Let's see - you're a classically trained singer with a gorgeous voice, you're pretty, a good actress, highly paid...and all you want is to get out of show business.

That's Deanna Durbin's story, and thank goodness, she didn't get her wish until she made films like "It Started with Eve," also starring Charles Laughton and Robert Cummings.

Durbin plays Anne Terry, a hat check girl trying to make it as a classical singer. One night, she is drafted by Johnny Reynolds Jr. (Cummings) who believes his father (Laughton) is dying. His father has insisted on meeting his fiancée, but when Johnny returns to the hotel to find her, she and her mother (Margaret Tallichet and Catherine Doucet) aren't in their room. Desperate, he offers Anne money if she will pose as his fiancée. Anne wants to return home to her family, so the money will come in handy. She accompanies him to his father's deathbed.

Well, Jonathan Reynolds Sr. rallies! He's not going to die, and his son may well -- he now has two fiancées. Jonathan Sr. plans a party for all his high falutin' friends, including people like Leopold Stokowski, to meet Anne and to have her sing for them.

Johnny Jr. is in a pickle and tells Anne that he will say that they broke up and then introduce his father to his real fiancée, whom Reynolds Sr.'s doctor will bring to the house. But Anne wants to sing at the party, so after he announces the big breakup, Anne rushes in and begs forgiveness.

Robert Cummings, a huge star in television, was usually second tier in films. He always excelled in comedy, and he does a great job here. Laughton, playing a man who's supposedly dying, looks quite gaunt and is, of course, marvelous as a man who has a great relationship with Anne and grows fond of her.

Deanna Durbin herself acts and sings like a dream and looks beautiful. Her warm personality shines through. She sings "Clavelitos," "Goin' Home," "When I Sing," and "Ahi, viene la conga" impressively.

"It Started with Eve," is a fast-moving, fun, highly entertaining film with moments of poignancy. This film marked the end of Deanna Durbin's work with producer Joe Pasternak and director Henry Koster; Pasternak went to MGM, and Deanna went on suspension for turning down a script. In the end, she was given approval of her directors, stories and songs.

Hard to believe this songbird, now 90, retired at the age of 26 and never looked back. It's a tribute to her that 64 years post-retirement, Deanna Durbin still has plenty of fans.

Wealthy Robert Cummings is engaged to an uppity socialite who is out of town on vacation when Cummings finds out that his wealthy father (Charles Laughton),one of the richest men in America, is supposedly on his deathbed. He hires a double (Deanna Durbin) to pose as her so the old man can die happy. But Laughton (looking realistic in old age make-up and with a convincing elderly strut) doesn't die. Meeting Durbin has revised his zest for life, and he demands to see her again after Cummings has sent her on her way out of New York and hopefully out of his life. Cummings' fiancée and her pearl-twirling mama (played by W.C. Fields' frequent butt of jokes, Catherine Doucet) arrive, but Cummings must continue the facade to pacify his papa. By a twist of fate, Laughton learns of the scheme, and pretends he hasn't recovered so he can continue to get Cummings and Durbin together.

This entertaining screwball comedy with a couple of light-hearted songs for Durbin is overloaded with silliness, but is pleasing on many levels, particularly for the lively performances of Laughton and Durbin. Walter Catlett is hysterically funny as Laughton's doctor who gets progressively as ill as Laughton was while his patient recovers. A lively squabble between Durbin and Cummings leads to a hysterically funny chase sequence around a huge dining table with a living room chair an active prop. In smaller roles, Guy Kibbee and Clara Blandick are memorable as a local preacher and Laughton's Miss Preen like nurse. In their few scenes together, Laughton and Blandick (best known as Auntie Em in "The Wizard of Oz") reminded me of Monty Woolley and Mary Wickes in the same year's "The Man Who Came to Dinner". There is a nice gag near the film's close that is sure to leave the viewer with a giant smile.

Although this was a Deanna Durbin movie and she does sing a few songs in the film, It Started With Eve is completely stolen by Charles Laughton playing Robert Cummings's father. Laughton is in the kind of role normally reserved for someone like Charles Coburn, but Laughton does make the most of it.

It Started With Eve does start out solemn enough, Laughton is on his deathbed and his last wish is to see the girl whom his son Robert Cummings has been engaged to. Cummings being a dutiful son endeavors to get his fiancé Margaret Tallichet to Laughton's deathbed for the old man's last request. But a mixup leaves Cummings without meeting Tallichet and with time running out, he offers a hatcheck girl Deanna Durbin $50.00 to come home and pretend to be his fiancé. What girl couldn't use an honest $50.00 so Deanna agrees.

But she so captivates Laughton upon meeting him that the old guy gets a new lease on life. I think you can figure the rest of this situation out and how the film ends.

Of course Deanna is an aspiring singer, that's a given in her early films. She does do a few numbers, but I have a feeling she may have had more in It Started With Eve, but the people at Universal Studios saw that Laughton was stealing the film and may have cut a few of her songs. Of course she stayed with top billing because until Abbott&Costello arrived on the scene with Buck Privates, Durbin was their chief money making star at Universal Pictures.

It Started With Eve was Laughton's first comedy since Ruggles Of Red Gap and in his scenes he steals all, but the furniture. His facial expressions are priceless. What a foxy scheming old man he was, determined to see Cummings marry Durbin or have Durbin in the family one way or another. I do believe if it came to it, he'd have married Durbin himself.

All in all like Richard Bennett in If I Had A Million, Laughton plays another millionaire who starts the film on his deathbed, but by the end of it has plenty of reason to live. The reports of his death are greatly exaggerated, but the laughs in It Started With Eve are not.