All About “All About Eve” (30 page)

A limousine rolled past. On the windshield was a large sticker that bore a picture of the famous statuette. This sticker acted as laissez-passer for cars to cross police lines.

John Lund, star of
My Friend Irma
and
My Friend Irma Goes West
, was the radio commentator who detailed the glamorous events underway: “Outside the Pantages Theatre it’s pandemonium.…”

Inside the Pantages Theatre the stage was dominated by a giant copy of the Oscar statuette, with rows of smaller copies arrayed on each side of it. Alfred Newman conducted the Academy Awards Orchestra in a medley, including “Mona Lisa” (nominated for Best Song) and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Perhaps he chose the latter as a sly allusion to all the sable and mink in the theatre, and also to Karen’s line in
Eve
: “Women with furs like that where it never even gets cold.”

Charles Brackett, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and co-author of
Sunset Boulevard
, delivered the opening address. Seldom glancing up from his notes, he alluded to timely topics such as “the Russian land grab” and “young American blood spilled in Korea.” His speech, resounding with pomp and noble solemnity, sounded like a high-school commencement address.

Fred Astaire, the suave emcee, also read from notecards. He said, “Tonight we present ten-inch statues worth forty-one dollars, but Caesar’s legions did not fight harder for the treasures of Gaul.”

The evening moved quickly because acceptance speeches were brief and there were no production numbers. There wasn’t much hokum except for the nominated songs, which included one from
Wabash Avenue
that rhymed “noggin” with “Copenhagen,” and “Mule Train,” sung with shrill conviction by Frankie Laine, who made it famous. Whatever skullduggery might have taken place in the fight for these forty-one-dollar, twenty-four-karat gold-plated statuettes was temporarily forgotten, and no one used the evening to filibuster.

Jane Greer, Debra Paget, Coleen Gray, Jan Sterling, and David Wayne led off by presenting various technical awards. Lex Barker and Arlene Dahl, husband and wife at the time, presented the award for art direction, Phyllis Kirk the award for short subjects.

In the meantime Robert Merrill, Metropolitan Opera baritone, sang the second nominated song, “Mona Lisa.” Merrill was photographed only in long shot until the end of the song, then in medium shot. He got no close-up, perhaps because he was not movie-star handsome.

Backstage, Marilyn Monroe was petrified as the time approached for her Academy Awards debut. She was wearing a black dress with a spidery tulle cape like a cowl. The color and the design of the dress were unflattering, and when she discovered that it was torn, she burst into tears. Fellow starlets Debra Paget, Jane Greer, and Gloria DeHaven rushed over and consoled her while a fashion attendant did some quick mending.

As Marilyn came onstage the orchestra played “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.” And she did look beautiful, in spite of the unfortunate dress. Her voice was steady as she presented the award for Best Sound Recording. Like other presenters, she seldom glanced up from the podium while reading her notecards, though she displayed great poise and showed not a sign of the nerves that must have terrified her. But she never presented another Oscar.

Marilyn was followed by an improbable troupe of presenters: Debbie Reynolds, Marlene Dietrich, Gene Kelly, Ruth Chatterton. Using a lorgnette to read the nominees, Chatterton presented Joe Mankiewicz his first Oscar of the evening, for Best Screenplay. Next came Leo McCarey, who gave Mankiewicz his second Oscar, this one for Best Director. Mankiewicz gave no acceptance speech in either instance, although he had just entered the record books as the only person to win both the Director and Screenplay awards for two consecutive years.

Mercedes McCambridge, the next presenter, read the list of Supporting Actor nominees: “Jeff Chandler in
Broken Arrow
, Edmund Gwenn in
Mister 880
, Sam Jaffe in
The Asphalt Jungle
, George Sanders in
All About Eve
, and Erich von Stroheim in
Sunset Boulevard
. And the winner is George Sanders,
All About Eve
.”

Since Sanders won the only acting award for
Eve
, and because his actions and emotions that evening are well documented, it’s worth a pause to hear his version, with additional dialogue supplied by Zsa Zsa.

Sanders accepted his Oscar, bowed to the audience but made no speech, walked backstage, and started crying. Safely behind the curtain, he wept uncontrollably. “I can’t help it,” he sobbed. “This has unnerved me.”

