EVE'S LOVER
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Directed by: Roy Del Ruth. Adaptation: Darryl Francis Zanuck. Photographed by: George Winkler.
Cast: Irene Rich (Eve Burnside), Bert Lytell (Count Leon Molnar), Clara Bow (Rena D'Arcy), Willard Louis (Austin Starfield), John Steepling (Burton Gregg), Arthur Hoyt (Amos Potts), Lew Harvey (agitator).
MELODRAMA: Source: W.K. Clifford, "Eve's Lover," in Eve's Lover and Other Stories. (New York, 1924).
Eve Burnside's steel mill is coveted by Austin Starfield, a business rival who persuades an impoverished count, Leon Molnar, to attempt to persuade Eve to marry him and thereby gain control of her business. The count, who has given a bad check to Starfield, succeeds in marrying Eve but meanwhile falls in love with her and breaks off dealings with Starfield. Rena D'Arcy, a flapper and sometime sweetheart of Leon, arrives in town and tells Eve that Leon married her only for money, thereby disrupting relations between Eve and Leon. Starfield foments labor disputes at the Burnside mill by hiring agitators to start a strike, but the count intercedes at a crucial moment and saves the day. Leon regains Eve's affections, and Starfield is arrested for conspiracy. (Information from "The American Film Institute of Feature Films".)
(Variety Film Reviews 1921-1925):As a feature picture 'EL' doesn't amount to Adam.
It is just one of those business woman stories, where the business woman falls in love and marries a man who doesn't give a darn about her, but learns to love her, although she believes that he has wed her for her dough.
From a box office angle the picture hasn't a thing except the title.
Irene Rich does give a performance worth while, but she isn't starring material, at leasst not in this picture. Bert Lytell plays the Austrian Baron the same as George Beban played an Italian Count in musical comedy. Clara Bow is just a flapper trouble maker and Willard Louis works overtime in the picture advertising Bromo Seltzer and not getting laughs.
The plot revolves about two steel mills. One is controlled by the heroine and the other by a business rival. The Baron is a friend of the business rival and indebted to him, because his checks have been coming back with no account stamped on them. That gives the business rival a hold on the Baron to compel him to make love to the wealthy spinster and marry her. The idea being that after the wedding the Baron will convince his wife that she should sell out to her rival.
Then the Baron falls in love with the wife, but she overhears his former mistress bawl him out and threaten to expose the whole scheme and then she's broken hearted and remains so until hubby invades the steel works, blocks a strike and finally is held in her arms for the two to start honeymooning all over again."
