by Staggs, Sam
As sensible as it seems today, the innovative policy of seeing a movie from the beginning was ahead of its time in 1950. Cinephiles welcomed the absence of people climbing over their feet, but most moviegoers were confused. “Why are we standing on line outside in the cold when there are empty seats inside?” some complained. “Save the ‘theatrical experience’ for Broadway shows,” grumbled others. The flood of telephone calls to the box office became so heavy that the management hired an extra operator to provide information.
And so a week later Fox and the Roxy abandoned their highfalutin plan. Back to the “grind” policy of continuous performances, with people arriving and leaving throughout the show. After the theatre reverted to a customary schedule, ticket sales increased 25 percent. Variety reported that “while the Roxy will probably gross a big $91,000 on the initial week ending tomorrow, a combination of favorable word-of-mouth and unanimous rave reviews indicated the figure would have gone much higher had Eve been playing on a straight exhibition policy.”
The reviews were not unanimous raves. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote that “Mr. Mankiewicz has been too full of fight—too full of cutlass-edged derision of Broadway’s theatrical tribe.… Two hours and eighteen minutes have been taken by him to achieve the ripping apart of an illusion which might have been comfortably done in an hour and a half.” Crowther never got around to telling a thing about the plot. Instead, he described the characters in monster-movie terms: “Eve, who would make a black-widow spider look like a ladybug” and Margo, “an aging, acid creature with a cankerous ego and a stinging tongue.… George Sanders is walking wormwood.” (Crowther makes the movie sound like a documentary on lethal arthropods.)
More typical of the reviews is this one by Leo Mishkin in the New York Morning Telegraph: “All About Eve is probably the wittiest, the most devastating, the most adult and literate motion picture ever made that had anything to do with the New York stage … a crackling, sparkling, brilliantly written and magnificently acted commentary on the legitimate theatre. Bette Davis gives the finest performance she has ever played on the screen.”
Hollywood braced for a hit. On November 6, three days before the West Coast premiere, Bette Davis finally pressed her hands and feet into wet cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Why had Sid Grauman waited so long to immortalize her?
Two servicemen, S.Sgt. Jack Spencer and T.Sgt. Bert R. Nave, assisted Bette as she knelt down and then arose. Newsreel cameras recorded the belated initiation. Bette’s mood was jovial. As she stepped over Betty Grable’s legprints, she quipped, “Too bad there’s no way to imprint my poached-egg eyes down there.”
The cement had hardened by the night of the premiere. On Thursday, November 9, a thousand fans filled the specially erected bleachers in front of Grauman’s before sundown. Thousands more lined Hollywood Boulevard. A headline that morning in the Hollywood Citizen-News had proclaimed, GALA PREMIERE TONIGHT FOR “EVE” AT CHINESE.
“The fans were treated to a glittering array of evening gowns,” stated the Hollywood Reporter, “and to add to the lustre and significance of the evening, the Roosevelt Hotel across the street blacked out all letters on their big electric sign except the word EVE.”
As the stars arrived by limousine, emcee Harry Crocker introduced them over a microphone. He was kept busy, for all of these attended: Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Kirk Douglas, Linda Darnell, Van Heflin, Joan Bennett, Janet Leigh, Larry Parks and Betty Garrett, Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse, Richard Conte, Ezio Pinza, Charles Coburn, Mercedes McCambridge, Louis Jourdan, Paul Henreid, Janet Gaynor, Paul Douglas and Jan Sterling, Donald Crisp, Debra Paget, Jean Hersholt, Robert Cummings, Robert Mitchum, George Raft, Macdonald Carey, Hedy Lamarr, Danny Kaye, Dorothy McGuire, Gregory Peck, Franchot Tone, Van Johnson, Corinne Calvet, Victor McLaglen, Jeanne Crain, Glenn Ford and Eleanor Powell, Teresa Wright, and Greer Garson.
Marilyn Monroe arrived on the arm of her agent and protector, Johnny Hyde, the man who had landed her the part of Miss Caswell by twisting Zanuck’s arm. A few of the fans recognized her; others asked “Who is she?” never guessing that even the initials “M.M.” would someday be bigger than all the other names combined. Johnny looked bad. His face was ashen and he seemed to clutch Marilyn’s arm for support. He died of a heart attack five and a half weeks later.
