During an online discussion of Tropes We Hate — not problematic stuff like Stalking Is Love but just tropes the various participants dislike — several people cited Fake Dating as one they can’t stand. That led me to rewatch IT STARTED WITH EVE (1941), an early example of the trope. And a funny one, so obviously I can stand it when it’s done well.
Legendary millionaire lover-of-life Jonathan Reynolds (Charles Coburn) is dying as the movie opens. His son Jonathan Junior (Robert Cummings) rushes to his side and learns all Dad wants is to meet Junior’s fiancee. Trouble was, she’s been delayed and probably won’t arrive in time; a desperate Junior hat-check girl Anne Terry (Deanna Durbin) and begs her to pose as his fiancee so the old man can die in peace. Except Reynolds finds Anne so charming, he starts to recover. Now what are they going to do? Of course you can all figure that out but the fun is watching them get there. It’s an enjoyable journey but Durbin has so much more chemistry with Coburn than Cummings it undercuts the perfunctory romance. Still a thumbs up for me. “What’s a town in Ohio?”
FERRYMAN MARIA (1936) is a German fantasy in which the ferryman who links a small village with the rest of the world meets Death – literally — leaving them stranded (though it looks like the ferry would be simple enough for passengers to work for themselves). Fortunately the vagabond Maria (Sybille Schmitz) shows up, takes the job and soon falls in love with an injured revolutionary hiding nearby. That creates a problem when Death returns, looking for the man … This has a certain charm, but nowhere near enough. “Tonight, no bell rings in the village.”
That film’s director, Frank Wisbar, subsequently remade it in America for PRC, one of the bottom-of-the-barrel studios of the Golden Age of Hollywood that churned out nothing but low-budget crap. THE STRANGLER OF THE SWAMP (1946), however, was an exception, one of the best things the studio put out — and while that’s faint praise, it’s a decent low budget movie.
In this version the strangler of the title is Charles Middleton, the ghost of a man framed for murder, then lynched by the angry villagers. Just as he hung, so will everyone he blames for his death, including the ferryman. His daughter Maria (Rosemary La Planche) arrives too late to see him but agrees to take over the ferryman duties. Too bad the strangling ghost includes the children of his enemies on the list of those marked to die … Fun, and Middleton is always a memorable, malevolent villain. “I don’t care what you say, I am afraid — but so are all the others!”
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