Rings on Her Fingers

Screwball Obscurity on DVD

Jul. 06, 2012

8:09 p.m.

Copying is nothing new in Hollywood. The popularity of Paramount's screwball grifters comedy, The Lady Eve (1941), prompted 20th Century Fox to rush its own screwball grifters comedy into production, Rings on Her Fingers (1942). Fox even employed the same leading man, Henry Fonda, as yet another naïf who falls into the clutches of a comical band of hustlers. The Lady Eve was the greater film, but director Rouben Mamoulian, better remembered for Queen Christina and The Mark of Zorro, moved the proceedings along at an agreeably amusing if not always madcap pace. Some of the funniest moments involve the female lead, a remorseful grifter (Gene Tierney), dodging both of her fiancés and a private detective at a crowded airport. Mamoulian always had a flair for the logistics of crowds. The filming of Rings on Her Fingers at Santa Catalina was halted on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941 for fear of a Japanese attack on the West Coast. The national mood was still off by the time the movie was wrapped and shipped to theaters. Perhaps that, as much as its similarity to The Lady Eve, doomed it to obscurity. Still, fans of Golden Age Hollywood will enjoy Rings on Her Fingers and will want to seek out the new DVD release in an almost-good-as-new print. David Luhrssen's biography, Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen, will be published this fall by University Press of Kentucky.