ABSTRACT
I begin with an observation that any number of readers must have made, that a thought is left dangling in Stanley Cavell’s magisterial Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. After Cavell drops an aside about Preston Sturges’s The Palm Beach Story (1942), he at once passes on, never again to mention that remarkable film. I can’t know what Cavell might have written about The Palm Beach Story had he not dismissed it so quickly – so suspiciously, one might say. But I now propose to tug on the loose end he left, to discover whether it will unravel part of his argument or instead lead through a labyrinth.
