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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

All About Eve

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All About Eve is a 1950 American drama film written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, based on the 1946 short story "The Wisdom of Eve", by Mary Orr.
The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star.Anne Baxter plays Eve Harrington, a willingly helpful young fan who insinuates herself into Channing's life, ultimately threatening Channing's career and her personal relationships. George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Hugh Marlowe, Barbara Bates, Gary Merrill and Thelma Ritter also appear, and the film provided one of Marilyn Monroe's earliest important roles.
Praised by critics at the time of its release, All About Eve was nominated for 14 Academy Awards (a feat that was unmatched until the 1997 film, Titanic) and won six, including Best Picture. As of 2010, All About Eve is still the only film in Oscar history to receive four female acting nominations (Davis and Baxter as Best Actress, Holm and Ritter as Best Supporting Actress). All About Eve was selected in 1990 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry and was among the first 50 films to be registered. All About Eve appeared at #16 on AFI's 1998 list of the 100 best American films


Plot summary

Bette Davis as Margo Channing
At an awards dinner, the newest and brightest star on Broadway — Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) — is being presented the Sarah Siddons Award for her breakout performance as Cora in Footsteps on the Ceiling. Theatre critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) observes the proceedings and, in a sardonic voiceover, recalls how Eve's star rose as quickly as it did.
The film flashes back a year. Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is one of the biggest stars on Broadway, but despite her unmatched success she is beginning to show her age. After a performance one night, Margo's close friend Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), wife of the play's author Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), meets besotted fan Eve Harrington in the cold alley outside the stage door. Recognizing her from having passed her many times in the alley (as Eve claims to have seen every performance of Margo's current play, Aged in Wood), Karen takes her backstage to meet Margo. Eve tells the group gathered in Margo's dressing room — Karen and Lloyd, Margo's lover Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) and Margo's maid Birdie (Thelma Ritter) — that she followed Margo's last theatrical tour to New York after seeing her in a play in San Francisco. Margo quickly befriends Eve, moves her into her home and offers Eve a job as her assistant, leaving Birdie, who dislikes Eve, feeling put out.
Eve begins working to supplant Margo, scheming to become her understudy behind Margo's back (which drives wedges between Margo and Lloyd and Margo and Bill) and conspiring with an unsuspecting Karen to cause Margo to miss a performance. Eve, knowing in advance she will go on, invites the city's theatre critics to the theatre that night. The night is a triumph. Eve makes a pass at Bill, but he rejects her. Following a scathing newspaper column by Addison, Margo and Bill reconcile. The couple dines with the Richardses that night and Margo and Lloyd make up. That same night at the restaurant, Eve blackmails Karen into telling Lloyd to give her the part of Cora, threatening to tell Margo of Karen's role in Margo's missed performance. Before Karen can act, Margo announces to everyone's surprise that she does not wish to play Cora and would prefer to continue in Aged in Wood, even being willing to take it on tour. Eve secures the role and attempts to climb higher by using Addison, who is beginning to suspect her veracity. Just before the premiere of her play at the Shubert in New Haven, Eve faces Addison with her next plan—to marry Lloyd after he divorces his wife. Addison is infuriated that Eve has attempted to use him and reveals that he knows her back story is all lies. Her real name turns out to be not Eve Harrington but Gertrude Slojinski and she had never followed Margo's tour. Before meeting Margo, she had been paid to leave town after her affair with her boss, a brewer in Wisconsin. Addison blackmails her, advising her that in exchange for his silence she now "belongs" to him.
Eve becomes a Broadway star and the film returns to the opening scene in which she is presented with her award. After the awards ceremony, Eve skips a party in her honor and returns home alone where she encounters a young female fan who has slipped into her apartment and fallen asleep. The young girl begins to attend to Eve's needs. "Phoebe" (Barbara Bates), as she calls herself, answers the door to Addison who has returned with Eve's misplaced award. While Eve rests in the other room, Phoebe tries on Eve's wrap and poses in front of a mirror holding the award. The mirrors transform her into countless images of herself.

