'The Lady Eve' (1941)
Approved | March 21, 1941 | 94 mins
When you deal a fast shuffle, love is in the cards.
It’s no accident when wealthy Charles falls for Jean. Jean is a con artist with her sights set on Charles’ fortune. Matters complicate when Jean starts falling for her mark. When Charles suspects Jean is a gold digger, he dumps her. Jean, fixated on revenge and still pining for the millionaire, devises a plan to get back in Charles’ life. With love and payback on her mind, she reintroduces herself to Charles, this time as an aristocrat named Lady Eve Sidwich.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda [+]
Director: Preston Sturges
Writers: Preston Sturges, Monckton Hoffe
Producers: Paul Jones, Buddy G. DeSylva
Cinematographer: Victor Milner
Editors: Stuart Gilmore
Music: Phil Boutelje, Charles Bradshaw, Gil Grau, Sigmund Krumgold, John Leipold, Leo Shuken (all uncredited)
Distribution: Paramount Pictures
Jean: I need him like the ax needs the turkey.
Jean: You see, Hopsi, 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. Not nearly as bad.
Jean: Do you know Charles?
Sir Alfred: Oh, is he the tall backward boy who’s always toying with toads and things? Yes, I think I have seen him skulking about.
Jean: He isn’t backwards. He’s a scientist.
Sir Alfred: Oh, is that what it is? I knew he was… peculiar.
Jean: Boy, would I like to see you givin’ some old harpie the three in one!
‘Colonel’: Don’t be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked, but never common.
Charles: And I have no right to be in your cabin.
Jean: Why?
Charles: I’m married.
Jean: But so am I, darling. So am I.
- After The Mad Miss Manton (1938), this film, and You Belong to Me (1941), Henry Fonda always would refer to Barbara Stanwyck as his favorite leading lady.
- With so many people on the set, Preston Sturges dressed eccentrically to stand out. He usually wore either a brightly coloured beret or a hat with a feather in it. This sartorial splendour led to his being dubbed the worst-dressed man in Hollywood.
- The book that Charles is reading during his first dinner aboard ship is entitled “Are Snakes Necessary.” This is a spoof of the book “Is Sex Necessary” by James Thurber and E.B. White.
- Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay specifically for Barbara Stanwyck. He had promised her a great film while working on a previous movie.
- The scene in which Eve agrees to divorce Charles only if he tells her to her face that he wants the divorce was taken from Preston Sturges’ own life. He had made the same demand of his second wife, Eleanor Hutton, whose wealthy family thought he had only married her for her money.
- Despite the story credit for Monckton Hoffe, a legend persists to the effect that Preston Sturges got the idea for this film after he ran into one of his ex-wives and didn’t recognize her.
- The working title of this film was Two Bad Hats, which was the title of Monckton Hoffe’s original story.
Videos
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