All About Eve

1950

 

Let’s talk about a scheming woman. Let’s talk about a woman who manipulates, and plots, and plays a long game of using whoever she can to get what she wants. Let’s talk about Eve Harrington. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about Margo Channing.

 

Bette Davis plays Margo, and some would argue that the brilliant, insecure, ageing stage actress is the role of her career. Margo is a firestorm of willfulness, passion, and ego. In short, she’s glorious.

 

The story begins at a theatrical awards banquet, and we’re immediately in the excellent hands of our narrator Addison DeWitt. He’s a theater critic, played by George Saunders at his most unctuous, which is saying something. He delivers every line like an aristocratic cat who just finished a particularly delicious bowl of cream.

 

At the banquet, DeWitt introduces us to the playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), his wife Karen (Celeste Holm), and ultimately, Margot Channing. The camera moves to Bette Davis, lighting her own cigarette, pouring her own drink, and very clearly bored with the proceedings. She is, DeWitt informs us, “A great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything else or anything less.” Damn right.

 

But Margo isn’t getting the award. No, that’s going to another actress. A younger, fresher actress—Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter.) And the rest of the movie is going to tell us all about Eve.

 

Flashback! Karen the playwright’s wife has noticed a mousy young woman standing outside the stage door every night as Margo stars in her husband’s hit play. One night she invites the poor waif inside to meet her idol Margo. The great actress is covered in cold cream and being attended to by her dresser Birdie (Thelma Ritter! Oh, how I love the skeptical, practical joy that is Thelma Ritter.)

 

Eve immediately ingratiates herself to Margo, spinning a heartbreaking tale that leaves not a dry eye in the dressing room. (Except Birdie’s, of course.) The mood is broken when they’re joined by Margo’s director and beau Bill Simpson. (Gary Merrill, who divorced his wife to marry Bette Davis soon after they made this movie. She’s that good.)

 

Bill is about to leave Broadway to go to Hollywood, a betrayal of the theater of the highest order, and something that makes Margo nakedly insecure. She’s of a certain age, and he’s going to the land of starlets. “Am I going to lose you, Bill?” It doesn’t look that way to me, but then there’s the Eve factor.

 

Eve moves into Margo’s guestroom that very night and immediately makes herself indispensable to the star. Margo didn’t know how much she needed someone until Eve became her “sister, lawyer, mother, friend, psychiatrist, and cop.” Too much, you think? You’re right.

 

The honeymoon doesn’t last long. Eve is just a little too eager to step in and help. Especially when it comes to boyfriend Bill. Boundaries, Eve. Seriously.

 

Thelma Ritter as Birdie seems to be the only one who sees what’s going on. Trust me, whether you’re planning a banquet or caught in a bar fight, she is the woman you want at your side.

 

It all comes to a head the night of Bill’s welcome back party. Margo finds him chatting and laughing with Eve downstairs when she was waiting for him to come to her room. She immediately starts hurling accusations, but Bill’s had it with her “age obsession.” She has no cause to worry, he insists. Eve isn’t a threat. She’s just “an idealistic dreamy-eyed kid.” Note to all men: This is not how to reassure your aging girlfriend that you’re not interested in a younger woman.

 

This is when the party gets going. And this is the Bette Davis drag queens worship. Her every word is tinged in witty poison and uttered between drags off cigarettes and slugs of dry martinis. The minute Karen arrives she can sense a fight is in the air. “Is it over or is it just beginning?” Margo pauses, drinks, steps onto the stairs and turns. Then she delivers The Line For All Time: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Yes!

 

Margo gets gloriously drunk, and wallows in the self-pity of an aging beauty. Lloyd’s new play has a lead written for a younger woman, but he still wants Margo to play it. He sees her as ageless. She’s in no mood to hear it. “Lloyd I’m not twentyish, I’m not thirtyish, three months ago I was forty. Forty. Four-O.” The number sounds like a death knell, and she realizes she’s never said it out loud before. “I suddenly feel as if I’ve taken all my clothes off.”

 

It isn’t that she cares about being older. She cares about being older than Bill. He’s thirty-two and he looks it. He’ll probably always look thirty-two, because men are just lucky that way. “I hate men.” Sing it, sister.

 

Meanwhile, upstairs, Eve is being heartfelt and earnest with Karen. She implores Karen to arrange it for her to be Margo’s understudy. Karen, dear sweet idiotic Karen, doesn’t see what harm it could do to give the kid a break.

 

You see where this is going. So does Margo.

 

I won’t say more, because you absolutely have to experience this movie for yourself. I don’t say this often, but this one is mandatory. There are schemes and plots and double-crosses and twists, and it’s all just so, so smart. Yes, it’s all overblown and overly dramatic, because these are overblown and overly dramatic people, Margo chief among them. Addison DeWitt describes her best. “You’re maudlin and full of self-pity. You’re magnificent!”

 

So many perfect lines

Joseph L. Mankiewicz rightly won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for this one. Anything else would have been a crime. There are so many brilliant exchanges, and so many iconic lines. It’s a screenwriter’s treasure trove.

 

Bill to Birdie, as he’s headed to Hollywood: “What do you want me to tell Tyrone Power?

Birdie: “Just give him my phone number. I’ll tell him myself.”

Margo: “I’ll admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.”

Margo, upon being accused of playing a silly game of cat and mouse: “Not mouse, never mouse. If anything, rat.”

Eve, storming to a door and pulling it open: “Get out!”

Addison, unfazed: “You’re too short for that gesture.”

 

Marilyn!

Addison DeWitt brings Marilyn Monroe to the party, playing the dumb-but-savvy-starlet role she’d perfect throughout her career. DeWitt points her toward a producer and tells her to do herself some good. She sighs. “Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?” Then she doffs her fur, squares her shoulders, and sparkles to sex goddess life. A star is born.

 

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