Eve Arden Quotes

Never meant to be more than a B picture entertainment produced on the Universal International backlot and at the Iverson Ranch (a five-hundred-acre family property often used for location shoots), it is one of those unexpected surprises that make you want to know about everyone who had a part in creating such a diverting picture. The film has no single star, but rather an ensemble of superb actors: Vincent Price (Tracy Holland), hamming up it as a ham actor, and Eve Arden (Lily Martin) playing an aging and acerbic stage star.

Miss Brooks had a devilish streak of witty sarcasm. Her dialogue was wonderfully “feline,” as critic John Crosby would note: her snappy comeback to the stuffy assertions of her boss, principal Osgood Conklin, bristled with intelligence and fun. She complained about her low pay (and how teachers identified with that!), got her boss in no end of trouble, pursued biologist Philip Boynton to no avail, and became the favorite schoolmarm of her pupils, and of all America. The role was perfect for Eve Arden, a refugee of B movies and the musical comedy stage. Arden was born Eunice Quedens in Mill Valley, Calif., in 1912. In her youth she joined a theatrical touring group and traveled the country in an old Ford. She was cast in Ziegfeld’s Follies revivals in 1934 and 1936, working in the latter with Fanny Brice. She became Eve Arden when producer Lee Shubert suggested a name change: she was reading a novel with a heroine named Eve, and combined this name with the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics on her dressing room table.