The Lady Eve ***** (1941, Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, Eric Blore, Melville Cooper) – Classic Movie Review 2603

‘You see, Hopsie, you don’t know very much about girls. The best ones aren’t as good as you probably think they are and the bad ones aren’t as bad.’

Writer-director Preston Sturges’s brilliant 1941 screwball romantic comedy movie The Lady Eve stars Barbara Stanwyck as Jean Harrington, a glamorous, classy professional con artist and card sharp, working tricks with her swindler father, the Colonel (Charles Coburn), and a man called Gerald (Melville Cooper).

On a cruise ship, she tries to charm ultra-rich snake fancier Charles ‘Hopsie’ Pike (Henry Fonda), the socially awkward heir to ale brewery millions just back from looking for rare snakes in the Amazon (‘I’m an ophiologist, snakes are my life, in a way.’), and she and her father plan to swindle him out of his money in a shipboard card game. All is well, at least for Jean and her dad, until she falls in love with ‘Hopsie’ and she stops her dad from swindling him. 

When Jean says ‘I thought you were in the beer business’, ‘Hopsie’ patiently explains his father’s brewing of The Ale That Won for Yale and the difference between beer and ale. ‘There’s a big difference. Ale’s sort of fermented on the top or something, and beer’s fermented on the bottom, or maybe it’s the other way around. There’s no similarity at all.’

The two fall in love in a whirlwind courtship, but they fall out over a misunderstanding when, prompted by Muggsy (William Demarest), Hopsie’s suspicious and ubiquitous minder, the ship’s purser (Torben Meyer) reveals the truth about Jean and her dad to ‘Hopsie’.

He will have nothing more to do with her. But, later, on dry land in the film’s second half, she follows him and arrives at his father Mr Pike (Eugene Pallette)’s country home with her splendidly fussy English pal Sir Alfred (Eric Blore), posing as English aristocrat the Lady Eve, intending to punish him for his treatment of her and hoping he will fall back in love with her.

Naturally, the Lady Eve bears an uncanny resemblance to Jean, who doesn’t bother to disguise herself in any way, apart from her silly accent, but this is the very thing that convinces ‘Hopsie’ that she isn’t the same dame! ‘They look too much alike to be the same,’ he reasons.

Sturges’s movie is a hilarious vintage romantic comedy, taken at a brilliantly breathless speed. Better known for drama, the two exuberant stars Stanwyck and Fonda put the ultimate shine on a screwball screenplay, Stanwyck a picture of charm and charisma in a comedic version of her femme fatale in Double Indemnity, and doing a hysterical ‘English’ accent, and Fonda handling the bumbling and pratfalls with grace and style.

And there is a lovely array of comic support, particularly from Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest and Robert Greig as Pike’s butler Burrows, all of them funny, and Eric Blore, who is delirious. It is virtually a who’s who of Hollywood character actor players.

When Jean says: ‘He isn’t backwards, he’s a scientist’, Sir Alfred replies: ‘Oh, is that what it is? I knew he was… peculiar.’ Blore turns this simple line into a huge laugh.

The dazzlingly witty script, loosely based on a 19-page story by Monckton Hoffe called Two Bad Hats, the working title for the film, is a high point of Sturges’s career. Hoffe was Oscar-nominated for the original story.

Also in the cast are Martha O’Driscoll as Martha, Jimmy Conlin, Luis Alberni as Pike’s Chef, Janet Beecher as Mrs Pike, Dora Clement as Gertrude, Frank Moran, Wanda McKay, Alan Bridge, Arthur Hoyt and Reginald Sheffield.

The Lady Eve is directed by Preston Sturges, runs 95 minutes, is made and released by Paramount, is written by Preston Sturges, based on a short story by Monckton Hoffe, is shot in black and white by Victor Milner, is produced by Paul Jones and Buddy G DeSylva, and is scored by Leo Shuken, Charles Bradshaw and Sigmund Krumgold, with art direction by Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegté, and costume design by Edith Head. 

Alluring but not a natural beauty, Stanwyck looks a million dollars in those Edith Head costumes.

Stanwyck compared the set to a carnival, in which the exuberant director Sturges paraded with a colourful beret or felt cap with a feather, a white cashmere scarf and a print shirt in loud hues. Between takes, the happy actors would relax in canvas chairs with Sturges, listening to his stories or going over their lines with him.

The saucy screenplay was rejected by the Hays Office because of the suggestion of a ‘sex affair without compensating moral values’, but they approved a revised script, which remains adult and sophisticated – and saucy (‘They say a moonlit deck is a woman’s business office’).

The idea that Sturges wrote the screenplay specifically for Stanwyck after promising her a great film while working on a previous movie does not seem to be correct as Sturges was assigned to write a script based on Hoffe’s story in 1938, with Claudette Colbert expected to star.

Would you Adam and Eve it? A cartoon snake twines round an apple tree during the opening credits.

[Spoiler alert] Muggsy gets the last word as he squeezes himself quietly out of the door of the honeymoon cabin: ‘Positively the same dame!’

The opening jungle scene was shot at Lake Baldwin of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia, California.

It was remade in 1956 as The Birds and the Bees.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2603

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