(1942, b/w) Five years after their marriage (remember the girl who's locked away in the opening scenes at the conclusion), Tom Jeffers (Joel McCrea) and Geraldine (Claudette Colbert) are broke and about to lose their duplex on Park Avenue in New York City to the Wienie King (Robert Dudley) of Texas and his wife. As the elderly couple look around the rooms, Gerry in her pink wrapper becomes acquainted with the hard-of-hearing sausage maker in the bathtub. He gives her $700 to keep the apartment, which Tom, wanting to know if sex was involved, finds hard to believe.

Feeling she's to blame for his hard luck at selling his airport concept - "Everybody's a flop until he's a success" - since she's "a rotten wife" without any domestic skills (can't cook or sew) but "tired of being broke," Gerry tells Tom she wants to get a divorce because "We're just habits - bad habits."

After a cabbie recommends Palm Beach, Florida, for a quick breakup, Gerry gets aboard a train with the help of members of the Ale and Quail Club (including William Demarest as Bildocker), who get soused and blast up their coach with shotguns. Having departed her cabin in a pair of loaned pajamas during the fracas and climbed into a vacant upper berth in the next car, Gerry discovers she's bereft of ticket and clothes when the conductor punishes the boisterous crew by decoupling their Pullman coach from the train and leaving it on a side rail.

The spectacled gentleman in the lower berth comes to her rescue by not only purchasing for her a new wardrobe and jewelry but taking her the rest of the way to Palm Beach on his yacht. One of the richest men in the world, John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee), who keeps accounts in a little notebook, explains to Gerry his preference for sleeping in berths because staterooms are "un-American" (as is tipping).

Before reaching the dock, John's sister Maude (Mary Astor), the Princess Centimillia, with her humorous houseguest Toto (Sig Arno), joins them; she (divorced three times with two additional annulments) calls her bachelor brother Snoodles. Waiting for them on the dock is Tom with flowers; the Wienie King, sympathetic to the husband's plight had given him money for an airplane ticket. However, Gerry introduces Tom to John and Maude as her brother Capt McGlue, to whom Maude takes an immediate liking.

Employing all of her charms and this serendipity toward getting Tom the $99,000 he needs to construct the model for his airport design, Gerry expresses exasperation when Tom remains too noble rather than practical to go along with the scheme because he loves her. John assembles an orchestra beneath her suite to serenade her by singing "Goodnight, Sweetheart."

This romantic comedy from director/writer Preston Sturges is mostly silly with an artificial, two-faced ending. (Curiously the script at one point calls for Tom to refer to Gerry as "tall and dark-haired" when Colbert is actually neither.)

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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