hollywood flashbacks: bette davis in all about eve
‘Hold onto your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.’
Sometimes you get the feeling, when watching a film, that you’ve just witnessed a moment that will go down in Hollywood history. The immortal words above are voiced by Bette Davis to kick off the house party to end all house parties in All About Eve, the 1950 classic about women in showbiz.
Just to illustrate how memorable this film is, the scene that follows introduces a young starlet named Marilyn Monroe, who plays a ditzy protégée of caustic theatre critic Addison DeWitt. Monroe steals the spotlight for a brief few minutes as she attempts to sound intelligent, looks stunning, and tries to figure out how to get a drink from the butler: “I can’t yell ‘Oh Butler’ can I, maybe somebody’s name is Butler,” she says logically.
All About Eve is the story of a theatre star, Margo Channing (Davis) who, while not exactly on her way out, seems to have hit a plateau. Roles keep coming in, but they’re all for young women, and she starts to question whether she can still play them. The beginnings of self-doubt are the perfect opportunity for a young woman, Eve (Anne Baxter) to worm her way into Margo’s life and, bit by bit, start to take over.
Nobody believes Margo at first about what’s happening. She is known for being a diva, for needing to always get her own way, and for throwing tantrums when she doesn’t. Her friends at first think her claims about Eve are just more tantrum-throwing, with a little bit of insecurity about her age thrown into the mix. See this line about men vs. women ageing: “Bill’s thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he’ll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.” Margo, on the other hand, is very aware that she’s forty and looks it.
It’s not until Eve has ingratiated her way into everyone’s lives and been cast as Margo’s understudy that the truth is revealed. If that sounds kind of creepy and a bit sad, well, yes, there are elements of that. But mostly this is a witty, hilarious look at the problems women face in showbiz, and a showcase for a fabulous Davis, she of the goggly eyes (as my Mum refers to her) and emphatic delivery. She and George Sanders as DeWitt throw around some of the best lines in cinema history like they were born to play these roles, and maybe they were. One of my favourites: “I loathe cheap sentiment,” said by Davis at an emotional moment, but with all the scorn she can muster. Or DeWitt on his own newspaper column: “While you wait you can read my column. It’ll make minutes fly like hours.”
Bette Davis had been a major Hollywood star for a long time before this – her film debut was in 1931, and she started appearing as the lead in the mid- to late-30s. Several Best Actress nominations (and two wins) didn’t necessarily mean quality roles all the time, and by 1950 her career was in decline. There are obvious parallels between her story and Margo’s, which makes it all the sweeter when Margo has her comeback at the end.
This was Davis’s comeback role. Another Best Actress nomination resulted – she supposedly only lost because her co-star Anne Baxter was nominated in the same category, and the votes were split between them (I can’t see that happening these days). A bit of trivia for you: this is the only time four actresses from the same film were nominated.
You know those films where maybe your mum or your grandma recommends it to you, and they say it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. You nod and say you’ll give it a try, but really you wonder how good it could be, when it’s from a time long before sophisticated comedies like Arrested Development and Parks and Recreation. Well, take it from me, this film most definitely stands the test of time. Think Lucille Bluth proclaiming ‘Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant. It just makes me want to set myself on fire’. All About Eve is that kind of good.
Be prepared, though: it’s kind of long. At 134 minutes, make sure you have plenty of snacks with you. But settle in and give it a shot – it’s one of those films that deserves to be a classic.
