My thoughts: All About Eve is my favorite movie of all time. I have been a huge fan for over half of my life. I can recite entire scenes word for word (much to the amusement of my family). This movie, for those who don’t know, is about an aging Broadway star, Margo Channing (played by Bette Davis) who takes a seemingly innocent young woman, Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter), under her wing. Eve turns out to be a deviously ambitious usurper who wants Margo’s career and her man, Bill Sampson. The movie has amazing (and highly quotable) dialogue and a lot of references to theater that I have slowly but surely learned over the years. When I first saw this movie as a fourteen-year-old, the references to Arthur Miller, Macbeth, Hamlet, Ibsen, Sarah Bernhard, etc. went completely over my head.
All About Eve also has wonderful supporting characters: Karen Richards is Margo’s best friend and the wife of Margo’s playwright; Birdie Coonan is Margo’s wisecracking assistant; and Addison DeWitt, shrewd and heartless, writes about the theater and knows a little too much about everyone’s business. The latter two characters have some of the best lines in the movie. Thelma Ritter was in A Letter to Three Wives and her character, Birdie, is the first person to get wise to Eve’s game.
I love this movie because it is witty and is a wonderful drama without being melodramatic. The characters are flawed but very compelling. Eve is a bit like Undine Spragg, our old friend from The Custom of the Country —she fights her way into the theater world and wants success by any means necessary. All About Eve was directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, who also directed the A Letter to Three Wives (and, interestingly, Guys and Dolls). Oh, and did I mention that the force of nature known as Bette Davis is in it? Dear reader, watch it, and thank me!
Great line (from Margo Channing): Infants behave the way I do, you know. They cry and misbehave; they’d get drunk if they knew how. When they can’t have what they want. When they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.
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