[edit]Production

[edit]Origin

The story of All About Eve originated in an anecdote related to Mary Orr by actress Elisabeth Bergner. While performing in The Two Mrs. Carrolls during 1943 and 1944, Bergner allowed a young fan to become part of her household and employed her as an assistant, but later regretted her generosity when the woman attempted to undermine her. Referring to her only as "the terrible girl," Bergner related the events to Orr, who used it as the basis for her short story "The Wisdom of Eve" (1946). In the story, Orr gives the girl a more ruthless character and allows her to succeed in stealing the career of the older actress. Bergner later confirmed the basis of the story in her autobiographyBewundert viel, und viel gescholten (Greatly Admired and Greatly Scolded).
In 1949, Mankiewicz was considering a story about an aging actress and, upon reading "The Wisdom of Eve," felt the conniving girl would be a useful added element. He sent a memo to Darryl F. Zanuck saying it "fits in with an original idea [of mine] and can be combined. Superb starring role for Susan Hayward." Mankiewicz presented a film treatment of the combined stories under the title Best Performance. He changed the main character's name from Margola Cranston to Margo Channing and retained several of Orr's characters, Eve Harrington, Lloyd and Karen Richards, and Miss Caswell, while removing Margo Channing's husband completely and replacing him with a new character, Bill Sampson. The intention was to depict Channing in a new relationship and allow Eve Harrington to threaten both Channing's professional and personal lives. Mankiewicz also added the characters Addison DeWitt, Birdie Coonan, Max Fabian, and Phoebe.
Zanuck was enthusiastic and provided numerous suggestions for improving the screenplay. In some sections he felt Mankiewicz's writing lacked subtlety or provided excessive detail. He suggested diluting Birdie Coonan's jealousy of Eve so the audience would not recognize Eve as a villain until much later in the story. Zanuck reduced the screenplay by about 50 pages and chose the title All About Eve from the opening scenes in which Addison DeWitt says he will soon tell "more of Eve ... All about Eve, in fact."[2]

[edit]Casting and characters

The principal cast of All About Eve. (Left to right) Gary Merrill, Bette Davis, George Sanders, Anne Baxter, Hugh Marlowe and Celeste Holm.
Bette Davis was cast as Margo Channing after Claudette Colbert severely injured her back and was forced to withdraw shortly before filming began.[3]
Davis, who had recently ended a 18-year association with Warner Brothersafter several poorly received films, later commented she had read the script in one sitting and immediately accepted the role after realizing it was one of the best she had ever read. Channing had originally been conceived as genteel and knowingly humorous, but with the casting of Davis, Mankiewicz revised the character to be more abrasive. Among other actresses considered before Colbert were Mankiewicz's original inspiration, Susan Hayward, rejected by Zanuck as "too young," Marlene Dietrich, dismissed as "too German," and Gertrude Lawrence, who was ruled out of contention when her agent suggested, "Wouldn't it be nice if Gertie sat by the piano and sang?" Zanuck favored Barbara Stanwyck, but she was not available.Tallulah Bankhead and Ingrid Bergman were also considered. Donna Reedand Joan Crawford were also considered for the part[4] but Reed was just twenty-nine years of age at this time making her rather young to play the forty year old Margo and Crawford was already working on the film The Damned Don't Cry. Mankiewicz praised Davis for both her professionalism and the calibre of her performance, but in later years continued to discuss how Colbert would have played the role.
Anne Baxter had spent a decade in supporting roles and had won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Razor's Edge in 1947. She got the role of Eve Harrington after the first choice, Jeanne Crain, became pregnant. Crain was at the height of her popularity and had established a career playing likable heroines; Zanuck believed she lacked the "bitch virtuosity" required by the part, and audiences would not accept her as a deceitful character.
The role of Bill Sampson was originally intended for John Garfield or Ronald Reagan. Reagan's future wife Nancy Davis was considered for Karen Richards and Jose Ferrer for Addison DeWitt. Zsa Zsa Gabor actively sought the role of Phoebe without realizing the producers were considering her, along with Angela Lansbury, for Miss Caswell.
Mankiewicz greatly admired Thelma Ritter and wrote the character of Birdie Coonan for her after working with her on A Letter to Three Wivesin 1949. As Coonan was the only one immediately suspicious of Eve Harrington, he was confident Ritter would contribute a shrewd characterisation casting doubt on Harrington and providing a counterpoint to the more "theatrical" personalities of the other characters.Marilyn Monroe, relatively unknown at the time, was cast as Miss Caswell, referred to by DeWitt as a "graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art." Monroe got the part despite Zanuck's initial antipathy and belief she was better suited to comedy. Smaller roles were filled byGregory Ratoff as the producer Max Fabian, Barbara Bates as Phoebe, a young fan of Eve Harrington, and Walter Hampden as the master of ceremonies at an award presentation.[2]

[edit]Cast

A young and unknown Marilyn Monroe (Miss Caswell) in a scene with Anne Baxter, Bette Davisand George Sanders.