Anne Baxter and John Hodiak, so much in love, arrived together and chatted with the emcee. They were followed by George and Zsa Zsa, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Marlowe, Darryl and Virginia Zanuck, and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Celeste Holm didn’t attend, for she was starring on Broadway in Affairs of State, written especially for her by the French playwright Louis Verneuil. Celeste was ecstatic, for Verneuil had also written Sarah Bernhardt’s last two plays for her. “I’m afraid some of Verneuil’s extremely French ideas on extra-marital relations have had to be revised for American audiences,” Celeste coyly told a reporter.
Along with her new play, Celeste was singing nightly at the Plaza Hotel’s Persian Room. She had turned her back on Hollywood and wouldn’t return until 1955 for The Tender Trap. “It was a world of showing off and tennis playing and cars,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it.” But Bette said, “I love Hollywood. The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can’t get work in movies.”
In the forecourt of Grauman’s, where her freshly pressed hand and footprints caused a stir, Bette was all smiles as she explained to reporters why she wasn’t staying for the movie. “My husband, Gary Merrill, is in Germany making Decision Before Dawn and I promised him I would not see our picture until he returned.”
Inside the theatre, All About Eve kept the audience laughing. There was perhaps the occasional wince, for some of those present surely wondered if Mankiewicz had targeted them in such lines as the one about “permitting mature actresses to continue playing roles requiring a youth and vigor of which they retain but a dim memory.”
There was not only laughter but also sporadic applause. When Addison DeWitt slapped Eve and warned her, “Now remember as long as you live, never to laugh at me,” the audience roared its approval not only for Eve’s comeuppance, but for George and Anne’s bravura acting.
And, when the movie ended, there was long and enthusiastic applause.
It was a night of Hollywood festivity. Dinner parties preceded the premiere, one hosted by Zanuck and another by Mankiewicz. After the film there were more parties, in homes and in nightclubs along the Sunset Strip.
The studio bash was held at Ciro’s. Bette’s “date” was her mother, Ruthie. A telephone was brought to their table and Bette placed an overseas call to Gary in Germany. “It was Bette’s night of triumph,” wrote Louella Parsons. “It was heartwarming to see the great and the near-great of Hollywood line up to pay her tribute.”
Sitting in the front banquette of Ciro’s, with Clifton Webb and Jane Wyman close by, Bette heard a commotion at the front entrance. “I’m surprised they’ve got any flashbulbs left,” she muttered to Ruthie. “Who’d arrive at this hour?” Turning her head, Bette saw another star framed in the doorway, wearing a red brocade gown under a full-length white mink coat. The star was posing for pictures.
Presently the new arrival, floating on glamour, made her regal way toward Bette. Under her breath Bette said, “Oh, Christ!” For her new admirer was Joan Crawford.
(Many years later, each time All About Eve was shown on television, Joan took her phone off the hook so that she wouldn’t be interrupted. “She must have seen it ten times,” said a friend. She pointedly told the same friend that she watched it “because of the script and the director.” But Mankiewicz, Joan’s former boyfriend, said, “She never told me she liked it.”)
Bette was not delighted to see Joan that night, but even an unwelcome apparition couldn’t dim her triumph. They kissed and exchanged warm words, these two who had both so recently been labeled “box office poison.” Once again Bette Davis was a force to be reckoned with. From there, it was on to the Osca
rs.
* * *
Things I Promised Not to Tell
This phrase, which is neither seen nor heard in the film, occurs in the script. There, Mankiewicz designates it as the title of Addison’s newspaper column the day he attacks Margo. But that’s only one bit of minutiae connected with All About Eve. I hope some readers will find the following as irresistible as potato chips.
• Several lines in Eve were not exactly new. Margo’s retort to Karen, “I’m so happy you’re happy,” was heard in Dragonwyck (1946), the first film Mankiewicz directed. (He also wrote the script.)
• In Bordertown (1935), Bette Davis taunts Paul Muni: “You’ve an adding machine where your heart ought to be.” In Eve, she tells Anne Baxter, “You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.”
• In Beauty for the Asking (1939), starring Lucille Ball, there is a character named Eve Harrington. She’s played by Leona Maricle in this obscure comedy revolving around cosmetics and hairdos.
