All About Eve

The Sarah Siddons Society hosts an annual banquet to present a small and rarefied group of dramatic professionals with the New York theater world's most coveted honor, the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement. Miss Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) is on hand to accept the award for Best Actress; the youngest person ever to receive the award, Eve is already a household name across America, and her star has only just begun to rise. From across the room, legendary but fading actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis) watches like a hawk as Eve glides up to the head table to accept her award. More than just about anyone else, Margo knows exactly how Eve got where she is today. For just ten months ago, Margo was at the top of the theater world, and Eve was a star-struck young fan who spent her evenings behind the theater hoping to catch a glimpse of her idol. When a friend of Margo's introduces the two women, the older actress took pity on the young ingénue and hires her as a secretary. Once ensconced in the bosom of Broadway, Eve began a dizzying rise to the top, leaving in her wake a trail of broken promises and destroyed lives. Watching the young star receive her coronation from a table in the audience, Margo does indeed know all about Eve.

All About Eve is Bette Davis' signature performance. The famously flinty actress with the striking, unconventional look perfected her "diva" persona as Margo Channing, the Broadway queen beset by secret self-doubts and targeted for extinction by a younger version of herself. The story of an ambitious young actress who schemes to replace her older, more experienced mentor is a simple one (the basic storyline was even used to drive the "plot" in 1995's hilariously awful breast-fest Showgirls), but Davis' complex performance moves her character beyond archetype and even invites sympathy for what is ultimately a fairly unsympathetic character. Margo Channing is obnoxious and disdainful of practically everything and everybody, but at heart she's a hard worker who's earned what she's got and harbors deep-seated insecurities about her age and prospects; her rival Eve Harrington, played by Anne Baxter in her most famous role, uses her breathless, eager facade to mask a brutal, even sociopathic ambition: the quintessential user, she worms her way into the good graces of anyone in a position to help her in her rise to the top, then just as easily betrays them when it suits her interests to do so. Acting both as the film's narrators and all-around observers and commentators are George Sanders as Addison DeWitt, a supercilious drama critic who's very aware of his power to make or break a production with a few cutting words from his pen, and Thelma Ritter as Birdie, Margo's crochety, suspicious assistant.

Bette Davis was nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for All About Eve, which itself was nominated for a record 14 Oscars and won six, including Best Picture.

Points to ponder:

• All About Eve features an early appearance by Marilyn Monroe, who plays Addison DeWitt's date at a party.
• Compare this film to Sunset Boulevard, released the same year: both films feature aging actresses forced to deal with their morality, and both are famous for the dramatic, even campy performances by their leading ladies. Which film do you think is better at portraying this theme? Which is better overall?