Wow

Yes, that has always bothered me. I don't see how Hildy's relationship with Walter will improve...and that kind of makes the whole plot hollow

The fact that the tables never get turned and that Fonda remains naive and wooden from opening shot to ending line seperates this film ubiquitously from all other in the genre. Fonda remains the lone voice of sanity in a comedy that is otherwise ENTIRELY screwball. The world The Lady Eve inhabits is loaded with cheats, scalliwags, gold-diggers and pugs at extreme levels. But if a screwball comedy is to effectively work, normality must exist somewhere within the abnormal world, if for no other reason than otherwise the entire world we are shown would be taken as a silly fantasy. Since Fonda acts realistic to cheats and con-artists, it makes Pike all the more interesting when you consider one of the tenents of comedy is collision of opposing worlds. Jean and Pike are opposites. If Pike solves one, even one scam, the film would suffer.

Fonda always plays a gentle, trustworthy, wholeheartedness I like to call Gregory Peck Light. He stands on the side of virtue in this film just as Atticus does in To Kill a Mockingbird...albeit on a far less culturally important pedestal. The sign affixed to the wall on the ocean liner shows that indeed EVERYONE is a cheat and to beware. The only exception to this rule are the young girls who want to marry Pike's money (cheating on a different level but all the same).

It is a smart tactic by Preston Sturges to keep the everyman Pike always in the dark. First off, we can sympathize better with him if he NEVER gains the upper hand, if he is always bombarded in a two front war of deceit and con, and also because it gives Jean and the Colonel and Muggsy and every other problem Pike encounters even more power and more conflict.

Some critics have not been kind to Fonda's performance for the reasons stated above. However the counter-argument is that he doesn't need to act strong (he's The Snake Whisperer for Christ's sake). By being a swashbuckling milquetoast his job is to let Lady Eve dictate the pace of the scenes and to have the upper hand. Imagine for a second that at some point in the film Pike figures out that he's being duped even on a small level, that somewhere he is in control of a scene. The premise of the film then would have then been ruined because it wouldn't be probable that he could mistake Eve and Jean and the entire second and third act would crumble.

As it stands it is dynamite. Minimal effort, maximum results.

...Re: the repetition of his "love lines" to "two," "different" woman: It's possible that Fonda ISN'T behaving like a cad, but more like a clueless, romantic nerd who can't think of any other way to describe his feelings; the very words he used, on both occasions, sound like a paragraph he memorized out of a corny romance novel! LOL! Not to mention that he had been deeply hurt by Jean and, consequently, reached the conclusion that she was NOT worthy of those "love lines;" whereas "Eve" seemed to have all of Jean's physical attractions and charms but none of Jean's con-artist traits AND it appeared that "Eve" was already wealthy, hence less fear on our hero's part that he should be bilked out of his fortune. Thus, he wouldn't be disinclined to whisper the same "sweet nothings" in "Eve's" ear that he had done with Jean.

AS for his sudden re-acceptance of his "first" love, Jean, at the conclusion of the movie: I had no problem with understanding that his "second" love, "Eve," whom he abandoned on the train, made Jean look honest and down-to-Earth in comparison. He must have looked back on the last time he'd seen Jean in the ship's saloon, when he verbally tore into her (having been exposed as a con artist by Muggsy) while refusing to allow her to vindicate her honest emotions for him, and realized what a jerk he had been.

And for you posters who are incredulous at his refusal to accept the reality that Jean and "Eve" are one and the same: That's the joke! The humor of it being, he is using faulty logic, i.e., "Jean couldn't be Eve because they DO look too much alike and Jean couldn't possibly think I'd be stupid enough to let her fool me twice!" LOL! Only we, the viewers--and Muggsy--can "see the forest for the trees," people!

What's more, Fonda is informed by "Eve's" "uncle" (who's actually Jean's confederate in her little scam, and played by Eric Blore) that Jean and Eve are actually half-sisters who never met (Jean being the the product of a the same stable boy who, according to the fiction Eve's uncle imparts Fonda, also had a liason with Eve's mother) and aren't even aware of each other's existence.

If I haven't satisfactorily put to rest some of the minor objections I've read in this thread, don't let those objections bother you too much--"The Lady Eve" is still a sparkling comedy that has more bite and substance to it than the great majority of the kind of comedies Hollywood churns out nowadays...