Is there a film that is not one of my all-time personal favorites that I have covered more than All About Eve? I covered it for the original AFI Countdown, and then I did a whole episode of my long absent podcast on it since it was my podcast partner Jen’s pick and one of her all-time favorite films. In retrospect, my personal preferences tend more towards antihero types from the 70s, so maybe this one should be higher on my list. I don’t think there’s any better way to describe Eve Harrington than an antihero if not an outright villain. That’s probably oversimplifying the story here a bit, but it doesn’t feel wrong to me.
By the by: between COVID, the laptop I recorded episodes on’s dying, and Jen’s moving across the state, I have no idea if/when the podcast is ever coming back for the two or three people who might care enough to ask.
However, if I am going to classify Eve (Anne Baxter) as an antihero, perhaps I need to take a step back and define my terms in this situation. Eve is one of the two main characters in the film, the rising starlet to Margo Channing’s (Bette Davis) aging diva. As explained in the opening narration by one of the film’s two narrators, theater critic Addison DeWitt (a marvelously acidic George Sanders), Margo is a star due to hard work and talent, someone destined for the stage since she was four. Eve, on the other hand, well, she has the talent, that much is certain. What she doesn’t have is the patience or perhaps the work ethic to get there the old fashioned way. I suppose that for someone of Eve’s background–her actual background, not the one she tells everyone is her background–there really aren’t any other ways to becoming a stage star, but the point stands: Margo earned her position and Eve more or less stole it.
Now, if I were bold enough to compare the story here to the basic plot of A Star Is Born, a story retold in multiple films though I have only seen one of them, stardom can come to someone with the right sort of timing and talent. All About Eve could be the dark counterpart to the Star Is Born story. Both stories involve an aging star helping a younger protégé achieve greater success as the mentor’s own light is dimming. The difference is a crucial one in that the mentor is a lot more willing to help out in A Star Is Born compared to All About Eve. Eve doesn’t ask for help. She doesn’t present herself as an actress. Hell, Margo is surprised at one point that Eve is her understudy. The rising star of A Star Is Born is there because a man found a woman with talent and opted to nurture it until his own death-by-suicide to get out of her way, a plot that makes more sense in context than that sentence can possibly convey. Eve doesn’t ask. Margo doesn’t bring her in as anything more than a personal assistant. Eve just takes what she’s really after.
To be fair, though, the film doesn’t actually portray Margo as a naïve saint. She has a bit of a bite, and turning 40 hasn’t helped out much there. Even as her friend Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) continues to write plays ostensibly for her, she can see that the characters are much younger than she is, to the point where she’s not certain she can realistically play a woman in her 20s. Margo and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, fellow actor Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill) get into some real rows, and even if Margo doesn’t quite see Eve for what the younger woman is right away, she doesn’t treat Eve with kid gloves either. Margo’s difficult personality seems designed to help Eve take the older woman’s place since, well, maybe people might like to work with someone who isn’t such a diva.
Except Eve is worse. Margo got to her position because she earned it. Eve plays tricks and uses outright blackmail to get what she wants, all while playing the innocent ingénue. Like many a reality show contestant, she isn’t there to make friends. She’s there to win. That the film bookends itself with Eve’s winning of a major award is telling. She got what she wanted, and she made no friends along the way. Margo, Bill, Lloyd, and Lloyd’s wife Karen (Celeste Holm) want nothing to do with her after all of them to one degree or another helped Eve in her rise to success. Baxter plays Eve as downright evil in her final few scenes when Addison finally pulls the rug out from under her, mostly because he cares about the theater more than anything, and what she’s doing is delusional to be sure, but harmful to his beloved artform above all else. The gleam in Baxter’s eyes just before Addison shuts Eve down might be one of the nastiest looks I’ve seen in a film where no one gets killed.
In point of fact, that does seem to be something else about this film: it offers a look into the world of the stage in a way that shows how ugly it can be when strong personalities all clash. It’s not quite the world of filmmaking–Bill and Eve go to Hollywood at different points to make movies, but All About Eve‘s general vibe seems to be that the theater is the superior artform while both are better than television–but it may not be that different considering how Hollywood for years has treated actresses who dare to actually age.
What makes that concept stand out to me this time around comes in light of another recent Stacker Challenge film, The Sweet Smell of Success. Both films offer the viewer a look into the world of a certain profession, and the sort of ugly side to it is there to make everything look like it isn’t all sweetness and light. If there’s a difference, it’s that Addison DeWitt, while pointing out the world of the theater, seems to acknowledge that it is a different world while also not being one that maybe should be taken too seriously. He certainly doesn’t. He even points out how Karen is barely part of the world by virtue of the fact that she married into it. I get the impression that the film both acknowledges that the theater world is separate from what most people experience while at the same time suggesting what happens there is only really important to theater people.
And is there more a creature of theater than Addison? Sanders was the only male castmember to get an Oscar nomination for this film, and he was likewise the only performer to win one, my guess because Davis and Baxter split the vote for Best Actress while Holm and Thelma Ritter did the same for Supporting Actress. But Addison is such an interesting character in his own right. No one seems to particularly like him aside from Eve, her biggest mistake, and his intellectual air and withering putdowns make it clear he’s really not a part of that world so much as a man who judges it in every conceivable way. At the same time, his opening narration makes it clear that he is well aware that this world is not one most people seem to know or care about as much as he does.
What does all that mean? The film ends with Eve potentially getting the same treatment she gave Margo from another adoring young fan, and Addison seems to recognize it for what it is. Is this how Eve’s career ends? Well, Margo’s didn’t. Then again, Margo earned her stardom.
NEXT: All About Eve may not be one of my all-time favorites, but up next is my all-time personal favorite film. Be back soon for the 1950 Japanese film that has a concept named for it, Rashomon.
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