• There are two allusions to Cole Porter songs in All About Eve. When Margo proclaims, “I hate men,” she’s quoting the title of a number from Kiss Me, Kate. Karen’s query to Bill Sampson when he’s comforting Margo after Addison’s newspaper attack—“I guess at this point I’m what the French call de trop?”—comes from, and rhymes with, “You’re the Top.”
• In Mary Orr’s story “The Wisdom of Eve,” Margola (the prototype for Margo) lives in a “nest of forty rooms at Great Neck, Long Island, called Capulet’s Cottage.” Too bad Mankiewicz didn’t use this name for a Margo Channing hideaway; it’s the perfect retreat for a star who lives like an institution.
• Cora, the name of the heroine in Lloyd Richards’ new play Footsteps on the Ceiling, is the name of the character played by Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
• Kenneth Anger, in Hollywood Babylon II, refers to Eve as a “triple-suicide movie.” His tasteless epithet is not entirely accurate. It’s true that Barbara Bates and George Sanders killed themselves, but the death of Marilyn Monroe is best described as mysterious.
• Several members of the All About Eve cast wrote, or co-wrote, autobiographies. George Sanders was first, with Memoirs of a Professional Cad in 1960. The only one to write two autobiographies was Bette Davis: The Lonely Life in 1962 and This ’N That in 1987. Gary Merrill’s 1988 memoir is Bette, Rita, and the Rest of My Life. Anne Baxter’s autobiography, published in 1976, is titled Intermission. Marilyn Monroe perhaps dictated My Story to a journalist sometime in the 1950s; it was published in 1974.
• The only female character in the film who is not, and has never been, on the stage is Karen Richards, played by Celeste Holm.
• For die-hard trivia fans who also speak French: Match the line from Eve with its translation in the subtitled version shown in France.
1. Les esclaves ne sont pas encore syndiqués.
A. Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night. (Davis)
2. Quel beau sujet de pièce! Il ne manque que l’infâme séducteur!
B. I haven’t got a union. I’m slave labor. (Ritter)
3. Accrochez vos ceintures, la nuit va être agitée.
C. That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. (Sanders)
4. Partout où il y a de la magie, de l’illusion et un public, il y a le théâtre.
D. Wherever there’s magic and make-believe and an audience, there’s Theatre. (Merrill)
5. Que je vous désire m’apparaît subitement comme le comble de l’improbabilité.
E. What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end. (Ritter)
(Answers: 1-B; 2-E; 3-A; 4-D; 5-C)
* * *
Chapter 22
Those Awards Presented Annually by That Film Society
At the end of 1949, the San Francisco Drama Critics Council had named Bette “Worst Actress of the Year” for Beyond the Forest. At the end of 1950, the same group voted her Best Actress for All About Eve. Accolades arrived almost daily: Bette Davis, “Actress of the Year,” Look magazine; “Best Actress,” the French film industry; “Most Popular Actress,” Photoplay. Bette shared the latter award with Joan Crawford.
Joan herself made several minor 1950 best-lists, for she had appeared in two Vincent Sherman pictures: The Damned Don’t Cry and Harriet Craig. In January 1951, when both Joan and Bette made the Photoplay list, both agreed to attend the ceremony the following month to accept their gold medals.
February 12, the day of the Photoplay awards party. In the middle of the afternoon Bette’s phone started ringing. “Haven’t you heard? You’re nominated! And All About Eve got more nominations than any other picture, ever.”
Joan Crawford, who had expected an Academy Award nomination for one of her Vincent Sherman pictures, got none. She was shattered. Feeling ill, she took to her bed and canceled her scheduled appearance at the Photoplay awards dinner that night.
Bette, wearing a black cocktail dress and a flowered hat, swept into the party with her arm locked in Gary’s. She drank champagne. She accepted a kiss from her former co-star Ronald Reagan and congratulations from his fiancée, Nancy Davis. Jane Wyman and her new beau, Hollywood attorney Greg Bautzer, seated beside Bette and Gary, congratulated her on her honors and wished them all the best as newlyweds.
The evening was well underway when Bette stretched across Greg Bautzer to ask Jane Wyman a question. Waving her cigarette toward an adjacent table, Bette whispered, “Who is that kid between Ann Blyth and Elizabeth Taylor? He keeps staring in my face.”
