Good Morning, Eve!

One of the shorts that TCM ran as part of the Saturday morning block was the early three-strip Technicolor short Good Morning, Eve!.

Leon Errol stars as Adam, looking much too old and certainly not the stereotypically handsome sort or Adam you'd see in other Bible-themed movies. Of course, he's in the Garden of Eden with Eve (June MacCloy), and is tempted with a bite of the apple.

This time, however, the apple sends them out of paradise, if you will, by going on a tour of history. This is an excuse for some sight gags since Adam and Eve are people out of place, as well as an excuse for musical numbers since that's the sort of thing audiences back in 1934 would have loved.

Adam and Eve make a stop in ancient Rome under Nero (Vernon Dent), who is holding some sort of musical competition that allows Adam and Eve to enter since Nero is bored of the traditional competition where he's always declared the winner. There's also a rural-style quartet from the days before it was commonly called country music.

Second is a stop in the England of King Arthur, four years before Warner Bros. made The Adventures of Robin Hood. Finally, Adam and Eve make it to the present, and a beach full of nubile young women in bathing suits, before the ending that reveals....

There is naturally very little plot to Good Morning, Eve!. The humor is dad joke level, but the audiences would have been OK with such dumb humor around the musical numbers. What is the most interesting about the short is that it's one the earliest live-action examples of three-strip Technicolor, coming after maybe Service With a Smile and La Cucaracha as far as shorts completely in the new process. The print TCM showed is excellent, with stunning color: