can figure it out.
If you can’t figure it out, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
You can’t figure it out, even when you think about the end, it’s sort of recycling back to that still.
It’s sort of a mystery.
It’s “hell for leather”.
It starts “hell for leather”.
And then gradually–I think an important point is that, particularly in Sturges movies.
One of the things about the Production Code.
One of the things that flourished before the Code, and not after, was the “Femme Fatale”.
Jean Harlow. Greta Garbo.
There were these sexy women. And that was their persona.
That no longer fit with the stories that were going to be told.
What had to happen was, sound film had come in, in the ’20s, ’30s.
It was becoming more and more important.
Dialogue was important. So women changed.
Women couldn’t be as lounging, and satin, and alluring.
And a bit wicked.
They now had to be doing something.
They became, the roles were more active.
There was more dialogue for women.
And here, the woman is the prime instigator.
She’s the catalyst for everything.
This is one of the things that happened–one of the positive things of the Production Code.
Another was that the writers and directors were driven to find more oblique and subtle ways of showing and addressing sex.
Sturges was very good at that.
Ernst Lubitsch, who preceded him, was the best.
And those of you who are going to see “Design For Living” (1933) tomorrow night. That was 1933, and Lubitsch was brilliant at that.
He managed when The Production Code came in, he still managed to do his thing in a different way.
So, I think that it’s a comedy about “Is marriage necessary?” I don’t want to say too much more than that. We can talk about afterward–the subtle thing.
And it’s also I think it’s very funny.
The other thing is that Sturges was known for having this repertory group of comic-types.
It was almost from the theatre, a sort of “Comedia dell’arte”, where you had stock characters who played certain things.
He has stock characters, but he infuses them with tremendous vitality and even individuality. And they’re running.
People run through his movies and play different variations of the same characters.
Here, you have the “Ale and Quail Club”.
I won’t say too much about that.
But that’s a little more questionable than some of his groups. But the side-characters here. They have a very loud role to play.
I think that’s about all I’m going to talk about.
I think people sometimes tell you too much beforehand.
So, enjoy the film.🎥
Film Society of Screwball Comedy®
Edited by Aliece Pickett
Copyright 2025