Tuesday Minute
No. 78 | April 20, 2010

O Preston, Where Art Thou?

Our theme this week
Films of Preston Sturges

Featured this week (theme introduction)
Monday         —   The Great McGinty (1940)

The Lady Eve (1941)

Whenever Barbara Stanwyck has her eye on a guy, watch out.  You know she’s going to land him—really, what man could say no?—but the fun part is watching her set one trap after another as she homes in on her target.  It’s not love she has in mind.  Something more nefarious.  Then, inevitably, the plan goes astray.

In Double Indemnity (1944), her mark is Fred MacMurray and she’s scheming a murder.  In The Lady Eve, it’s a more innocent game, fleecing the rich, and Henry Fonda is the not-at-all-poor sucker who falls for her.  Turns out she’s not as cold as she thinks and she falls for him too.

Stanwyck plays a dual role, con artist Jean Harrington and her alter ego, faux Brit noble Lady Eve Sidwich—her character is so full of deceit you may at times wonder just who she is; she even seems to surprise herself a few times.  Fonda is the brewery heir Charles Pike, who spends half the movie affectionately known as Hopsie, a brave move surely for any actor.  Jean and Charles meet on a ship, the setting for the first part of the film, and later again, under very different circumstances, at a tony manor in Connecticut.  Throughout, the Stanwyck role is the one in charge, devising the schemes, leading the naïf played by Fonda all the way to the end.  Somewhere along the way there’s a wedding.  It’s a brief honeymoon, as Charles learns more than he cares to about the Lady, but the marriage gives director Preston Sturges a clever way to get one past the Hays Office at the end.

Stanwyck and Fonda give stellar performances.  It’s their second (and best) of three films together, and much of the movie’s appeal is watching them play off each other.  Sturges supplies them with plenty to work with—an intelligent script, great dialogue, and the perfect balance of wit, slapstick, and romance.  It doesn’t get better than this.  The Lady Eve is one of the true gems of screwball comedy.

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The Lady Eve (1941)
Preston Sturges, director
Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda

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The Lady Eve
Preston Sturges, director

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Quote of Note
“I need him like the ax needs the turkey.”
—Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck), The Lady Eve (1941)

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