Birthday Girl: The Wisdom of Eve

I suppose it says something about me more than anything else, but my feed over at Facebook just plain lit up with the news that yesterday was the birthday of the heavenly Miss Eve Arden.

Tributes, videos, photo collages, even a go at an Internet meme ("Keep the Eve in New Year's Eve!" indeed...) - it was all Eve, all the time.  Well, here I am as usual a day late, but this little gem tickled me so much I don't care.  Taken from a 1959 episode of nothing less than The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, this number gives our girl the chance to Go Latin, and she does so with a vengeance, briefly accompanied by her hostess in a segment that dearly makes one wish that someone had been sensible enough to star the duo in at least a national tour of Wonderful Town. They would have made for a mature pair of Sherwood sisters, but that's never stopped anyone before.

One doesn't usually think of the wisecracking Miss Arden as a song-and-dance gal, really, but she holds her own, I think. How one misses the sass and sparkle of Eve Arden, a trouper who was able to put a wry spin on even the weakest material, of which I sometimes fear she was handed more than her share - a great many of her film titles don't exactly resonate.  Curtain Call at Cactus Creek, anyone?  How about Song of Scheherazade, in which she assayed the part of "Madame de Talavera"? Or the distinctly off-color-sounding Obliging Young Lady (don't worry - this little 1942 gem is not, in fact, a stag film, even though she's given a definitely burly-Q name, Suwannee Rivers)? Not exactly deathless art, any of them.

Ah, but never you mind - we'll always have Stage Door, and Mildred Pierce, and Our Miss Brooks, and even The Mothers-in-Law, a sitcom as fondly remember as it was wretchedly scripted (luckily, she was paired with Kaye Ballard, another pro at spit-polishing a hairball until you half-believe it's an opal). In a world desperately short of character women and the right kind of actress to play them, Eve Arden still shines bright. I'd go down South American way with her anytime...