All About Eve
Written for the Screen and Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Based on the short story, "The Wisdom of Eve," by Mary Orr
Reviewed by Rebecca O’Connor
---------
It shouldn’t be difficult to persuade readers that they “gotta see” a movie that the Writers Guild of America, West lists as having the #5 screenplay of all time, on their “101 list.” In fact, I imagine a few of the regular readers of this column have seen All About Eve more than once. That doesn’t make a difference. You should watch it again. I’ve watched it six times in as many months, getting another jolt out of it every time. It has shifted the way I see the world in that way that the right movie at the right time does, in tiny shakes that go down your own, personal fault lines. Eve may be one of those movies that are almost
always the right movie at the right time. All About Eve speaks to me personally, as a woman and as a memoirist attempting to understand and write about the life of another woman who was half my age at the time the movie premiered: My grandmother, Barbara Jean Cates, who died from a .22 rifle shot to the head, possibly by her own hand. I have many 50s movies lined up in my Netflix cue, I’m eager to hear that era’s dialogue and imaginatively place myself in that decade, do my research; but I wasn’t prepared for All About Eve. In 1950, the year Eve premiered, my grandmother, was nineteen years old and eight years away from her death. In 1958, when she died, her life didn’t just end, my family erased her, but in 1950 Barbara Jean was very much alive, falling in love, getting married and so, whatever else happened in the years that followed, this was the year that I imagine her being most alive. I was watching movies trying to imagine her brief years as an adult. What I found in Eve was that my grandmother and I in many ways could have lived in the same time. The challenges and the possibilities of being a woman, especially a woman in a man’s world, resonate throughout the movie, enough to remind modern viewers that there is nothing new under the sun.
All About Eve has a well-rounded cast of characters in a way that Hollywood rarely offers us. The men are heroes and villains in varying degrees but, more importantly, the women are as well. Bette Davis astounds as the angrily aging stage actress Margo Channing (40 years old, see… ancient) who has her life and those of her friends thrown into upheaval by an unbelievably faultless and wickedly cunning ingénue, Eve Harrington. “So many understated charms,” Margo quips once she has a whiff of what the much younger and seemingly sweeter woman has planned. Of course none of the men in the movie--the lover, the playwright or the producer--quite see the far reaches of Eve Harrington’s manipulations, even the critic (played by the urbane George Sanders) with the poison-pen and his own bag of tricks, takes some time to catch on to her. Eve is an amazing villain, and the two women closest to Margo, Karen (Celeste Holm) and Birdie (Thelma Ritter) are as complex in their supporting roles as are the leading ladies. Even the women who flash momentarily across the screen have depth. An early-career Marilyn Monroe shines as a starlet with a pitch-perfect vacuity draped like an ermine coat over her barely concealed intelligence and wit. The eerie Phoebe (played by Barbara Bates) in the final moments of the movie chills as a character we instantly recognize to the core as she brings the story full circle.The screenplay by Joseph Mankiewicz was based on a short story “The Wisdom of Eve” by Mary Orr, published in Cosmopolitan in May 1946. According the WGA, Fox bought the story rights for $3,500
but no credit was stipulated, so she isn’t listed on the credits--and neither is the woman the story truly belongs to, Elisabeth Bergner, the Austrian actress who lived it. Bergner told Orr the story of a young actress who waited for her outside the stage in a red coat for months, eventually insinuating herself into Bergner’s life, lying, deceiving and even trying to steal her husband. Orr fictionalized it without permission, but left some unmistakable details.Mankiewicz’s crystalline dialogue propels this movie at high speed through sharp turns. Accused by her soon-to-be fiancé of overreacting and allowing jealousy toward Eve to threaten their relationship, Margo Channing snarks, “It’s obvious you’re not a woman.” From this point forward the focus of the movie sharpens on this point, that none of the men know what it means to be a woman and the women understand all too clearly. In Margo’s world it is the men who run the theater and their world must be navigated to succeed--but there are also women pulling the strings, and
other women willing to do anything to pull those same strings if you don’t watch your back, and these ladies know it. Karen, voicing distrust of Eve, is called a cynic by her husband and retorts, "The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!" But it is Margo who fully sums it up: “Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman.”At its heart, Eve is a story that is timeless because it is true. It can be dangerous business being a woman, in any era, and the danger doesn’t only come from men. My take away is that I may not really need to delve into the past to look to answers for human behavior. Whether in 1950 or in 2012, women still fight to remain relevant, devour one another, fall in love, fail their friends or lovers, and try as best
they can. I wondered if my grandmother in 1950 was Margo or Karen or even perhaps Eve. Being any of these characters could have killed her. I’ve wondered who I have been, and who I am now as well. This film provides a number of possible models. Watch All About Eve and look for yourself in it. You will find your ambition, desire and hope, some facet of what you were, are or wish you could be in each character, whether you are a man or a woman. If you’re a woman though, well, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”---------
Rebecca K. O'Connor is the author of the award-winning memoir Lift published by Red Hen Press. She has published essays and fiction in South Dakota Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Los Angeles Times Magazine, West, divide, Prime Number Magazine, Used Furniture Review and The Rumpus. Her novel, Falcon's Return was a Holt Medallion Finalist for best first novel and she has published numerous reference books on the natural world.