Stars: Anne Baxter, Bette Davis, George Sanders
Rated: NR
Released: 1950
What I “know”: Another movie I literally know nothing about. I’ve started the DVD player up, so I’m on the title screen, so I see a very … alluring Bette Davis? With a couple behind her? I’m guessing she breaks them up or tries to for some devilish scam. Also, it’s 2 hours and 19 minutes. Did no one have editors back then??
What I know after reading the Netflix sleeve: Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s sharp script anchors this story about New York City theater life, with Bette Davis playing an aging Broadway diva who employs a starstruck fan (Anne Baxter) as her assistant, only to learn the woman is a conniving upstart. The now-classic “All About Eve” won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (George Sanders).
Well, I’m intrigued. A “sharp script” is always going to be a positive for me, and this thing was a “short wait” on Netflix, so it’s obviously still popular. Or, more likely, they only have one copy they have to ship around the country. Oh well, here we go!
TRAILER!
3:20: Addison Dewitt, Sanders’s part, is a catty old hag, isn’t he? He’s giving the lowdown on everyone at this awards ceremony and he pulls no punches. He said the playwright’s wife had nothing in her history or life that should have brought her closer to the stage than Row E, center.
4:10: Ha! Margo pours liquor in her glass and waves away the soda water. Good girl.
6:45: Well, the women don’t like her. Men all clapping, Karen and Margo … not so much. I mean, having read the sleeve, I know she does Margo wrong. Maybe Margo and the wife are friends? Maybe Eve sleeps with the writer to get the part? No idea. P.S. “Playwright” is one of those words that I know is right, but when you write it a few times, it stops looking right. Like how if you say any simple word, like drawer, over and over, it starts to sound weird. Anyway …
8:44: A-ha! She is Margo’s best friend. And she’s apparently the one who lets Eve in the door. Good work on destroying your friend’s career, Karen!
12:45: Bette Davis’s eyes, those of songs, don’t do much for me … but I could listen to her voice all night. And Birdie with the early entry for “best spoiler of Margo’s attitude.”
14:30: Uh, Eve is giving off some strong stalker vibes. I mean, beyond the just “huddling in an alley and then doing SRO for every performance” thing. Margo says, “There are other plays” and Eve says, “Not with you in them.”
16:03: “It got so I couldn’t tell the real from the unreal.” Dude, this is where you escort her out of the room. They were too trusting in the 1950s. She moved ACROSS THE COUNTRY to follow a play Margo was in. Come on. My stalker senses are giving me a headache.
19:46: “Heaven help me, I love a psychotic.” Margo is my spirit animal.
27:58: I’ll tell you who doesn’t like Eve … Birdie. That lady is smart. She smells the opportunist.
31:34: Man, if “Single White Female” had come out in the ’40s, Eve Harrington could have played it.
37:35: Haha, Birdie’s face is all, “I tried to warn you” after Eve said she’d sent a telegram to Margo’s boyfriend for his birthday. Birdie is all of us.
40:28: WAIT, dresses in the ’50s had pockets? What? I thought that was a new-ish thing.
45:25: Holy crap, that’s Marilyn Monroe! That’s the prettiest I’ve ever seen her look. So pure and young.
55:40: Man, Karen is the reason everything keeps getting worse. Road to hell, etc., etc. Now she wants to make Eve Margo’s understudy and says, “I think [Margo]’d cheer.” Guess again, buttercup. She’s literally never seen her act a single second, aside from the four seconds in this movie she’s acted like a non-stalker.
59:08: Eve is talking crazy about how applause is like love and Karen just smiles like it’s the sweetest thing she’s ever heard. Karen is the worst.
1:10:47: “It is about time the piano realize it has not written the concerto.” Damn, Lloyd Richards. I mean, Margo’s being a bitch, no doubt, but Lloyd had no chill.
1:15:16: So Margo just basically quit the play and got dumped, all within 10 minutes? Well done. Time management skills, check.
1:24:58: Karen is THE WORST.
1:26:05: Or wait, Eve might be the worst. Lordy, she might as well just hitch up her skirt and ask Bill if he likes what he sees.
1:27:13: Bill handled that about as well as he could have, short of slapping her and calling her names. “What I want, I go after. I don’t want it coming after me.”
1:28:39: “We all come into this world with our little egos equipped with individual horns. If we don’t blow them, who will?” I can see why Sanders was honored. He’s the little observer for all of us.
1:30:17: Oooooooh Addison is coming for Eve. Coming hard. Hoisting her on her own petard, or something.
1:45:18: Karen tells Eve, “I don’t think you meant to cause unhappiness.” Oh, she very much did. Oh my god, she’s blackmailing Karen! I don’t know who to root for. I mean, they’re both terrible people. Bill is the only person in this movie who gives a shit about Margo!
1:55:12: Nope, never mind, Eve is the worst. Karen is just stupid.
1:58:50: I know I’m supposed to hate Eve, so well done, moviemaker? I mean, there’s not a lot of nuance to her, so I’m glad she didn’t get an award for this. But cripes, she just moves from man to man, power grab to power grab.
2:02:04: I mean, Addison is more responsible for creating Eve than even Karen, but man … that slap across her face felt due.
2:03:50: THERE’S MY ADDISON. He set her up, and he’s taking her down, hard.
2:04:54: “You are an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, our contempt for humanity and an inability to love and be loved.” If he wasn’t using this as a way to hit on the woman he just exposed as a power-hungry liar, it would stand for a description of my dating history.
2:10:23: And Margo, line of the movie:
2:12:47: Why are there so many stalkers in this movie? Now there’s just some young girl who broke into Eve’s apartment? At least Eve … er, Gertrude … was invited in.
2:16:49: Man, talk about circle of life. The stalker becomes the stalkee. Is everyone in acting this insane?
I’m trying to do a little introspection as to how I love Scarlett O’Hara so much, but hate Eve. No clue. But I need to see more Bette Davis movies if she always plays sassy ladies. I lived for her, even if she was a little slow on the uptick.
Up next: “The Sound of Music”!
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