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All About Eve
Sam Staggs, author of the a book about the making of “All About Eve,” calls the 1950 film the “bitchiest movie ever made.” Full of snappy and snapping dialogue, and behind-the-scenes drama, “All About Eve” still stands as the definitive drama about the competitive world of the legit stage, and a new Blu-ray edition of the film finds it looking and sounding its very best. Bette Davis stars as Margo Channing, a Broadway star whose time in the limelight is fading. She’s still playing roles meant for much younger women. Women like Eve (Anne Baxter), who shows up at Channing’s stage door one day after observing her for months on end. After Eve performs her sad story for an assembled backstage audience of Margo and her friends, Margo opens her world to Eve, inviting her to be her personal assistant. However, Eve is soon handling more than Margo’s phone calls. Through manipulation and subtle deception, Eve manages to worm her way onto the stage, and it isn’t long before she’s making a play for Margo’s lover (Gary Merrill). When theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) sees Eve on stage and in action, he sees the future, and decides to help Eve in her quest. After all, by being close to Eve, he’s sitting on the story of the year. As Eve, Anne Baxter delivers a performance unlike most of her other roles. She speaks glowingly of Margo Channing in hushed, reverential tones, but behind her eyes is a singleminded determination to sweep Margo aside and take over not only her role on stage, but in life as well. As she puts her plan into effect, her vocal tone becomes bolder, and by the end of the picture, her velvety tones have hardened into harsher, more coarse speech. Bette Davis is Baxter’s match on screen. Her Margo seems somewhat modeled on the flamboyant actress Tallulah Bankhead. (Bankhead would in fact play the role herself in an NBC radio version of the drama in 1952). She whips herself around the room, gesticulates wildly, and bites the head off those closest to her. “I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're HER words she's speaking and HER thoughts she's expressing?” asks playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) to Margo. She replies with venom, “Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theatre!”
“All About Eve,” in fact, is so full of piquant observations about the world of showbiz, I could spend an entire article just quoting them. Addison DeWitt: “That’s all television is, my dear, nothing but auditions.” Lloyd Richards, on actors: “There comes a time that a piano realizes it has not written a concerto.” Joseph Mankiewicz both directed and wrote the picture, and by most accounts, Davis felt the script was so well-penned that she didn’t touch a word, and despite her famous temper, she behaved on set, with the exception of not speaking to actress Celeste Holm, whom Davis thought to be too much of a goody two shoes. “If [Mankiewicz] had not have been a film director, psychiatry would have been his next profession,” opines one scholar on the Blu-ray disc. Mankiewicz was a keen observer of not only the theater, but human nature. As if the onscreen showdown between Margo and Eve weren’t enough, there are plenty of supporting roles that stand out in “All About Eve.” Marilyn Monroe has a brief role as a young starlet, and when she’s on screen, Scott Stroud quite correctly notes on his commentary track that you can’t take your eyes off her. As Addison DeWitt, George Sanders is terrifically reptilian, looking out for himself and his byline by supporting Eve in her efforts to take down Margo. DeWitt’s seen this all happen before, and knows it’ll happen again, an observation that’s keenly made plain as the movie comes to a conclusion, as Eve welcomes a mousey young fan backstage. At the 23rd Academy Awards, “All About Eve” received 14 nominations, a record that went unmatched until “Titanic” in 1997. It’s still the only film to score four female acting nominations. Davis and Baxter were both nominated for Best Actress, and Holm was nominated for Best Supporting Actress along with co-star Thelma Ritter, who played Margo’s longtime assistant Birdie, who sniffs out Eve’s plan early on. (No one could pull the wool over Thelma Ritter’s eyes! See: “Rear Window,” “Pillow Talk,” etc.) None of the actresses took home a statue, however, because their co-nominations likely canceled each other out. George Sanders did win for Best Supporting Actor, and the film won an additional five Oscars, including Best Picture. “All About Eve” still stands up today as a delicious dish of a movie. As long as the theater lives, “Eve” will, too. ALL ABOUT EVE on BLU-RAY This new high definition transfer of “All About Eve” to Blu-ray looks amazing. It’s quite simply one of the best classic film transfers I’ve seen. There are little to no visible blemishes on the image.
There are two audio commentaries on the disc that were previously available on the standard DVD of “All About Eve.” One features Mankiewicz biographer Ken Geist, Mank’s son Christopher, and actress Celeste Holm. The other one features Sam Staggs, author of a book about the film. His commentary is sprinkled with dishy stories about the production, but there are unfortunately a lot of long gaps where he doesn’t speak at all. There are documentaries about director Joseph Mankiewicz and about the film’s production, but my absolute favorite feature on this disc is “The Real Eve.” Mary Orr, whose “The Wisdom of Eve” was first published in Cosmopolitan in 1946, based her short story on the real life of actress Elisabeth Bergner. The real “Eve” in this case was a young woman who called herself Martina Lawrence. She became a young secretary to Bergner, and got a little too close to the Bergner for comfort. Orr embellished the tale for her short story, and sold the screen rights to 20th Century Fox for $5,000. Flash-forward some 40+ years into the future. Playbill’s Harry Haun actually tracked down Lawrence, and got her in the same room with Orr -- and taped the conversation. If you think the movie “All About Eve” has some fireworks, wait till you hear Orr and Lawrence spar. 20th Century Fox has done a splendid job with this Blu-ray set, which comes packaged in a nice digipack booklet with biographical sketches of the principal cast and crew, and several pictures. For anyone that loves movies, this is a must own.
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