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All About Eve (1950) ft. Jaylan Salah Salman

  • Writer: Thomas Duncan
    Thomas Duncan
  • 2 days ago
  • 6 min read

Guest:


Cast:

  • Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Writer/Director

  • Milton Krasner, Cinematography

  • Alfred Newman, Music

  • Bette Davis as Margo Channing

  • Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington

  • George Sanders as Addison DeWitt

  • Celeste Holm as Karen Richards

  • Gary Merrill as Bill Sampson

  • Hugh Marlowe as Lloyd Richards

  • Thelma Ritter as Birdie Coonan

  • Gregory Ratoff as Max Fabian

  • Marilyn Monroe as Claudia Casswell


Background:

  • All About Eve was released on October 13, 1950.

  • On a reported budget of $1.4 million, All About Eve would gross nearly $8.4 million to finish #4 at the domestic box office for 1950.

  • Eve was met with widespread critical acclaim and would garner 14 Oscar nominations (still tied for the record with Titanic and La La Land):

    • Nominated:

      • Best Actress: Anne Baxter, Bette Davis

      • Best Sup. Actress: Thelma Ritter, Celeste Holm

      • Best Art Direction - Black and White

      • Best Cinematography - Black and White: Milton Krasner

      • Best Film Editing

      • Best Score - Alfred Newman

    • Winner:

      • Best Picture

      • Best Director - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

      • Best Sup. Actor - George Sanders

      • Best Screenplay - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

      • Best Costume Design - Black and White: Edith Head and Charles LeMaire

      • Best Sound Recording

  • The film has lived in the public consciousness for decades with many pop cultural references, homages in other works, and a stage musical adaptation in the 1970s.

  • The film has been recognized by the AFI on the following lists:

    • 1998 - AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies - All About Eve - #16

      2003 - AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains

      • Eve Harrington (Villain) - #23

    • 2005 - AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes

      • "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." - #9

    • 2007 - AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - All About Eve - #28

  • When AFI named Bette Davis #2 on its list of the greatest female American screen legends, All About Eve was the film selected to highlight Davis' legendary career.

  • The Writers Guild of America has ranked the film's screenplay as the fifth greatest ever written.

  • In 1990, All About Eve was inducted into the United States National Film Registry in its second class.

  • In 1997, the film received a placement on the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame.

  • All About Eve currently holds a 99% among critics on RT, a 98 score on Metacritic, and 4.4/5 on Letterboxd (#97 overall on Letterboxd)


Plot Summary: All About Eve is a classic drama about ambition, fame, and betrayal in the world of theater. The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a talented but aging Broadway star who begins to feel threatened by a young admirer named Eve Harrington, played by Anne Baxter.


Eve appears at first to be a devoted fan, eager to help Margo with her career. Margo takes pity on her and hires her as an assistant. But over time, Margo and her friends—including her playwright friend Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), his wife Karen (Celeste Holm), and theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders)—realize that Eve has bigger ambitions. She wants Margo’s fame, her friends, and even her roles on stage.


As Eve schemes her way to the top, Margo must face her own insecurities about aging and love, especially with her younger boyfriend Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill). The story becomes a battle of wits and emotions, showing how ruthless ambition can destroy friendships and reputations.


Did You Know:

  • Bette Davis fell in love with her co-star Gary Merrill during the shoot of this movie, and the two married in July 1950, a few weeks after filming was completed. They adopted a baby girl, whom they named Margot. They did indeed divorce almost exactly ten years to the day after their wedding. Davis was quoted as saying that they had married their characters from the movie, rather than the actual people.

  • Co-star Celeste Holm spoke about her experience with Bette Davis on the first day of shooting: "I walked onto the set... on the first day and said, 'Good morning,' and do you know her reply? She said, 'Oh shit, good manners.' I never spoke to her again - ever." Years later, Bette Davis said in an interview, "Filming All About Eve was a very happy experience... the only bitch in the cast was Celeste Holm."

  • Despite their characters' tense relationship on screen, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter got along very well during filming. "The studio tried to play that up all during the filming," recalled Baxter, "but I liked Bette very much. She'd come on the set and go 'Sssssss' at me, but it was just a joke between us." Davis liked Baxter, too, which was quite a compliment as Davis reportedly didn't often like her female co-stars. She felt that Baxter did an excellent job with her part as Eve, and publicly praised her for it.

  • Margo Channing's famous cocktail dress was an Edith Head creation. To Head's horror, just as they were about to go film the cocktail party, she found that the dress didn't quite fit Bette Davis in the shoulders. There was no time to fix the dress, but fortunately Davis hit on the bright idea of simply slipping the dress off her shoulders.

  • Life imitated art thirty-three years later when Anne Baxter stepped into Bette Davis' shoes to replace her on the series Hotel (1983) after she fell ill. Davis never returned to the show.

  • Zsa Zsa Gabor kept arriving on the set because she was jealous of her husband George Sanders in his scenes with the young blonde ingénue Marilyn Monroe.


Best Performance: Anne Baxter (Eve)

Best Secondary Performance: George Sanders (Addison)/Bette Davis (Margo)

Most Charismatic Award: Celeste Holm (Karen)/George Sanders (Addison)/Marilyn Monroe (Casswell)

Best Scene:

  • Eve's Story

  • Bill's Party

  • Karen Betrays Margo

  • Eve Blackmails Karen

  • Addison Owns Eve

  • Eve's Replacement

Favorite Scene: Bill's Party/Addison Owns Eve

Most Indelible Moment: Eve's Replacement/Margo's Identity Moment


In Memorium:

  • Drew Struzan, 78, American film poster artist (Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, The Thing, Star Wars, Harry Potter)

  • Jackie Burch, 74, American casting director (Die Hard, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club)

  • D'Angelo, 51, American musician (albums Brown Sugar and Voodoo)

  • Thommy Price, 68, American drummer (Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Scandal, Love Crushed Velvet).

  • Diane Keaton, 79, American actress (Annie Hall, The Godfather, Something's Gotta Give), Oscar winner (1978).


Best Lines/Funniest Lines:

Margo: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!


Margo: I detest cheap sentiment.


Addison DeWitt: [voiceover] Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.


Margo: Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.


Margo: In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!


Margo: Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.


Margo: Those years stretch as the years go on. I've seen it happen too often.

Karen: Not to you, not to Bill.

Margo: Isn't that what they always say?


Addison DeWitt: You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, our contempt for humanity and inability to love, and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.


Margo: Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.


Birdie: The bed looks like a dead animal act.


Eve: If there's nothing else, there's applause. I've listened backstage to people applaud. It's like - like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine, to know every night that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, their eyes shine, you've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.


Miss Casswell: Tell me this, do they have auditions for television?

Addison DeWitt: That's, uh, all television is, my dear, nothing but auditions.


The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 7.67

Impact/Significance: 9.17

Novelty: 10

Classic-ness: 9.83

Rewatchability: 8

Audience Score: 8.85 (83% Google, 94% RT)

Total: 53.52


Remaining Questions:

  • How long does Eve's career go?

  • Does Margo return to acting?

  • What does Addison get from these relationships?

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