Oscars Retrospective: All About Eve (23rd Academy Awards Review)

  

All About Eve Suite~Alfred Newman - All About Eve

One of the best writing tricks to making a good story is to take clichés that we’ve seen numerous times before and turn them on their head, creating something entirely fresh yet still familiar. For example, by 1950, the Hollywood fairy tale movie was already becoming a bit “been there, done that” as numerous classic films feature a young, bright-eyed (usually female) newcomer getting into show business to follow their dreams. They’re given a rude awakening by just how much hard work is involved but through sheer grit, determination and belief in themselves, they achieve the success of their dreams and become a star (examples: 42nd Street (1933), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), A Star is Born (1937), Dance Girl Dance (1940), Ziegfeld Girl (1941) etc.). But what if you took that same young, bright-eyed (female) newcomer and turned her into a ruthless monster who manipulates and cons everyone she meets into becoming her sucker?

All About Eve centers around an illustrious but aging actress named Margo Channing (Bette Davis) who is coming to grips with her fading looks and, thus, her failing career. Enter Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), a fan of Margo’s who insists on meeting the star and befriending her. Eve inserts herself into Margo’s circle and does everything she can for her idol. Before long, however, it becomes apparent that Eve is not as innocent as she seems and is using Margo’s own insecurities and weaknesses against her to take everything she holds dear.

It isn’t really a spoiler to point out that Eve ends up being Margo’s antagonist as the film has a great framing device. The film opens with a scene of Eve accepting an award and attending an awards show with all the corresponding glitz and self-fellatio. As she’s giving speeches and being given speeches about how awesome she is, the camera periodically cuts to Margo and her friends who are all staring daggers at Eve before flashing back to explore their relationship and how they got to this point. This invites so much interest right from the word go. Eve is clearly the center of attention and seems nice enough, even more so in the beginning of the flashback when she first meets Margo. But then why do these people all so visibly hate her?

Now, if we’re being completely truthful, to my understanding, the film wasn’t really written with the aforementioned cliché subversion in mind (at least not particularly). All About Eve is based on an anecdote given by British theater actress Elizabeth Bergner who met a fan at one of her shows and invited her into her household. Overtime, however, Bergner realized that said fan was attempting to undermine her and steal her spotlight. (Bergner never actually mentioned the name of said fan and it goes without saying that whoever it was wouldn’t have been in any rush to admit to being a sleazebag so the identity of “the real Eve Harrington” remains unknown.) This story was relayed to fellow actress Mary Orr who wrote a short story about the topic. Said short story was then acquired by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who wanted to write a story about an aging actress and thought that the conniving understudy would be a great element to add drama to the story. As a result, All About Eve is less about the fairy tale of the wonders of superstardom and more of a cynical look at the cyclical nature of show business.

Margo Channing is arguably Bette Davis’ best and most iconic role. Davis always stuck out compared to most other actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood as she eschewed the familiar, easy roles for more challenging and dignified performances. Unique to most other actresses, she was willing to ugly herself up to make for a stronger performance and play downright horrible characters. As the 40s turned into the 50s, however, she would discover one of the universal truths about both show business and common life, that being that a woman’s beauty and time that she’s considered attractive has an expiration date. Even today, you’ll very rarely see any female leads over the age of 40 while men can still be considered leads well into their 50s. Call it sexism or call it biology, it’s a tragic truth that everyone must come to grips with as they get older.

By the time All About Eve came out, Davis would’ve been 42 and her gorgeous looks were rapidly fading. Playing an aging, award-winning actress who’s pissed off at her lover, her friends, her age and the unfairness of the world around her can’t exactly have been the hardest role for her to play (though, apparently, Margo is a lot less nightmarish to be around than the real Bette Davis was). This is the role that the movie hinges on and Davis plays it pitch-perfect, perfectly encompassing the frustration that all too many actresses (and women in general) have felt before her and since.

It was so successful, in fact, that Davis managed to be one of the very few actresses to overcome the age barrier and get a successful second wind as a leading lady in Hollywood. It would quickly fail again as most of the films she picked in the 1950s would be failures but her career would then receive a third wind in the 60s after What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) (another important piece of film history that, rest assured, we will be talking about down the line). The fact that her career has managed to spark so many ebbs and flows speaks to the testament of both Davis’ dynamism as an actress and how much the public loved her.

But now let’s talk about Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, Margo’s understudy turned eventual nemesis. She’s phenomenal as well but what makes the role so fascinating, and might surprise viewers of the film so many years later, is how carefully she’s written. This is another classic archetype that has been reused numerous times over the years in sitcoms, TV shows and second-rate movies: the best friend/biggest fan who becomes close to the main character and slowly takes away everything that makes them special. Most later projects usually tip their hand in this regard to make it very apparent that the understudy is actually not a very nice character and is planning on gaslighting our protagonist into becoming a jerk.

