Deanna Durbin - It Started With Eve [DVD]

Deanna Durbin was always fabulous and on this outing has a nice script and fine support from Charles Laughton and Robert Cummings, making this one of her best. This film is warm, funny and delightful. Durban even gets to do a few beautiful songs that are worked into the story in a natural way. This is really a very funny comedy with many fine moments that will leave you smiling when it's over.

Jonathan Reynolds (Charles Laughton), an irracible, rich and socially prominent tycoon, is on his death bed. His son Jonathan Jr. (Robert Cummings) rushes home from Mexico with his new fiance Gloria (Margaret Tallichet) to see him before he dies, an event the papers can't wait for. But when the old man wants to meet young Jonathan's bride to be, she and her hideous mother have left the hotel to go shopping. A desparate Jonathan talks coat check girl Anne Terry (Deanna Durbin) into pretending to be Gloria for $50.00. It is money she needs for train fare back to Shelbyville because she is abandoning her dreams of singing stardom, which are going nowhere.

A teary eyed Anne has a warm and instant connection with old man Jonathan, who adores her and makes an unexpected recovery thanks to her charm and warmth. This causes complications for Jonathan, who has to catch Anne at the train station twice in order to keep the charade going! The interplay between the two as they start bickering about it is priceless. Even when the old man overhears them and knows the truth he goes along because he can see she's the right girl for his son Jonathan Jr., and the daughter-in-law he wants.

Of course, Jonathan Jr. still thinks he wants to marry the real Gloria and there is a subplot about a party which will be attended by Stokowski and Heifetz, friends of the old man. Anne may finally get her chance to be noticed. But she is too sweet to go through with it and plans on returning home to Shelbyville, prompting the wise old Jonathan to hatch up a little plan of his own.

A night on the town where a delightful Durbin teaches Laughton to do the Conga in a swank nightclub is a particular highlight of this stellar film. Deanna's tearful rendition of "Goin' Home" is another. There is also an hilarious fight scene with Durbin and Cummings chasing each other all over the place that involves biting and pinching which will surely leave you on the floor!
This is one of Durbin's best films. She had a flair for light comedy and a warmth and sincerity to her acting. You can't miss this one if you love Durbin or enjoy a great comedy. This is a classy production and a chance to see for yourself the always wonderful Deanna Durbin, always and forever, "The Last Rose of Summer."

I saw this movie years ago during a Deanna Durbin season on Chanel 4. I really enjoyed it and when I saw it for sale on DVD I bought it with some trepidation. However it did not disappoint and was as funny and entertaining as I remembered.

Would anyone not take a bet that a 20-year-old young woman would be mincemeat if she tried to take a film away from the skilled and hammy hands of Charles Laughton, especially when Laughton, to modern eyes, looks suspiciously like he's playing Tim Conway playing one of Conway's old, tottering geezers? It Started With Eve, an attractive romantic comedy, stars Deanna Durbin, Robert Cummings and Charles Laughton. It was a shame Laughton wasn't a few years younger. He and Durbin turn out to be quite a pair, both of them adept at delivering smart lines, doing subtle double-takes or moving from subversive good cheer to tear-jerker moments of sincerity. They dominate the film and they do it as equals. Robert Cummings was a skilled light-weight lead. Here. as in so many of his films, he just doesn't have the leading-man gravitas to appear as anything but an earnest puppy. When he shares a scene with either Laughton or Durbin, he makes a pleasant second banana.

It Started With Eve begins with Jonathan Reynolds (Laughton), a rich old tycoon, apparently on his death bed. When his son, Jonathan Junior (Cummings), comes rushing in from a trip to Mexico, old Jonathan asks to meet young Jonathan's new fiance, who has come to New York with him, accompanied by her mother. Young Jonathan tries to contact his fiance, can't reach her, and believing his father is now dying, happens upon Anne Terry (Durbin), a hatch-check girl. He rushes Anne to the side of his father and introduces her as his fiance. But the next day his father recovers. Now young Jonathan has his fiance he can't let his father meet, and his father wants to keep seeing Anne, thinking she's the fiance. The movie's an hour-and-a-half of mistaken identity and screw-ball encounters. Love finally wins out, but only after Laughton plays matchmaker and Durbin sings two or three songs. Along the way we have some clever lines ("The trouble with being sick is you have to associate with doctors!"), a good deal of skullduggery as Laughton contrives to smoke the cigars his doctor forbids him, and a fast pace set by director Henry Koster. Laughton, of course, overacts but gets away with it. He also has a comb-up hair style that, if he were a foot shorter, would let him pass for a munchkin. He does a lot of stooped-over shuffling, squinting from under his eye-brows, and little bits of business that we wind up hardly noticing when Durbin is around. She must have been quite a challenge for him. Durbin, at 20, is no longer the child star. She's well-nigh gorgeous, with a figure that could make staring illegal. She is natural and straight-forward, and completely self-assured. She's one of the few actresses who could get away with sniffing mightily or falling down next to a piano and make us smile just at her style. She was, in a word or two, sui generis. And for those who admire subversive scene-stealers, the movie has that master, Walter Catlett, playing Dr. Harvey. Catlett was in hundreds of films, usually playing blowhards or flustered shysters. He's a bit subdued here, but just the sound of his voice is enough to make me smile.

The movie is a bit of froth, expertly served. If it's a little dated, well, so am I.