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Sunday, Oct 9, 2011
4 pm
Eve's Leaves
After parting ways with Famous Players-Lasky in 1925, Cecil B. DeMille decided to try his hand at playing studio boss and purchased the Thomas H. Ince studios. Production began on the first year's program of twelve films, one of which was Eve's Leaves, based on the play by Harry Chapman Ford. The story involves a sea captain who forces his daughter Eve (Leatrice Joy) to masquerade as a boy in a misguided attempt to protect her from the evils of the world. Eve responds by provoking widespread mischief aboard her father's tramp steamer, which culminates with the shanghaiing of handsome Bob Britton (William Boyd). When Chinese marauders capture the ship, gang leader Chang Fang (Walter Long) discovers Eve's true identity and schemes to add her to his illicit possessions. While the plot is framed by melodrama, it is comedy that forms the heart of this movie. Joy displays her considerable talent as comedienne in one of several masculine-feminine characters she would play. William Boyd, who would later achieve fame as cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy, is commendable as the object of Eve's desire, but it is Leatrice Joy's ebullient performance that steals the show.
Preserved by the Stanford Theatre Foundation and UCLA Film and Television Archive from two 16mm prints.
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