Join us on Tuesday, Oct. 7, at the Easton Library at 6:30pm (please note earlier starting time) for the launch of our new season of classic films featuring a screening of one of Hollywood’s funniest comedies, Preston Sturges’ 1943 masterpiece “The Palm Beach Story.”
The evening will be co-hosted by Peter McCrea, son of actor Joel McCrea. Following the screening, we’ll be joined by Tom Sturges, son of director Preston Sturges and film historian Jay Rozgonyi who wrote the foreword and introductions to “O Brother, What Might Have Been,” a newly published collection of three unproduced screenplays by Preston Sturges.
After the success of Joel McCrea’s nuanced performance in “Sullivan’s Travels” (1942), Sturges urged McCrea to star in his next project, “The Palm Beach Story,” a very different film that elicited no less of a brilliant performance.
McCrea and Claudette Colbert co-star in this fast-paced, satirical comedy with a stellar supporting cast that includes Rudy Vallee, and Mary Astor, along with Preston Sturges’ regular troop of character actors. “The Palm Beach Story” was very personal to Sturges who, like his film’s protagonist, was an inventor who spent much energy chasing lost causes and loves. The film’s climactic scenes were inspired by Sturges’ memory of visits to an estate his mother-in-law built and referred to as “the 70-bedroom cottage on the sea”. She even gave the grand bungalow a name: ‘Mar-a-lago’.
Exploring themes of love, money, sex and American values, “The Palm Beach Story” delivers sharp wit and social commentary through Sturges’ signature comedic style.
I hope you will join us for what promises to be a stimulating, highly entertaining evening of film and film talk.