All About Eve is very careful in how they lay out Eve’s arc. When we meet her, she seems so sweet and naïve and just wants Margo to like her. As she starts to absorb more and more success, however, she still acts so chipper and nice that you do start to wonder how much of it is actually in Margo’s head or if she’s just being gaslit. You don’t ever really see Eve’s true colors until very close to the end of the movie. This makes for a more subtle performance but also adds to the moral of the film: was Eve always so rotten or did show business make her rotten? I’m sure you can have a lot of debates about this one way or the other. I also love her comeuppance at the end of the film and all the implications it has about what is going to happen to her but I won’t dare spoil it for you.

Rounding off this trio of main characters is Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), a witty and cynical theater critic who acts as the narrator of the film. This is once again a character that audiences in 1950 would’ve been familiar with but the film plays with a bit. In most films of this era, the critic is usually a villainous character (see A Star is Born, above) and DeWitt at first seems to reflect that. The character comes off as very dry in his needling and trolling of the main characters and is borderline hated by most of them who seem to tolerate DeWitt insomuch as they know that he can make or break their careers. As the movie goes on, however, he turns out to be a layered character who actually does have his own rigid moral compass.

DeWitt also adds to an interesting commentary on All About Eve as a whole. While the film is nominally about theater actresses, most of its themes and relationships between the characters seem pretty reflective of Hollywood as well. There always has been a symbiotic relationship between Hollywood and the world of theater as many of the first major Hollywood productions were adaptations of Broadway musicals with theater continuing to be seen as the more prestigious art form. (The bitter irony being that, nowadays, most new Broadway musicals are adaptations of Hollywood movies.) All About Eve came out at the dawn of the 1950s in Hollywood: a time period when the first generation of moviemakers who existed in a world that always had movies came of age. An industry that just got rocked by the war and the HUAC hearings and was now trying to figure out the way forward in a changing America. Margo and Eve seem to inhabit the two sides of this coin as Margo is the old-school theater performer who treated the job like a profession without forgetting what’s important in life and is slowly getting phased out while Eve is the fame-hungry, self-obsessed Hollywood starlet who wants the glitz and glamor, everything else be damned.

I could keep talking all day about the symbolism of the characters and how wonderfully they’re written and acted and that is also deliberate when talking about All About Eve. In terms of the movie itself, it kinda begins and ends with these descriptions. There’s no action scenes, no creative cinematography, no grand adventure, no plot holes; just a drama with great characters, witty dialogue and smart commentary. There’s really not much else I can go into too deeply with the movie without giving away some major twists though I will warn that it is slow. While it is about Margo and Eve’s rivalry, the film is also primarily showing the world of show business and how brutal and catty it can be. Many scenes can drag if this doesn’t particularly interest you.

The rest of the side-characters are all good but nothing too special and that is a good thing. No one is trying to overstep or steal the show, they all do the job that the script requires. The most notable standout is a cameo from a young Marilyn Monroe about halfway through the movie. For people familiar with her later comedies such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Some Like It Hot (1959), this can come off as surprisingly against-type as she’s not the breathy-voiced moron that she portrays in her later films.

All About Eve is one of the best movies about show business and still one of the smartest movies of its era. It takes all of the romanticism and stereotypes of the dream of Hollywood and throws it in the audience’s face in a mean-spirited bag that encourages them to try to remember the important things in life. Anyone who has any aspirations of working in Hollywood or show business owes it to themselves to watch this at one point in their life, just to be aware of what they’re getting themselves into. Or, Hell, anyone coming to grips with old/middle age. It’s a smart, sharp satire about show business that still has its staying power.

But could it be called movie of the year?

In case you missed it:

1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2

2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2

3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2

4th Academy Awards (1930/31): Cimarron: Part 1, Part 2

5th Academy Awards (1931/32): Grand Hotel: Part 1, Part 2

6th Academy Awards (1932/33): Cavalcade: Part 1, Part 2

7th Academy Awards (1934): It Happened One Night: Part 1, Part 2

8th Academy Awards (1935): Mutiny on the Bounty: Part 1, Part 2

9th Academy Awards (1936): The Great Ziegfeld: Part 1, Part 2

10th Academy Awards (1937): The Life of Emile Zola: Part 1, Part 2

11th Academy Awards (1938): You Can't Take It With You: Part 1, Part 2

12th Academy Awards (1939): Gone With the Wind: Part 1, Part 2

13th Academy Awards (1940): Rebecca: Part 1, Part 2

14th Academy Awards (1941): How Green Was My Valley: Part 1, Part 2

15th Academy Awards (1942): Mrs. Miniver: Part 1, Part 2

16th Academy Awards (1943): Casablanca: Part 1, Part 2

17th Academy Awards (1944): Going My Way: Part 1, Part 2

18th Academy Awards (1945): The Lost Weekend: Part 1, Part 2

19th Academy Awards (1946): The Best Years of Our Lives: Part 1, Part 2

20th Academy Awards (1947): Gentleman's Agreement: Part 1, Part 2

21st Academy Awards (1948): Hamlet: Part 1, Part 2

22nd Academy Awards (1949): All The King's Men: Part 1, Part 2