“Don’t you know him? That’s Joan Crawford’s son, Christopher. He’s only nine years old, but he’s accepting the award tonight for his mother.”
“How sweet,” said Bette. “And just where is Joan?”
“She’s at home ill,” Jane Wyman explained.
“Oh,” replied Bette in a stage whisper. “Something fatal, I hope.”
* * *
It was Anne Baxter’s fault that Bette didn’t win the Oscar. If Anne hadn’t insisted on running against Bette for Best Actress, Baxter herself might well have gotten the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, and Bette might have won another Oscar, her third, for her performance as Margo Channing.
Although Baxter played the title role, and was on-screen as much as Davis, the part of Eve Harrington seemed less important than the role of Margo Channing. It still does. For one thing, Anne Baxter had the ingenue role, while Bette played the star. Also, Eve was younger, while Margo had reached her full-bodied zenith. And, using a purely intuitive criterion to determine whose role is supporting and whose is not, everyone feels that the movie would survive without Anne Baxter, though not without Bette Davis.
Baxter had already won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for The Razor’s Edge in 1946 but she considered All About Eve her breakthrough picture. If she didn’t qualify as Best Actress now, she never would.
And so she campaigned hard for a nomination in the Best Actress category. The thrust of her campaign took place within the walls of 20th Century-Fox, because the designation of each nomination was made by the studios, regardless of the role’s billing or importance. It’s hard to blame Baxter for convincing Zanuck to boost her into Best Actress. Besides, they all thought she had a good chance of winning. The competition—or so it looked early in 1951—shouldn’t have been too hard to beat.
For starters, Bette Davis was unpopular all over town. Too many directors, producers, writers, and technicians knew, either firsthand or from rumors, what a monster she could be on the set. The long history of the Academy Awards proves that Oscars have often been given not as true rewards for professional excellence but rather as bouquets to persons the industry wishes to exalt. They have also been denied to those who didn’t meet Hollywood norms. And so, with her reputation, and since All About Eve hadn’t yet been validated as an Oscar classic, there seemed little chance that Bette Davis could win another Academy Award.
Gloria Swan
son, who hadn’t worked in years before Sunset Boulevard, was a contender, but how many Academy members would vote for her as that dotty old vamp who made Hollywood squirm? Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday looked like a flash in the pan; besides, she was considered a visitor from Broadway. Eleanor Parker, a nominee for Caged, seemed anything but a front runner. And so Anne Baxter started to look like a shoo-in.
Consequently, on February 12, 1951, when the Academy Award nominations were announced, Anne and Bette were neck-and-neck on the Best Actress list. They were the first two actresses ever nominated for starring roles in the same film. Later Mankiewicz said, “Bette lost because Annie was nominated. Annie lost because Bette Davis ditto. Celeste Holm lost because Thelma Ritter was nominated, and she lost because Celeste ditto.”
Celeste and Thelma, of course, were nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category. All About Eve was nominated for a total of fourteen awards, the most nominations ever received up to then, and for many years to come. It held the record until February 1998, when Titanic tied it with fourteen nominations.
Eve was also nominated in the following categories: Best Picture; George Sanders as Best Supporting Actor; Mankiewicz as Best Director and for Best Screenplay; Milton Krasner for Best Black-and-White Cinematography; Lyle Wheeler, et al. for Best Art Direction and Set Decoration in Black-and-White; 20th Century-Fox Sound Department for Best Sound Recording; Alfred Newman for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture; Barbara McLean for Best Film Editing; Edith Head and Charles LeMaire for Best Costume Design for a Black-and-White Picture. Eve won in six of the nominated categories.
In later years the Academy Awards came to be described as “a symbol that captures the essence of American popular culture” and “the most visible prize in the world.” But on the night in question—March 29, 1951—the Oscar ceremonies were visible only to those in attendance, for they were not televised until 1953. Even so, Oscar was perhaps the most audible prize in the world, for awards night had been broadcast complete on radio since 1945. (The Academy, with admirable foresight, filmed these pre-television Oscar events, and recently, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I watched the awards for 1950, as different in comportment from the present day as the court of Versailles is from Las Vegas.)