[edit]Response

[edit]Critical reaction

All About Eve received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics upon its release on October 13, 1950 at a New York City premiere. The film's competitor, Sunset Boulevard, released the same year, drew similar praise, and the two were often favorably compared. Film criticBosley Crowther loved the film, stating it was "a fine Darryl Zanuck production, excellent music and on air ultra-class complete the superior satire".
Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times has praised the film, saying Bette Davis' character "veteran actress Margo Channing in All About Eve was her greatest role".[5] A collection of reviews from the film's release are stored on the website Rottentomatoes.com, and All About Eve has garnered 100% positive reviews there, making it "Certified fresh." Boxoffice.com stated that it "is a classic of the American cinema -- to this day the quintessential depiction of ruthless ambition in the entertainment industry, with legendary performances from Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and George Sanders anchoring one of the very best films from one of Hollywood's very best Golden Era filmmakers: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. It is a film that belongs on every collector's shelf - whether on video or DVD. It is a classic that deserves better than what Fox has given it."[6]

[edit]Awards and honors

[edit]Academy Awards

[edit]Golden Globe Awards

[edit]NY Film Critics Circle Awards

[edit]Directors Guild of America Awards

  • Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Motion Picture - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

[edit]Cannes Film Festival

[edit]British Academy of Film and Television Arts

[edit]Later recognition and rankings

In 1990, All About Eve was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The film received in 1997 a placement on the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame. The film also earns a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
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. (Marilyn Monroe, who makes a brief appearance in Eve, ranked # 6 on the screen legends list.)

[edit]Sarah Siddons Award

The film opens with the image of a fictitious award trophy, described by DeWitt as the "highest honor our theater knows - the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement." In 1952, a small group of distinguished Chicago theater-goers began to give an award with that name, which was sculpted to look like the one used in the film. It has been given annually, with past honorees including Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and Celeste Holm.

[edit]Adaptations

A radio version of All About Eve starring Tallulah Bankhead as Margo Channing was presented on NBC's The Big Show by the Theatre Guild of the Air on November 16, 1952.[9] The production is notable in that Mary Orr, the writer of the original short story that formed the basis for the original film, played the role of Karen Richards. The cast also featured Alan Hewitt as Addison DeWitt (who narrated), Beatrice Pearson as Eve Harrington, Don Briggs as Lloyd Richards, Kevin McCarthy as Bill Samson, Florence Robinson as Birdie Koonan, and Stefan Schnabel as Max Fabian.[9]
In 1970, All About Eve was the inspiration for the stage musical Applause, with book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. The original production starred Lauren Bacall as Margo Channing, and it won the Tony Award for Best Musical that season. It ran for four previews and 896 performances at the Palace Theatre on Broadway. After Bacall left production, she was replaced by Anne Baxter in the role of Margo Channing.

[edit]Popular culture references

The plot of the film has been used numerous times (frequently as an outright homage to the film), with one famous example being a 1974 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, "A New Sue Ann". In the episode, the character of Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), hostess of a popular local cooking show, hires a young, pretty and very eager fan as her apprentice and assistant, but the neophyte quickly begins to sabotage her mentor, in an attempt to replace her as host of the show. (Sue Ann, however, unlike Margo Channing, prevails in the end, countering the young woman's attempts to steal her success and sending her on her way.)[10]
The rock band of the same name got its name when lead singer Julianne Regan and (then) drummer Manuela Zwingmann saw the film for the first time at the former's parents' house in 1985.
A 2008 episode of The Simpsons, "All About Lisa", is influenced by this film. In the episode, Lisa becomes Krusty the Clown's assistant, eventually taking his place on television and receiving an entertainment award.[11]
Pedro Almodovar's 1999 Academy Award-winning Spanish language film, Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother), has elements similar to those found in All About Eve. The title of the film itself is an homage to the 1950 film. In the first scene, the character of Manuela and her son, Esteban, are watching a dubbed version of the movie on television when the film is introduced as "Eve Unveiled." Esteban comments that the film should be called "Todo Sobre Eve" ("All About Eve"). Later in the scene, he begins writing about his mother in his notebook and calls the piece "Todo sobre mi madre." Also in All About My Mother, Manuela replaces Nina Cruz as Stella for a night in a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, leading a furious Nina to accuse her of learning the part "just like Eve Harrington!"[citation needed]
In a season 3 episode of Gossip Girl, titled "Enough About Eve", Blair has a dream where she is Bette Davis in All About Eve.
In the fifth season of "L Word" a so-called fan becomes Jenny's assistant while she is directing a movie; later the fan blackmails the movie studio to letting her direct and she proceeds to take over Jenny's life.

