Charles Pike (
played by Henry Fonda): “Now you, on the other hand, with a little coaching you could be terrific [
at playing cards].”
Jean Harrington (
played by Barbara Stanwyck): “Do you really think so?”
Charles: “Yes, you have a definite nose.”
Jean: “I'm glad you like it. Do you like any of the rest of me?”—
The Lady Eve (1941), written and directed by Preston Sturges
The Lady Eve, released 70 years ago today, furnished
Barbara Stanwyck with one of her golden opportunities to do what she did best onscreen: demonstrate that she was forever deadlier than the male. Even the sharpest of studs become inadvertent prey for "Stanny," as demonstrated in the unforgettable moment she sidles down the stairs in
Double Indemnity, making you sense immediately that Fred MacMurray’s seemingly wised-up insurance salesman is already toast.
Henry Fonda’s Charles Pike is such a poor dumb sap that, had his character been transposed to
film noir, it would have been a case of cruel and unusual punishment. Instead, this shy, none-too-bright heir to an ale fortune provides Stanwyck with some of the great moments in the screwball comedy genre that Hollywood buffed to a high sheen in the Forties and Fifties.
Even before Jean’s nose becomes the topic of conversation, it’s Jean’s legs that get Charles’ attention: this card sharp trips the ale heir when they’re on an ocean liner. Later, annoyed by his rejection, she puts him through
another scam: impersonating a grande dame.
Early on, she evokes chuckles when, sizing Charles up, she announces, “I need him like the axe needs the turkey.” By the film’s denouement, she’ll discover, to her surprise, that she needs him, period--the most unlikely and delightful of love stories.
One of the great crimes of Hollywood is that it never saw fit to present Stanwyck an Academy Award while she was in competition, waiting until she was in her mid-70s before giving her one of those honorary Oscars that attempt to redress wrongs to aging former box-office idols while there’s still time. (The presenter that night was John Travolta, who admitted later to being stunned that he was standing there next to a woman who had long been an idol of his family growing up in my hometown, Englewood, N.J.)
The year that
The Lady Eve came out was one of the years she could have won. (Instead, the Academy awarded the Best Actress trophy to Joan Fontaine, for
Suspicion.) She could easily have been nominated that year for
The Lady Eve, or even for her tough-as-nails reporter in Frank Capra’s
Meet John Doe. Instead, her nomination was for a turn maybe even funnier than the one she had in
The Lady Eve: the deliciously named nightclub singer Sugarpuss O’Shea in
Ball of Fire.
In a
wonderful centenary tribute published three years ago in The New Yorker, critic Anthony Lane wrote of the female in the accompanying photo: “It was a face that launched a thousand inquisitions: the mouth too tight to be rosy, and a voice pitched for slang, all bite and huskiness. When I think of the glory days of American film, at its speediest and most velvety, I think of Barbara Stanwyck.”
