When snake expert Henry Fonda refers to Professor Marsdit at the film's opening, it's a backhanded reference to Raymond L. Ditmars, the nation's leading reptile expert.
To ensure authenticity, Sturges loaned the studio his own antique sterling silver for the posh dinner party at which Hopsie first meets Lady Eve Sidwich.
The scene in which Eve agrees to divorce Hopsie only if he tells her to her face that he wants the divorce was taken from Sturges's own life. He had made the same demand of his second wife, Eleanor Hutton, whose wealthy family thought he had only married her for her money.
The film's score includes melodies from three songs featured in earlier Paramount musicals, "Isn't It Romantic" and "Lover" from Love Me Tonight (1932) and "Cocktails for Two" from Murder at the Vanities (1934). Classical sections include the thunderstorm music from Rossini's “William Tell” and the "Pilgrim's Chorus" from Wagner's “Tannhaüser.”
During filming, Henry Fonda brought his daughter, future star Jane Fonda, on set for her fourth birthday party.
Stanwyck was so grateful for the way Edith Head glamorized her on screen that she took the costume designer to see her dentist so she could have her teeth fixed.
After The Lady Eve (and two others, The Mad Miss Manton in 1938 and You Belong to Me later in 1941), Fonda would always refer to Stanwyck as his favorite leading lady.
After respectable profits earned by his first two directorial efforts, The Great McGinty and Christmas in July (both 1940), The Lady Eve was Preston Sturges's first A picture and first big hit, paving the way for greater freedom at Paramount.
The Lady Eve was also the first big comedy hit for Barbara Stanwyck – who would score later the same year in Howard Hawks' Ball of Fire, opposite Gary Cooper – and Henry Fonda, who would remain primarily associated with serious roles.
The Lady Eve marked the emergence of Barbara Stanwyck, the clotheshorse. It was her most glamorous role to date, and costume designer Edith Head, who would become a close friend, showed her how good she could look in high fashion. Stanwyck was so pleased that she had Head design her personal wardrobe for years after.
The chance to costume Stanwyck as two different characters gave Head the best showcase her costumes had ever had. She had already quietly risen to the top of Paramount's wardrobe department. With The Lady Eve, she would begin to establish herself as Hollywood's leading designer of glamorous clothing.
Preston Sturges was one of Hollywood's first great writer-directors since the birth of talking films. His work on films like The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) paved the way for other writer-directors such as John Huston, Billy Wilder and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
By directing the scripts he wrote, Sturges became one of the most vivid precursors of the auteur school of film criticism, which proposed the idea that the director was the author of his films. His work would be rediscovered for later generations through the efforts of influential critics like Andre Bazin in France and Andrew Sarris in the U.S.
FAMOUS QUOTES FROM THE LADY EVE (1941)
"Don't be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked, but never common." – Charles Coburn, as Colonel Harrington, reminding his daughter of the family motto.
"Pike's Pale, The Ale That Won for Yale." – Ad line for Hopsie's (Henry Fonda) family business, initially quoted by Melville Cooper, as Gerald.
"We'd better get back now."
"Yes, I guess so. You see, where I've been, I mean up the Amazon, you kind of forget how, I mean, when you haven't seen a girl in a long time. I mean, there's something about that perfume that..."
"Don't you like my perfume?"
"Like it! I'm cock-eyed on it!"
"Why Hopsie! You ought to be kept in a cage!" – Barbara Stanwyck, as Jean Harrington, getting cozy with Henry Fonda, as Charles "Hopsie" Pike.
"Well, it certainly took you long enough to come back in the same outfit."
"I'm lucky to have this on. Mr. Pike has been up a river for a year." – Coburn, as Colonel Harrington, questioning Stanwyck, as Jean Harrington.
"Oh darling, hold me tight! Oh, you don't know what you've done to me."
"I'm terribly sorry."
"Oh, that's all right."
"I wouldn't have frightened you for anything in the world. I mean if there's anyone in the world I wouldn't have wanted to – it's you."
"You're very sweet. Don't let me go." – Stanwyck, as Jean, pretending to be scared of Fonda's pet snake.
"Snakes are my life, in a way."
"What a life!"–Fonda and Stanwyck.
"Gimme a spoonful of milk, a raw pigeon's egg and four house flies. If you can't catch any, I'll settle for a cockroach." – William Demarest, as Muggsy, ordering breakfast but neglecting to tell the porter it's for Fonda's pet snake.
"I can just see myself roaming around your estate with a weedsticker and fifty cents a week. And a pair of new slippers for Christmas. The trouble with people who reform is they always want to rain on everybody else's parade too. You tend to your knitting. I'll play the cards."
"Not with him." – Coburn kidding Stanwyck about her dreams of domestic bliss with Fonda.
"They say a moonlit deck is a woman's business office." – Stanwyck, getting serious about her relationship with Fonda.
"You see, Hopsie, you don't know very much about girls! The best ones aren't as good as you probably think they are, and the bad ones aren't as bad. Not nearly as bad. So I suppose you're right to worry, falling in love with an adventuress on the high seas."
"Are you an adventuress?"
"Of course I am. All women are. They have to be. If you waited for a man to propose to you from natural causes, you'd die of old maidenhood. That's why I let you try my slippers on. And then I put my cheek against yours. And then I made you put your arms around me. And then I, I fell in love with you, which wasn't in the cards." – Stanwyck, trying to explain herself to Fonda after he finds her out.
"I positively swill in their ale." – Eric Blore, as Pearlie, bragging about his friendship with the Pikes to fellow con artists Stanwyck and Coburn.
"I need him like the axe needs the turkey." – Stanwyck, plotting revenge on Fonda.
"That's the same dame. She looks the same, she walks the same, and she's tossing you just like she done the last time." – Demarest, as Muggsy, pointing out Lady Eve Sidwich's resemblance to Jean.
"Why don't you put on a bathing suit?" – Eugene Pallette, as Horace Pike, commenting on the repeated accidents that ruin Fonda's dinner clothes.
"I don't deserve you."
"Oh but you do, Charles. If anybody ever deserved me, you do. So richly." – Fonda proposing to Stanwyck's Lady Eve.
"I wonder if now would be the time to tell you about - Herman?" – Stanwyck, as Eve, confessing past indiscretions to new husband Fonda.
"Why didn't you take me in your arms that day...Why did you let me go? Why did we have to go through all this nonsense? Don't you know you're the only man I ever loved? Don't you know I couldn't look at another man if I wanted to? And don't you know I waited all my life for you, you big mug."
"Will you forgive me?"
"For what? Oh you mean, on the boat. The question is, can you forgive me?"
"What for?"
"Oh, you still don't understand."
"I don't want to understand. I don't want to know. Whatever it is, keep it to yourself. All I know is I adore you. I'll never leave you again. We'll work it out somehow. There's just one thing. I feel it's only fair to tell you. It would never have happened except she looked so exactly like you. And I have no right to be in your cabin."
"Why?"
"Because I'm married." "But so am I, darling. So am I."
– Stanwyck's Jean making it up with Fonda.
"Positively the same dame!" – Demarest, in the film's last line.
