It Started With Eve

A few months back, I mentioned having recorded a double-feature of Deanna Durbin movies that aired on TCM. One of the movies, It Started With Eve, is one that I had watched many years back but never actually done a review on. So I watched it again in order to be able to do this review on it.

We don't meet Deanna Durbin for several minutes. Instead, we see Jonathan "Johnny" Reynolds, Jr. (Robert Cummings). He's the son of wealthy businessman Jonathan Sr. (Charles Laughton). Except that Dad is on his deathbed, and Junior is returning home to see Dad for what is probably the final time, with some newspaper types keeping a vigil outside the family mansion and wondering whether Johnny is going to make it back in time before Dad dies. Tragically, this means that Dad isn't going to make it to his son's wedding: Johnny has only recently gotten engaged while on the sort of vacation to a place where all the rich people go. With that in mind, Dad tells his son that his dying wish is to meet his son's fiancée, Gloria Pennington.

Johnny dropped the Penningtons off at the hotel, not realizing that Dad would want to meet them; to be fair one can think that bringing the fiancée's family to an occasion like this might be too much for the old man. But it means he has to go back to the hotel room and pick them up, and who knows whether they'll make it back in time before Dad dies? Worse, when Johnny gets to the hotel, he finds that Gloria (Margaret Tallichet) and her mom have gone out late in the evening to get a custom fitting for clothes for the funeral, which again seems like a bit of a plot hole considering that stores would likely not be open at this hour of the evening.

On his way out the lobby, Johnny runs into hat-check girl Anne Terry (Deanna Durbin), who is hoping to get back to her family in Ohio. Johnny, being desperate, offers this woman he's never met before a proposition. Would she be willing to play the part of his fiancée for an hour or two until Dad dies? Johnny will pay her good money, and since Dad will never see her again, is there really any harm in this little white lie? Anne could use the money, and it won't keep her from catching her train, so she decides to accept.

Except that this is a Hollywood movie and we're only ten or fifteen minutes in, so you know fully well that this isn't all that's going to happen and that there are going to be serious complications. Dad does not in fact die. Not only that, but it looks like he's going to start getting better and eventually even make a reasonable recovery. Johnny has to go back to Anne's apartment and bring her back to the house, which she's not particularly excited about at first. And then there's the real Gloria and her mother, who are understandably displeased about not being able to meet their future in-law until Johnny can come up with some sort of explanation as to what's going on. Even worse is that Dad really likes Anne. Finally, as you might guess, as the movie goes on it's going to become more and more apparent that Johnny and Anne are the ones who are right for each other, even if they don't yet realize it.

It Started With Eve is one of those movies that has a premise where you know exactly where it's going to go and that it's going to get to a happy ending, but the fun is seeing how it gets there. And with a cast like Deanna Durbin, Robert Cummings, and Charles Laughton, it's a fairly fun ride getting to the obvious destination. Charles Laughton did not get to play comedy as often in his career as he probably should have been given the chance to do. He's clearly enjoying himself here in the sort of mischievous older father role you could easily see Charles Coburn do, and his enthusiasm really makes the film a lot of fun. Durbin and Cummings are more than adequate. There's a bit of odd miscasting with Guy Kibbee as an Episcopal (I think) bishop; Kibbee just doesn't look the part although it's not as if he does anything wrong with his smallish role.

For some values of "nice"

Some months back, TCM ran a Sunday night double feature of films starring Deanna Durbin. The first was It Started with Eve, but when I sat down to watch it I had the distinct feeling I'd seen it before. So instead I watched the other, Nice Girl?, to do the obligatory post on here. Now, as it turns out, I have seen It Started With Eve, but have never done a post on it; I wouldn't be surprised if the last time it was on TCM was before I started blogging since Deanna Durbin was at Universal and TCM doesn't get the rights to their films all that often. So I'll watch it again and eventually do a post on it.

Durbin plays Jane Dara, middle daughter in a family that is somehow middle class enough to have a maid Cora (Helen Broderick), as well as a father Oliver (Robert Benchley) who is doing experiments on the diets of rabbits that Jane helps with. Indeed, Dad is hoping to get a fellowship with a prestigious institute in New York to be able to help fund his studies. Jane has a boyfriend in Don Webb (a young Robert Stack), who has an interest in cars and could probably make a reasonable living as an auto mechanic, although I get the impression that even in those days this wasn't necessarily the profession a middle class man would want his daughter to marry.

