Eve's Leaves (US Import DVD-R) Release January 21/25

US Import

Eve Macey, having grown up on the rough seas as the daughter of the captain of the tramp steamer Garden of Eden, has little use for dresses, makeup, and other girly things. This changes after she learns about romance from cheap dime novels borrowed from the ship's cook. Eve vows to find a boy the next time the ship goes ashore, and lo and behold, she meets Bill Stanley, the pampered son of a wealthy businessman. When Chinese pirates stage a raid on the port town, Eve uses it as an opportunity to sneak Bill onto her father's ship. But the Garden of Eden soon falls prey to the pirates as well, and the pair become captives of the bloodthirsty Chang Fang. Now Eve must use all her previously untapped feminine wiles to save herself and her boyfriend-to-be from a fate worse than death - despite the clueless playboy still being confused about her gender.

Leatrice Joy (1893-1985) became Cecil B. DeMille's preferred leading lady after the legendary director had a falling out with Gloria Swanson following The Affairs of Anatol (1921). Though initially loyal to DeMille, starring in hit films like Saturday Night and Manslaughter (both 1922), she eventually rebelled against CB's domineering influence. Leatrice impulsively cut her hair into a boyish bob in 1926, infuriating DeMille, who felt the new 'do prevented her from playing "feminine" roles. Scripts had to be written around Joy's new hairstyle, and both Eve's Leaves and The Clinging Vine (also 1926) feature Leatrice being mistaken for a boy as a major plot point. (Perhaps showing his disapproval, CB chose to only produce these films, leaving his protégé Paul Sloane to direct.) Eve's Leaves also has a notable non-Western role for William Boyd (1895-1972). Years before he became Hopalong Cassidy, the actor was a romantic leading man in features as diverse as DeMille's The Volga Boatman (1926) and D.W. Griffith's Lady of the Pavements (1929). His dramatic career was derailed when newspapers mistakenly ran a picture of him to report the arrest of another actor with the same name, William "Stage" Boyd, in 1931. Let go from his studio contract, he struggled to find work until he was cast as Clarence E. Mulford's cowboy character in Hop-Along Cassidy (1935).