A pretty amazing artifact of the pre-code area, Garden of Eden features Corrinne Griffith as an opera singer wanting to make it big. She leaves a note to her Mom and Dad Bakers ("I don't want to make pretzels any more!" and heads of to Budapest (!!) to a theater who she got a telegram from. Little does she know that the telegram is from a speakeasy joint with dancing girls, headed by a lesbian manager! After being fooled by wearing a see through dress and pawed by one of the fans, her and a sympathetic dressmaker hightail it out of there. The first half, quite amazingly, is VERY similar to 'Showgirls', so much that I am sure that Paul Verhoeven watched this film for ideas. We almost take a 180 degree turn as the action switches to Monte Carlo, to this Parlor Room comedy. The woman, in a hardly believable turn of events, uses her war pension every year to stay at one of the swankiest joints in Monte Carlo, and spends the next 50 in squalor in Budapest. This, I think, is a woman in serious need of an accountant. Anyways, her and the girl sign in as Mother and Daughter (somehow, in the 2 weeks they stay there, she legally adopts her), and the girl is wooed by 2 suitors. The rest is pretty much of the "hiding behind doors when he's not supposed to" Three's Company company variety. But the end wedding scene is a whooping hi-light, when the lead actress rips off her wedding dress and hightails it out of there as the wedding march plays!
Pretty amusing, nicely directed and beautifully photographed. Check this one out if you can!
Pretty amusing, nicely directed and beautifully photographed. Check this one out if you can!