Movie  1942
The Palm Beach Story      Back      Home
Wienie King: I'm the Wienie King! Invented the Texas Wienie! Lay off 'em, you'll live longer.
Princess Centimillia: Captain, we should have met sooner, and if I'd seen you around, we would have!
J. D. Hackensacker III: Chivalry is not only dead, it's decomposed.
Gerry Jeffers: Don't you know that the greatest men in the world have told lies and let things be misunderstood if it was useful to them? Didn't you ever hear of a campaign promise?
Princess Centimillia: Of course, I'm crazy, I'll marry anybody.
Gerry Jeffers: Anyway, men don't get smarter as they get older. They just lose their hair.
John D. Hackensacker III: You don't marry someone you just met the day before; at least I don't.
Princess Centimillia: But that's the only way, dear. If you get to know too much about them you'd never marry them.
Tom Jeffers: That's my wife, you dumb cluck!
Gerry Jeffers: You have no idea what a long-legged woman can do without doing anything.
John D. Hackensacker III: Tipping is un-American.
Gerry Jeffers: I don't begin and end with a smelter, you know.
Tom Jeffers: Where'd you get that dress?
Gerry Jeffers: Why, that's what I've been telling you about!
Tom Jeffers: What's that on your wrist?
Gerry Jeffers: It's just what you think it is, dear.
[He looks at the bracelet on her wrist]
Tom Jeffers: What kind of stones are those?
Gerry Jeffers: Just what they look like.
Tom Jeffers: Do you know what it feels like to be strangled by bare hands?
Tom Jeffers: [talking about his new name, "McGlew"] I guess I'll have to stick with it.
Tom Jeffers: Don't you ever talk about anything but Topic A?
Princess Centimillia: Is there anything else?
Tom Jeffers: So this fellow gave you the look?
Gerry Jeffers: At his age it was more of a blink.
Tom Jeffers: Seven hundred dollars! And sex didn't even enter into it, I suppose?
Gerry Jeffers: Sex always has something to do with it, dear.
Gerry Jeffers: Thank you for your chivalry.
Train Porter: Anytime from 8 to 12.
Wienie King: Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly but without pity that which yesterday was young. Alone our memories resist this disintegration and grow more lovely with the passing years. Heh! That's hard to say with false teeth!
Princess Centimillia: We should have met sooner. If I'd seen you around, we would have!
Gerry Jeffers: You're not being rude, dear, you're just being yourself.
Gerry Jeffers: [Gerry has just found out that John is one of the richest men in the world] I would step on your face!
John D. Hackensacker III: That's quite all right, I rather enjoyed it.
Gerry Jeffers: Twice!
John D. Hackensacker III: You made quite an impression.
Tom Jeffers: Why is your breath coming faster?
Gerry Jeffers: Because you're squeezing me!
Tom Jeffers: Funny having to sleep with a sitting-room between us.
Gerry Jeffers: And the doors locked.
Tom Jeffers: You don't have to worry about that.
John D. Hackensacker III: You know Maude, somebody meeting you for the first time, not knowing you were cracked, might get the wrong impression of you.
Princess Centimillia: You will care for me, though. I grow on people. Like moss.
John D. Hackensacker III: That's one of the tragedies of this life - that the men who are most in need of a beating up are always enormous.
Tom Jeffers: Where'd you meet this Weenie King?
Gerry Jeffers: You'll die laughing!
Tom Jeffers: All right, convulse me.
Gerry Jeffers: You're not a burglar, are you?
John D. Hackensacker III: Oh no, that was my grandfather. At least that's what they called him.
John D. Hackensacker III: No, I'm not my grandfather, of course. He's dead, anyway.
John D. Hackensacker III: Staterooms are un-American.
Gerry Jeffers: You're married to me; that's like saying, you're *blind* to me. For a long time, I've been a part of you, just something to snuggle up to and keep you warm at night, like a blanket, but you can't *see* me any more than you can see the back of your neck.

Princess Centimillia: [spoken very fast] Look at that very handsome man. I wonder who he is. I don't think I've seen him around before. I thought I knew all the handsome men in this village.
Princess Centimillia: Hello, Snoodles, where'd you get the pretty girl?
Princess Centimillia: I'd marry Captain McGloo tomorrow, even with that name.
John D. Hackensacker III: And divorce him the next month.
Princess Centimillia: Nothing is permanent in this world - except for Roosevelt.
Amazon.com essential video
Among the earliest writers to set his sights on the director's chair, Preston Sturges brought a frank, unsentimental view of the war between the sexes to his mid-'40s features that exemplify his style, as demonstrated in this prescient 1942 gem. Architect Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and his wife, Gerry (Claudette Colbert), further refine the archetypal Sturges couple--the male embodying strength, idealism, and a certain naivete, the female ultimately stronger, smarter, and (as revealed early on in an astonishing speech by Colbert) clearer-eyed and more pragmatic about the subtext of sex. This giddy shaggy-dog story follows the couple's split, and Gerry's subsequent flight to Palm Beach. This head-snapping frolic is paced by double-entendres and lampooning looks at the very rich, with standout performances by the predatory Princess Centimillia (the delicious Mary Astor), who's more than ready to comfort Tom, and the wealthy, dim-witted John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee, staking out a new career, post-crooner, as comic foil), Gerry's new suitor. Even the predictable reunion of the star-crossed lovers is achieved with an antic surrealism. Sturges's strength in building strong character ensembles is matched by his affection for coupling screwball dialogue with physical slapstick, seldom to better effect than in the drunken target practice of the Ale and Quail Club, who make Colbert's train ride to Florida a different kind of shoot-'em-up. --Sam Sutherland