All tears were forgotten when, ten years later in his memoirs, Sanders described the evening in acerbic tones that echoed Addison DeWitt. His words can almost be read as “The Acceptance Speech They Wouldn’t Let Me Make”: “It is generally imagined that after receiving an Academy Award one’s salary shoots up. From personal experience I have to report that this is not so, and judging by the case histories of some of the winners, one is lucky still to receive any salary at all. Be that as it may, everyone wants an Oscar, and the handing out of these coveted trophies takes place at a highly emotional ceremony which makes strong men weak and turns egocentric actresses into weeping and blushing maidens. The correct procedure for winners is to disclaim all credit for their victory and to look stunned and transported with ecstatic disbelief and surprise. This is the moment when one draws to the limit of one’s reservoir of histrionic skill.”

It wasn’t an entirely happy night for Zsa Zsa, who felt left out: “We heard, ‘The winner—George Sanders.’ I was wild with excitement. I threw my arms around George and kissed him. ‘Oh George, I’m so proud, go up, go up!’ Without looking at me he rose and walked to the stage. He said into the microphone ‘Thank you,’ and Oscar in hand, he vanished behind the curtain.

“I sat alone as the other awards were handed out. The ceremonies came to an end—and I sat there. People filed out, the auditorium became completely empty, and I sat there; a huge, naked electric bulb was switched on: ushers came down the aisles, turning back the seats. I sat alone in the empty, eerily lit auditorium. Somewhere behind the curtains before me, the winners were savoring the triumph of their careers—photographed, interviewed, congratulated—I could hear their laughter and merriment. My husband was there, part of the laughter and merriment. He had completely forgotten me.

“Finally, George remembered. An usher came and led me backstage. Nearly everyone had gone. At night, I would think: if I had a career…”

George himself paints a less poignant picture of his helpmate: “The night I got my Oscar I was accompanied to the ceremony by Zsa Zsa Gabor, to whom I was then married. The occasion for me was filled with such painful suspense that I never rose above a state of frozen stupefaction, in contrast to Zsa Zsa who was soaring and plunging between enough dizzy emotional heights and depths for both of us, first of all with delight at attending this top-flight Beano, secondly with triumph at being associated with the winning team, and thirdly with black indignation when it was tactfully explained to her that she had not won a prize herself. She was scarcely eligible by virtue of the fact that she had not as yet made any films, but this quirk of circumstance seemed irrelevant to her, and for some time afterwards she remained both hurt and insulted.”

As the event neared its climax, Dean Jagger presented the Best Supporting Actress award to Josephine Hull for
Harvey
. Petite and rather feeble, she was helped onto the stage by several gentlemen. She grasped her Oscar and gave an endearing old-lady speech. She was so tiny, and her mink stole so large, that it seemed capable of asphyxiating her if it slipped so much as an inch.

Helen Hayes then appeared to announce the Best Actor Award. Looking somewhat like a flash-forward to Eve Harrington at age fifty, the First Lady of the American Stage played to the house: “I wish I could tell ya how good it is to be back here.” She beamed as they responded to her cue for applause. Hayes accepted for the winner, José Ferrer, who then joined the proceedings by radio hookup from New York. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen, three thousand miles away, and hello Helen Hayes,” he said.

Broderick Crawford announced that the winner of the Best Actress Award was Judy Holliday, who was also in New York. And then, rather incongruously, Dr. Ralph Bunche of the United Nations made a speech about responsibility and the necessity of the motion picture industry’s always acting democratically. He stated that in the UN, as in Hollywood, there is drama, comedy, even ham. That said, he presented the award for Best Motion Picture of 1950—
All About Eve
—to Darryl F. Zanuck. (This was Zanuck’s second honor of the evening. Earlier he had won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.)

Alfred Newman and the Academy Awards Orchestra played the
All About Eve
theme, and Zanuck concluded with “Thank you, Joe.”

Fred Astaire closed the evening by saying, “It is a great privilege to serve you. Good night.”

