Was there ever a more giddy comedy from the 1940’s than The Lady Eve with a never-better Barbara Stanwyck as a con woman out to bilk silver spoons millionaire Henry Fonda? Stanwyck the ice queen falls for this greenhorn because he’s so genuine but she's also obligated to fleece him.

They are on an ocean liner where it's a zoo for socialites and bachelorettes all trying to land a dreamboat guy. But eyes are drawn to Fonda's Charles Pike, heir to a brewery fortune, and money talks for these ladies. Pike is the most gullible of gentlemen, but even he can see how transparent all them gold-diggers are. It takes a special woman, one of take-charge sass, one of gumption, one with the gambling bug in her genes, one with bedroom intuition, to steal Pike's heart. One like Barbara Stanwyck's Jean Harrington.

The Lady Eve is all the funnier because even though she has a soft spot for Pike, she still has to turn Pike into a fool's fool to appease her grifter father; they both scheme their way into Pike's mansion estate. Writer-director Preston Sturges turns Stanwyck into an unremitting duplicity act, and there are corny-delicious scenes where she plays endlessly with his hair during quasi-pillow talk as her seductive modus operandi, running gags of klutzes falling backwards that miraculously feel spontaneous and non-staged, and shots of a train speeding through a tunnel as romantic symbolism.

Sturges made fourteen total films, six of them I'd categorize as must-sees if you're looking for 40's era screwball comedy. This one The Lady Eve I'd say is my favorite of them all, even if it began for Sturges as a homage to his mentor Ernst Lubitsch with his splendid grifter comedy "Trouble in Paradise" (1932). But both have luminous qualities of their own. Stanwyck is perfectly composed, sharp-witted and equipped with gracefulness and élan throughout; she also had success with another screwball comedy the same year, Howard Hawks' "Ball of Fire" which I'd rate 4/5.

The Lady Eve is Top One Hundred Films of All Time