A running subplot is Cora's relationship, or her being pursued by, the mailman Hector (Walter Brennan), who also leads the town's band that meets in the small-town park band shell for holidays like July 4, this being one of those Connecticut small towns that populated Hollywood movies like this in the years leading up to World War II. Hector brings Oliver a special delivery letter informing him that the foundation is sending a man from New York to look over the experiments with a view to the foundation funding these experiments. Jane goes to the train station to pick that man up: Richard Calvert (Franchot Tone). Richard has done research on various pygmy populations and the extent to which diet has made them short, and this has caused him to travel all over the world (and as we'll see later, have an impossibly big New York apartment for someone of his employment). That travel makes him sophisticated in the eyes of the three daughters, all of whom put on airs in the hopes that he'll take an interest in them, even if they're all too young for him.

Eventually it's time for Calvert to go back to New York, and Jane offers to drive him to the train station, in Don's convertible since Don's working on her car. However, she sabotages the convertible so that it won't get to the station on time, meaning she has to drive him to New York. They get stuck in the rain, and in a series of coincidences, Jane winds up wearing a pair of pajamas belonging to Richard's sister while her own clothes are drying. Then when Calvert makes it clear there's no romantic interest between them, Jane drives home in the middle of the night, arriving home at a scandalous time and making the whole town gossip about her.

Now, this is a Deanna Durbin movie, so we know that everything is going to come out right in the end. But to see exactly how that's going to happen, you'll have to watch for youreself. Nice Girl? is the sort of movie that I can see why it would appeal to fans of Deanna Durbin, especially back in 1941 when it was released. However, I can also see why Deanna Durbin was growing tired of these ingenue roles and wanted something more talent-stretching. This being Deanna Durbin, there are also several opportunities for her to sing, which again fans of hers will enjoy. The misunderstandings plot doesn't always work, and to me it felt wrapped up a bit too quickly. But for the most part Nice Girl? is simply inoffensive fun.

Train under a lady

One of my recent DVR watches was Lady on a Train, which is available on DVD courtesy of Universal's MOD scheme.

Deanna Durbin plays Nikki Collins, a young lady traveling from San Francisco to New York by train to visit an aunt for Christmas. Just as she's getting into New York, she looks out the window of the train when it stops briefly, into the windows of a building near the tracks. She sees... an old guy getting hit over the head with a crowbar and killed! Unfortunately, the guy doing the hitting has his back to the train, so she wouldn't be able to identify the killer. She can't even identify where it took place.

Still, she wants to do her civic duty, so she goes to the police (William Frawley in a bit part), but since she's not able to explain herself and because she's carrying a murder mystery book, the desk sergeant thinks she's nuts. At that point, Nikki gets the brilliant idea of looking up the author of the murder mystery, Wayne Morgan (David Bruce)! He lives in New York and since he writes mysteries, surely he'd be interested in trying to solve one.

Now this is absolutely ridiculous, but it's also a movie, so you know that Morgan is eventually going to get involved actively. However, his first involvement is more passive, as Nikki keeps pestering him for attention, much to his chagrin since he's got a fiancée in Joyce (Patricia Morison). But Nikki's following Wayne and Joyce around is going to bring a clue. When they all go to the movies, Nikki sees a newsreel talking about the sudden death of reclusive industrialist Josiah Waring (Thurston Hall), who died in a freak accident falling off a ladder while decorating his Christmas tree at his Long Island estate. Nikki realizes that Waring is the man she saw getting murdered!

So Nikki goes off to Waring's estate, as if she's ever going to get in. This being a Hollywood movie, she does, helped by one of Waring's nephews, Arnold (Dan Duryea). Arnold figures that Nikki must be Margo Martin, a nightclub attraction whom the dead Waring was in love with, and whom a lot of the rest of the family had serious problems with despite never having met her. Arnold is there for the reading of the will, and figures that Margo is too. Also there is Aunt Charlotte (Elizabeth Patterson), and Arnold's cousin Jonathan (Ralph Bellamy). Nikki uses the will reading as an opportunity to snoop around the mansion, which is how she gets vital clues that the elder Waring was indeed murdered.

Nikki also overhears stuff involving somebody's henchman Danny (Allen Jenkins) and Danny's boss, so it begins to get pretty clear that Waring was murdered by somebody fairly close to him, either a relative or somebody in his employ. Nikki goes around New York, notably to Margo's club the Circus Club, trying to put all the clues together and figure out who did it, while also figuring out which of the people in the Waring coterie are trying to help or hinder her.

I found Lady on a Train to be a reasonably interesting and fun mystery, although also nothing particularly outstanding. Nobody is really stretching their acting chops here, instead just focusing on professional entertainment, which they deliver. There were a few plot holes, and I don't care much for Durbin's singing, although I know audiences of the day would have gone to her movies specifically to see her sing at least one song (she gets "Silent Night" and "Night and Day" here).

If you want a new-to-you mystery, you could do far worse than to watch Lady on a Train.