The Lady Eve

The Lady Eve (1941)

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 re-introduces herself to Charles, this time as an aristocrat named Lady Eve Sidwich.

Date of release
1941-02-25
TMDB
7.3 / 10 (421)
Runtime
1h 37m
Genres
Comedy, Romance
Director
Preston Sturges

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $660K
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 1. Including: National Board of Review: Top Ten Films

The Lady Eve is a 1941 American screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges and starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. The film is based on a story by Monckton Hoffe about a mismatched couple who meet on board an ocean liner. Regarded amongst the greatest films of all time, The Lady Eve was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1994 by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

Production

The Lady Eve is loosely based on a 19-page story by Monckton Hoffe called "Two Bad Hats", which was also the working title of the film. Sturges was assigned in 1938 to write a script based on Hoffe's story, with Claudette Colbert expected to be the star. Sturges and Paramount producer Albert Lewin had some written disagreement in 1939 about the development of the script.

The Hays Office initially rejected the script because of "the definite suggestion of a sex affair between your two leads" that lacked "compensating moral values", and a revised script was submitted and approved.

At some point, the studio wanted Brian Aherne for the male lead, and Joel McCrea, Madeleine Carroll and Paulette Goddard were under consideration as of July 1940. But in August 1940, Fred MacMurray and Madeleine Carroll were announced as the film's co-stars. In September, Darryl Zanuck lent Henry Fonda to co-star with Goddard, who was then replaced by Barbara Stanwyck.

Production took place from October 21 to December 5, 1940. According to Donald Spoto in Madcap: The Life of Preston Sturges, Sturges "... invariably paraded on [the] set with a colorful beret or a felt cap with a feather protruding, a white cashmere scarf blowing gaily round his neck and a print shirt in loud hues ...

Location shooting for the opening jungle scene took place at Lake Baldwin of the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia, California. In that scene, Fonda's character refers to Professor Marsdit, whose last name is an anagram of Raymond L. Ditmars of the American Museum of Natural History, a well-known reptile expert and popular science writer of the time.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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