All About Eve
Short description
All About Eve centres on Eve Harrington, an apparently devoted young admirer of the Broadway star Margo Channing. Eve works her way into Margo's household and inner circle, and her loyalty gradually reveals itself as ambition. She is determined to displace the older actress and take her place on the stage, and her scheming unsettles the people around Margo, among them her partner and director Bill Sampson and the playwright Lloyd Richards and his wife Karen. The one figure who recognises what Eve is doing is the theatre critic Addison DeWitt, whose interest in her is far from innocent.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz wrote and directed the film, the fourth of the fourteen he directed, following House of Strangers and preceding No Way Out. Bette Davis plays Margo, with Anne Baxter as Eve, George Sanders as Addison DeWitt, Celeste Holm as Karen Richards, Gary Merrill as Bill Sampson and Hugh Marlowe as Lloyd Richards, in a credited cast of forty-seven. Darryl F. Zanuck produced for 20th Century Fox on a budget of about one million dollars.
The film holds an IMDb rating of 8.2 from roughly 149,000 votes and a TMDB rating of 8.1 from around 1,700 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 9.6 from 110 reviews, placing the professional response noticeably above the audience scores. It runs 139 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- Although film producer Darryl Zanuck wanted Marlene Dietrich in the lead role, Mankiewicz insisted on Claudette Colbert. However, two weeks before filming began, she was forced to decline the role due to an accident. Ultimately, the role of Margo Channing went to Bette Davis.
- Film star Bette Davis once confessed that Joseph Leo Mankiewicz saved her career by giving her such a great role.
- The twentieth and final episode of the 19th season of the animated series "The Simpsons" (1989) is titled All About Lisa. The main plotline of the episode is a parody of "All About Eve."
- The original title of the film, “Wisdom of Eve,” was changed several times: first it became “Eve Harrington,” then – “The Best Role,” after which the final version – “All About Eve” – was found.
- The film’s screenwriter, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz, began his career in 1929 in Berlin, where he devised captions for silent films. He was hired for this job by his older brother, Herman Mankiewicz.
- Mary Orr's story "The Wisdom of Eve" was based on a real event that happened to actress Elisabeth Bergner, who was often called "Garbo of the stage." The story was published in Cosmopolitan magazine in May 1946; Orr then wrote a radio play based on it, which attracted the attention of Joseph Leo Mankiewicz.
- Fox Studio acquired the rights to adapt the story for $3,500.
- Tallulah Bankhead and Susan Hayward also vied for the role of Margo.
- It is known that Mankiewicz drew inspiration for the image of Margo from the fate of Peg Woffington, an Irish actress of the 18th century; after the film's release, rumors circulated that Tallulah Bankhead was the prototype for Margo. However, Bette Davis could also identify with the character, feeling the decline of her fame and the threat from youth, as the continuation of the 41-year-old actress's career was then in question. The success of "All About Eve" resolved this problem for Davis.
- In 1990, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
