Hollywood likes to show how the theatre is full of treachery - unlike the innocent film world - the Queen of these remains Joseph L Mankiewicz' magnificent ALL ABOUT EVE.
Nominated for fourteen Academy Awards, it won six but overlooked Bette Davis' magnificent ageing star Margo Channing.
At the Sarah Siddons Theatre Awards, the Best Actress is won by Eve Harrington for her debut. In the audience, she is watched disdainfully by five people who know all about Eve: actress Margo Channing, her director lover Bill Sampson, playwright Lloyd Richards and wife Karen, and waspish critic Addison DeWitt.
They each remember how they met Eve... Karen found her waiting outside the stage door of Margo's latest hit and brings her backstage. Eve tells them she is a war widow who has seen every performance.
Margo offers Eve a PA job but slowly realizes that she has her own agenda... becoming a star.
Shelf or charity shop? Taking a bow on the shelf... I can watch ALL ABOUT EVE over and over. It's a film where every componant fits together seamlessly with career-best performances from all concerned. Mankiewicz' direction and screenplay provides the frame and the motor which drives the excellent performances. It's interesting to reflect that Davis and Gloria Swanson in SUNSET BOULEVARD were both up for the Best Actress Academy Award for playing actresses who were ageing - their characters were 40 and 50 respectively. My favourite performances come from Thelma Ritter's Birdie, Margo's spikey dresser - viewing the mink-strewn bed at a party, she says "It looks like a dead animal act", notably Birdie is the only one not taken in by Eve. Marilyn Monroe is delicious as Miss Casswell, Addison DeWitt's 'protege' from the 'Copacabana School of Dramatic Art' in a performance that hinted at performances to come. Anne Baxter is marvellous as the duplicitous Eve, her hushed voice and demure appearance slipping occasionally to reveal the conniving wannabe star. George Sanders deservedly won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award as the silky Addison DeWitt who eventually pulls the rug under Eve's machinations while Bette Davis simply IS Margo: proud, bitchy, unsure, drunk, realistic, and above all else, a star. So fasten your seat belts... it's gonna be a bumpy night.
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