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.