[edit]Thematic content

Critics and academics have delineated various themes in the film. Rebecca Flint Marx, in her Allmovie review, notes the antagonism that existed between Broadway and Hollywood at the time, stating that the "script summoned into existence a whole array of painfully recognizable theatre types, from the aging, egomaniacal grand dame to the outwardly docile, inwardly scheming ingenue to the powerful critic who reeks of malignant charm."[12] Roger Ebert, in his online review, says Eve Harrington is "a universal type", and focuses on the aging actress plot line, comparing the film to Sunset Boulevard.[13] Similarly, Marc Lee's 2006 review of the film for The Daily Telegraph describes a subtext "into the darker corners of showbusiness, exposing its inherent ageism, especially when it comes to female stars."[14] Kathleen Woodward's 1999 book, Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations (Theories of Contemporary Culture), also discusses themes that appeared in many of the "aging actress" films of the 1950s and 1960s, including All About Eve. She reasons that Margo has three options: "To continue to work, she can perform the role of a young woman, one she no longer seems that interested in. She can take up the position of the angry bitch, the drama queen who holds court (the deliberate camp that Sontag finds in this film). Or she can accept her culture's gendered discourse of aging which figures her as in her moment of fading. Margo ultimately chooses the latter option, accepting her position as one of loss."[15]

[edit]Heterosexual marriage versus homosexuality and female agency

Professor Roger J. Corber, an expert on homophobia within the cultural context of the Cold War in the United States, posits that the foundational theme in All About Eve is that the defense of the norms of heterosexuality, specifically in terms of patriarchal marriage, must be upheld in the face of challenges from female agency and homosexuality.[16] The nurturing heterosexual relationships of Margo and Bill and of Karen and Lloyd serve to contrast with the loveless relationship predation and sterile careerism of the homosexual characters, Eve and Addison.[17] Eve uses her physical femininity as a weapon to try to break up the marriages of both couples, and the extreme cynicism of Addison serves as a model of Eve's future. For instance, shortly after Eve had a phone call placed to Lloyd Richards in an attempt to break up his marriage, she was shown walking up to her room with her female co-conspirator, their arms about one another and each of them dressed for bed. Even film reviewer Kenneth Geist, despite being critical of the emphasis that Sam Staggs' book All About All About Eve places on the film's homosexual elements, nonetheless acknowledged that Eve's lesbianism seemed apparent, and not just in that scene.[18] Geist asserted that Mankiewicz "was highly contemptuous of both male and female homosexuals",[18] although Mankiewicz himself suggested otherwise in an interview in which he argued that society should "drop its vendetta against them".[19]
Homosexuality was often linked to Communism during the Cold War's Lavender Scare and critics have written about film's subtle, yet central, Cold War narrative. The fair amount of subtlety employed in All About Eve is seen as primarily being due to Production Code restrictions on the depiction of homosexuals in the media during this time.[16][20] However, notwithstanding those restrictions, Corber cites the film as but one example of a recurrent theme within American film of the homosexual as an emotionally bereft predator.[16] The documentary The Celluloid Closet also affirms this theme to which Corber refers, including citing numerous other film examples from the same Production Code time period in which All About Eve was made.[16][21]
Another important thematic of the film, in terms of war politics and sexuality, involves the post-World War II pressure placed upon women to acquiesce agency. This pressure to resume "traditional" female roles is especially illustrated in this film in the contrast between Margo's mockery of Karen Richards for being a "happy little housewife" and her lengthy and inspired monologue, as a reformed woman later, about the virtuousness of marriage, including how a woman is not truly a woman without having a man beside her. This submissive and effeminate Margo is contrasted with the theatricality, combativeness, and egotism of the earlier career woman Margo, and the film's two homosexual characters. Margo quips that Eve should place her award "where her heart should be", and Eve is shown bereft at the end of the film. At dinner, the two married couples see Eve and Addison in a similarly negative light, with Margo wondering aloud what schemes Eve was constructing in her "feverish little brain". Additionally, Eve's utility as a personal assistant to Margo early in the film, which is a subtle construct of a same-sex intimate relationship, is decried by Birdie, the same working-class character who immediately saw through Eve's story about a fictional husband. Birdie sees such agency as being unnatural, and the film contrasts its predatory nature ("studying you like a blueprint") with the love and warmth of her later reliance upon Bill. The pressure to acquiesce agency and more highly valued patriarchy, following the return of men from the war, after having been shown propaganda promoting agency such as Rosie the Riveter and after having occupied traditionally male roles such as bomb-building factory worker, was deemed "the problem that has no name" by well-known feministBetty Friedan.[22]



Despite what critics such as Corber have described as the homophobia pervasive in the movie,[16] All About Eve has long been a favored film among gay audiences, likely due to its campy overtones (in part due to the casting of Davis) and its general sophistication. Davis, who long had a strong gay fan base, expressed support for gay men in her 1972 interview with The Advocate


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