Screen Savers Movies » It Started with Eve http://screensaversmovies.com 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:54:42 +0000 en hourly 1 It Started with Eve (1941) http://screensaversmovies.com/it-started-with-eve-1941 http://screensaversmovies.com/it-started-with-eve-1941#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:01:35 +0000 Jennifer Kurdyla, Editor http://screensaversmovies.com/?p=165 Deanna Durbin had matured from teenage roles in, among others, the 1936 Three Smart Girls and its 1939 sequel, when director Henry Koster and producer Joe Pasternak asked her to star in It Started with Eve. The movie’s three songs may not qualify it as a musical, but the antics of Durbin and co-star Robert Cummings, as they conspire to please his dying father (the great Charles Laughton) on his deathbed with their mock engagement, will leave audiences with the same feel-good sensation.

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]]> http://screensaversmovies.com/it-started-with-eve-1941/feed 2 It Started with Eve (1941): When Quasimodo Met Cinderella http://screensaversmovies.com/it-started-with-eve-1941-when-quasimodo-met-cinderella http://screensaversmovies.com/it-started-with-eve-1941-when-quasimodo-met-cinderella#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:13:15 +0000 John DiLeo http://screensaversmovies.com/it-started-with-eve-1941-when-quasimodo-met-cinderella/ One of the least regarded of these peripheral comic winners is Universal’s It Started with Eve, a box-office hit given little respect. Best known for Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), Universal was rescued from its financial woes of the mid 1930s when producer Joe Pasternak, director Henry Koster, and plucky teen soprano Deanna Durbin collaborated on Three Smart Girls (1936), thus beginning this trio’s well-attended series of frothy musicals. Not only a smash hit, Three Smart Girls was a Best Picture Oscar nominee. It helped that Durbin—whose singing voice was clear and mature rather than shrill—was girl-next-door pretty and had a nonchalant flair for comedy. It Started with Eve was the sixth and final (and best) picture for the Pasternak-Koster-Durbin combo and, though it features three songs, it’s not a musical. Durbin was by now a young woman of 19, and the studio was hoping that the adult Durbin could sell as many tickets as the pubescent Durbin. It Started with Eve brought smiles and made money, surely, but it turned out to be a real sleeper. Aided immensely by the casting of esteemed Charles Laughton, it’s a smartly scripted, flawlessly cast, and enchantingly played comedy that continues to deliver enormous pleasure to those who discover it.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

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