Durbin plays Anne Terry, a struggling singer who works as a hatcheck girl and is persuaded by young business tycoon Johnny Reynolds (Cummings) to pretend to be his fiancée to please his father, Jonathan Reynolds, Sr. (Laughton), who is thought to be fatally ill. Comic complications ensue when the senior Reynolds regains his health and Johnny's real fiancée, gold-digger Gloria Pennington (Margaret Tallichet) protests the ruse. The expert supporting cast includes Clara Blandick (Auntie Em from The Wizard of Oz, 1939) as an overly attentive nurse, Walter Catlett as a physician with symptoms of his own and Leon Belasco as a couturier who prematurely provides Gloria with fashionable mourning clothes.
According to a magazine article of the time, Durbin was earning approximately $5,000 per week during this period, including royalties from various recordings and merchandise (dolls, clothing articles, fictional stories, etc.), with an additional $100,000 bonus each year "upon the completion of her two obligatory films." She would continue in films through 1948, but It Started with Eve marked the peak of her career as a singing ingénue. After Pasternak and Koster had moved on to other studios, her career at Universal would lose much of its luster as the studio struggled to find suitable vehicles for its maturing star. None of them would match the prestige and appeal of her Pasternak/Koster movies; it was generally considered that the poor quality of some of her later films led to her retirement.
Laughton, to look convincing as a man hovering near death, lost 40 pounds before filming began and wore oversized clothes and special makeup to make him look even gaunter; he is all but unrecognizable. The early scene on his supposed deathbed allows him to show his acting chops and gain audience sympathy, and the fact that the Cummings character is attached to someone else (for a time) allows Durbin to turn her sympathetic attention to the older man in many scenes. The Durbin/Laughton combo generates an onscreen rapport that gives particular warmth to their encounters. Their chemistry proved so potent that they would make a second film together, Because of Him (1946). The two also enjoyed each other off-camera; Durbin referred to Laughton in interviews as a "special friend" among her costars, and that friendship continued until his death in 1962.
Durbin and Cummings had become chums while costarring in two earlier films, Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) and Spring Parade (1940). They also saw each other socially and enjoyed a lighthearted, teasing relationship. Durbin had just married Vaughn Paul, an assistant director on some of her early films, and during filming of It Started with Eve the newlyweds spent a weekend at the home of Cummings and his wife, Vivien. On the set the following Monday, Durbin complained that she was so sore from all the laughter that she couldn't sing properly. Cummings was on quite a busy schedule, filming Kings Row (1942) at Warner Bros. simultaneously with It Started with Eve.
Durbin and Cummings, sometimes to the annoyance of director Koster, mischievously tried to break each other up in their more serious scenes. When playing opposite each other in profile, both did distracting things with the off-camera sides of their faces. Cummings would look only into Durbin's left eye, leading her to burst into giggles and exclaim, "I can't stand the way he looks at me. It makes me feel one-sided!" She, in turn, would regard him tenderly with one side of her face while the other, unseen by the camera, would distort into grotesque grimaces and smirks. The playfulness enlivened their more lighthearted scenes, such as a romantic encounter when, to cool his ardor, she bites his ear.
Musical highlights include a funny conga by Durbin and Laughton and, of course, Deanna's singing. She performs When I Sing from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty; Goin' Home from Dvorak's From the New World; and, notably, a lightning-fast Clavelitos (at a reported 157 words per minute, in Spanish!) by Albert Hay Malotte, while accompanying herself on the piano. Also at the piano, she performs an excerpt from Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.
It Started with Eve opened in New York City on October 2, 1941, the only one of Durbin's movies to premiere at Radio City Music Hall. The film, another box-office winner for Durbin, received positive reviews; in The New York Times Bosley Crowther called it "light and unpretentious fare" that "should please - as they say - both young and old. It's the perfect '8-to-80' picture." He went on to praise director Koster for getting "the best out of Mr. Laughton, that man of great reknown... Mr. Laughton plays with flavor, mischief, humor and great inventiveness." Crowther also noted that "Miss Durbin is as refreshing and pretty as she has ever been and sings...with lively charm."
It Started with Eve, originally titled Almost an Angel, received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Music Score (Charles Previn and Hans J. Salter). It was remade by Universal in 1964 as I'd Rather Be Rich, with the genders of the romantic leads switched. Robert Goulet played a variation of the Durbin role, with Sandra Dee in the Cummings part and Maurice Chevalier as the dying grandfather. Before that, Laughton had repeated his role in two radio adaptations of the movie, one by Lux Radio Theater in November 1944 and the other by Screen Guild Theater in April 1950.
By Roger Fristoe
