![]() But, she increasingly injects herself into Margo’s personal affairs with a charming smile and a delicate lack of guile that, for a while at least, masks her growing ambitions. She quickly makes herself indispensable, which is initially appealing in that she makes Margo’s life run more smoothly. Margo, who at first is merely tolerant of Eve’s presence, decides to give her a job as an assistant, which Eve takes to immediately. Once in Margo’s rarefied presence, she slowly works her way into everyone’s hearts with a sad story about a miserable Midwestern life and a husband killed in the war. Karen, moved by her dedication, offers to bring Eve backstage to meet Margo, an offer she reluctantly accepts. Karen spots her hanging around the back of the theatre and learns that she is such an avowed fan of Margo’s that she has attended every single performance of the play in which she is performing. We then flash back to the moment when Eve first entered their lives. We are introduced to all the major characters here, including Margo, who smokes and drinks her way through the proceedings and has enough of an aggravated air about her to let us know she is not pleased with what is transpiring Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), an award-winning playwright and his wife Karen (Celeste Holm), who are two of Margo’s best friends Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill ), a theatre director and Margo’s husband and Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), a supercilious theatre critic who is, at this point, providing the voice-over narration (at different points in the film Karen and Margo will step in as narrators, as well, giving the film a particularly complex perspective). ![]() The film opens with the annual gala of the fictional Sarah Siddons Society, an insular, self-important group of theatre aficionados, where Eve becomes the youngest person ever to be given its coveted annual award. The Eve of the title is Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), and by the end of the film we will know quite a bit about her, if not “all” (as Citizen Kane, which was co-written by Mankiewicz’s older brother Herman, made so clear, it is impossible to know everything about anyone, inside and outside of the spotlight). after a string of box office flops, which is why she told Mankiewicz that her being cast as Margo Channing, a great Broadway actress who finds herself being usurped by a cunning starlet, “resurrected from the dead.” ![]() Davis had recently ended a nearly two-decade relationship with Warner Bros. It is also a remarkably candid depiction of the double standards by which men and women are judged in the limelight and how fleeting stardom can be, which is why it is so fitting that the film functioned as a comeback vehicle for star Bette Davis. It is both funny and ruthless, and it somehow manages to flaunt caricature while also digging deep into the human psyche and rooting out its characters’ various desires, insecurities, and frailties. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve is one of the great triumphs of classical Hollywood-a smart, insightful, and darkly humorous drama about the intersections of art and show business and that insatiable appetite we call ambition. Stars: Bette Davis (Margo Channing), Anne Baxter (Eve Harrington), George Sanders (Addison DeWitt), Celeste Holm (Karen Richards), Gary Merrill (Bill Simpson), Hugh Marlowe (Lloyd Richards), Gregory Ratoff (Max Fabian), Barbara Bates (Phoebe), Marilyn Monroe (Miss Casswell), Thelma Ritter (Birdie Coonan) Mankiewicz (based on the short story “The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr)
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