*   *   *

In New York, José Ferrer and Gloria Swanson were appearing together in a stage revival of
Twentieth Century
. Since they couldn’t leave the show to attend the Academy Awards, Ferrer decided to combine an awards-night party with a celebration of Swanson’s birthday (March 27, two days before). With so many potential Oscar winners in New York and attending the party at the Cafe La Zambra—Celeste Holm, Sam Jaffe, Thelma Ritter, George Cukor—the Academy arranged to install a radio hookup.

Someone ran up to Sam Jaffe’s table to tell him he had just lost to George Sanders. The press asked the remaining nominees to sit together at a table in the middle of the café. Judy Holliday and Gloria Swanson, meeting for the first time, shook hands. José Ferrer sat between them. George Cukor took the seat next to Gloria Swanson, and Celeste Holm sat on his other side.

With 280 guests, the party was in full swing when Ferrer was announced as Oscar winner for Best Actor. Judy Holliday and Gloria Swanson shrieked for joy, along with everyone else in the place. A few minutes later Judy Holliday, and not Gloria Swanson, was named Best Actress, and La Zambra went wild again. Gloria hugged Judy and said, “Darling, why couldn’t you have waited till next year?” But the radio network forgot to pull a switch and Holliday didn’t get to make a speech.

Gloria Swanson congratulated the winners and told reporters: “Well, this just means the old warhorse has got to go back to work.”

Bette Davis attended neither the Academy Awards in Hollywood nor Oscar Night East in New York. She was somewhere on the Yorkshire moors filming a British movie called
Another Man’s Poison
with Gary Merrill. (In it she retains the Margo Channing hairdo and the Margo Channing line readings—insofar as we can tell where Bette leaves off and Margo starts. But in every scene, Bette seems to realize what a lousy movie it is.)

In England, Bette and Gary, along with cast and crew of
Another Man’s Poison
, were gathered at a wee-hours party around a radio to hear the winners announced from America. When Broderick Crawford began reading the Best Actress nominees, Bette stood up expectantly. Crawford opened the envelope and read, “The winner is Judy Holliday for
Born Yesterday
.” Bette said to her assembled colleagues, “Good. A newcomer got it. I couldn’t be more pleased.” But she left the party early and returned to her hotel, where she informed the desk that she was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

Years later Bette Davis said her two Oscars, for
Dangerous
(1935) and
Jezebel
(1938), didn’t mean much because they were for the wrong films. She felt she should have won for
The Letter
and especially for
All About Eve
.

Bette made no ungracious comments about Judy Holliday’s surprise win. Rather, she contended that actors who have played roles on Broadway for a period of time, as Holliday had done in
Born Yesterday
, should be placed in a separate Academy Awards category from film actors who play a role for the first time on-screen. In support of her argument she cited the writing-award categories: original screenplay versus adaptation.

When an interviewer asked Bette in 1950 if she had seen Gloria Swanson’s performance in
Sunset Boulevard
, she said: “Gary and I were on our way to Maine when we saw it advertised at a small-town theatre. We spent the night there just to see the picture. I think she gave a heavenly performance.” Years later, in a 1982
Playboy
interview, Bette’s admiration was undiminished: “Swanson was up for an award that year, and if she’d won, I’d have shouted hooray. She was sensational, just fantastic, and she had never won.”

Shortly before her death in 1985, Anne Baxter told an interviewer, “I’ve decided recently that I was wrong. I
should
have accepted another supporting Oscar and then Bette would have undoubtedly gotten hers.” When Bette heard of Anne’s statement, she replied without rancor, “Yeah, she should have.”

*   *   *

Acclaim for
All About Eve
didn’t stop with the Oscars. This is a partial list of the film’s other awards and citations over the next couple of years:

Best Picture, New York Film Critics

Best Picture, San Francisco Drama Critics Council

Best Film, the British Film Academy

Second Best Picture of the Year, National Board of Review

One of the Ten Best Films of the Year,
Time
magazine

Special Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival (1951)

Best Director, Mankiewicz, Directors Guild of America

Best Director, Mankiewicz, New York Film Critics

Best Writing in an American Comedy, Mankiewicz, Writers Guild of America

Golden Globe for Best Screenplay, Mankiewicz

On June 11, 1952, the French minister of commerce and industry, Jean-Marie Louvel, presented Bette Davis with an award as best actress of the year for her performance in
All About Eve
.