Few movies have been accepted better by the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than All About Eve (1950), which received 14 Academy Award nominations. Only Titanic (1997) has received that amount. The movie won six Oscars, including best picture. It is similar to Titanic in that way. It is dissimilar because the audience doesn’t know what will happen in the end, unlike the ship that is destined for an iceberg.
Ironically, for a movie about two competing Broadway actresses, Bette Davis and Anne Baxter competed against each other for the Best Actress Oscar. Neither won. In fact in a year in which Sunset Blvd. also was released, and Gloria Swanson was nominated for her performance, no actress who played an actress in a movie won the award. It went to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday. It is believed by some that Baxter and Davis split the votes, and had they not then one of them would have won the award.
On the surface it appears that All About Eve is a heartwarming story about a young actress, Eve Harrington, played by Baxter, who comes of age to become the star of Broadway. But in the realm of the theater, and
Margo Channing, played by Bette Davis, is an aging Broadway star. She knows it, the critics know it, the producers know and her friends know it. The fans might know it, but they are always the last to figure these things out – or so the belief is in
One night after giving a stellar performance, Margo retreats to her dressing room where she meets an adoring fan named Eve. Eve tells Margo a sob story about how she is an actress from Milwaukee who saw Margo one night in San Francisco and was so impressed with her performance that she has followed the actress around ever since. The ushers at the theater can vouch for Eve because they have seen her attend every one of Margo’s performances.
Margo is flattered and Eve is brought on as her secretary. Soon Eve becomes Margo’s understudy. Margo gets a kick out of this because she adores the attention. She also gets an opportunity to be young again through Eve. But soon understudy becomes actress and actress will become competitor for Margo. This Margo doesn’t like. But there isn’t much she can do about it.
Eve has met all of Margo’s theater friends. There is the critic Addison De Witt, played brilliantly by George Sanders. Sanders was an odd man who won an Oscar for his role as the theater critic, a role in which he was perfectly cast as his personality and De Witt’s match well.
Hugh Marlowe plays Lloyd Richards, a successful Broadway playwright. Richards’ wife, Karen, played by Celeste Holm, is Eve’s biggest supporter in the beginning. She encourages the actress to continue on. Like Margo, things backfire on Karen as she finds herself competing with the young actress for her husband’s attention.
Margo and her friends are stuck having to watch the monster Eve take over Broadway and become a huge star. They seem powerless to stop her, all that is except De Witt. He is similar to Eve. He does some checking in Eve’s past and finds out that she really isn’t an actress from
De Witt is as conniving as Eve and does not blow her cover. He sits back and watches Eve get all the rewards that come with being a Broadway star. The movie ends with Eve getting an award and then being confronted by an adoring fan, who happens to be an aspiring actress. The whole cycle begins again.
Marilyn Monroe made an impression of Joseph Mankiewicz with her performance in The Asphalt Jungle. He cast her as De Witt’s girlfriend, another aspiring actress. Her style to getting jobs is different from that of Eve’s. Miss Caswell is unsure of herself. Eve is not. This is the reason why Eve is the star and Miss Caswell is not. Marilyn Monroe at this point was unsure of herself and this might be a reason why it would be three more years before she became a star, although all the star qualities she possessed were present for the short time she was on screen.
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