All About “All About Eve” (35 page)

Because she’s getting older and because she’s in jeopardy, Margo is the archetype of the Long-suffering Woman. Many gay men, like her, are in a sense terribly battered. They’ve been mistreated and rejected since childhood, by the world and often by their families. But Margo fits another archetype as well. Even before pop psych, she was rightly labeled a survivor. Who wouldn’t admire her perseverence? In less reverent terms, she’s a bitch with a heart of gold—gays have known many such. And Margo is an actress; that says it all. (What is it about a movie star on a staircase that makes gay men swoon?)

Gay men respond to other women in the cast: to Thelma Ritter’s Birdie, a leather-lunged den mother who’s the earthy voice of common sense; to Celeste Holm as the true friend who nevertheless commits a terribly disloyal act; to the daffy knowing innocence of Marilyn’s Twinkie, Miss Caswell; and to Eve Harrington, played as a stalking predator who’s closer to Lillith than to the original Eve. (The heterosexual Mankiewicz responded much the same to these females. “Male behavior is so elementary,” he said, “that
All About Adam
could be done as a short.”)

Savvy gays of course react to the camp aspect of George Sanders as Addison DeWitt, who seems so queeny yet is portrayed as lusting for females when the opposite must surely be the case. Mankiewicz confessed that Addison was “based essentially on me and what I think a theatre critic should be like—and on George Jean Nathan.” With pronouncements like this, Mankiewicz comes across as a heterosexual trapped in a gay sensibility.

And so does
All About Eve
. When did so many Hollywood straights ever create such a gay entertainment? It is perfectly ripe. To misquote Shakespeare, ripeness is all (about Eve). Certainly
Eve
holds no monopoly here; most movies about show business are overblown, but not many have such a patina of real sophistication. That’s because Mankiewicz was the Oscar Wilde of 20th Century-Fox.

Put another way,
Eve
transcends the usual vulgarity of Hollywood movies about actresses. Just contrast
Eve
’s chic milieu with the queasy goings-on at Norma Desmond’s. The audience laughs with the characters in
Eve
, but it often laughs at those sad creatures in
Sunset Boulevard
. This observation is not a complaint; the unyielding bad taste of “actress movies” is exhilarating. Think of Joan Crawford in
Torch Song
(1953), Bette herself in
The Star
(1953), Judy Garland in
A Star Is Born
(1954), Lana Turner in
Imitation of Life
(1959), Geraldine Page in
Sweet Bird of Youth
(1962), Carroll Baker in
Harlow
(1965), Jean Hale in
The Oscar
(1966), Kim Novak in
The Legend of Lylah Clare
(1968), and many more.

Mankiewicz at his best wrote and directed with an operatic touch, and nowhere more than in
All About Eve
. Did some gays, even early on, perhaps view the movie in terms of opera, with the characters relating to one another as quartets, trios, duets? (The flashbacks evoke
Tales of Hoffman
, an older woman vying with a younger one recalls
Norma
, and Addison and Eve play their scene in the hotel room with the sexual frenzy of Scarpia and Tosca.)

Mankiewicz cleverly paced the speeches so that they come off musically. For example Eve, in Margo’s dressing room, delivers a long recitative that starts out, “I guess it started back home. Wisconsin, that is…” Bill’s lecture to Eve about the theatre—“Listen, Junior, and learn”—is a cavatina that’s not sung but declaimed, though Bill flings out his arms as though he’s about to sing it. Karen and Margo have a lovely duet in the stalled car, and the off-screen arrival and departure of movie stars at Margo’s party recall the gypsies who show up in Act III of
La Traviata
. There’s no Mad Scene, of course, but this is comic opera. Besides, how could Mankiewicz top Gloria Swanson’s insane aria at the end of
Sunset Boulevard
?

It’s instructive to speculate on the gay infatuation with
All About Eve
. But if you watch the movie with die-hard fans you’ll find their admiration less schematic. More than politics, psychology, or camp, it’s the vitality of the movie that keeps them hooked. After a showing of
All About Eve
, there’s always something new to talk about. Here, for instance, is a typical audience gathered around a video monitor where the end credits have just scrolled by …

Glenn: “I don’t have anything to say about the significance of
All About Eve
, but when Margo is seeing Bill off at the airport and they walk past that sign, No Smoking Beyond This Point, I thought, This has to be the only time in the movie when she’s not allowed to light up.”

Sam: “Does she smoke as much in this one as in her other movies?”

Brian: “Cigarette consumption probably rose dramatically with each one of her films. No one smokes quite like Bette Davis.”

Evan: “Bette’s line in the dressing room, ‘Lloyd, honey, be a playwright with guts. Write me one about a nice, normal woman who just shoots her husband’—Is this an in-joke about Bette in
The Letter
, where the movie opens with her doing precisely that—shooting her husband?”

Robert: “And the heated exchange between Bette Davis and Hugh Marlowe about actors having to rewrite and rethink the playwright’s words to keep the audience from leaving the theatre—did Mankiewicz write that line with Bette herself in mind?”

Sam: “It could have been a sly Mankiewicz allusion to Bette’s reputation for rewriting dialogue that didn’t please her. But she never tried to rewrite Mankiewicz. He wouldn’t have stood for it, and since she loved his script there was no reason to try.”

Tim: “Margo, at the airport, wears only one earring because she was unable to locate the other one in her dressing room. That was thirty years before men—gay and straight—took up the earring fad.”

Joe: “I like that scene in the bedroom where they’re talking about fur coats. It’s not vital to the movie but it conveys Broadway opinion of Hollywood success.”

Evan: “Margo’s crack about the movie actress who has just arrived—‘Shucks, and I sent my autograph book to the cleaners’—perhaps reflects her bitterness at being overlooked by the movie studios. Bill has just directed a film in Hollywood; Eve will soon get a flood of offers. But Margo not at all.”

Gary: “For me the best part of the movie is when Bette Davis really becomes
Bette Davis
. At the cocktail party when she starts to get bitchy and nasty. That’s when the movie takes off.”

Glenn: “She played Margo Channing as a very complex character, while in many of her other movies she didn’t bring in the nuances that we see here.”

Robert: “Here she’s vulnerable, unlike the Margo Channing you see portrayed by drag queens. They do her as a hard-edged bitch. They seize on that aspect of the character. But if you pay close attention to Bette’s performance, Margo is more sinned against than sinning.”

Evan: “In Hollywood, during the thirties, forties, and fifties, the easiest way to make a joke about a woman’s age was to refer to the Civil War. For example, Bill says to Margo, ‘I’ve always denied the legend that you were in
Our American Cousin
the night Lincoln was shot.’ In
Dinner at Eight
there’s a similar reference to Marie Dressler’s advancing years.”

Sam: “Is Eve Harrington too evil?”

Evan: “The thing that keeps her from being so is that she is obviously a talented actress.”

Sam: “She’s never seen onstage, so how do we know?”

Evan: “Because Eve’s colleagues are astute observers of the theatre, right? You’ve got a playwright, a director, a critic—all three consider her a fine actress.”

Steve: “Do you think Addison DeWitt compliments and flatters Eve just to get at Margo?”

Glenn: “Addison likes that crowd. Margo’s crowd. He attends the cocktail party even though Margo says, ‘I distinctly remember, Addison, crossing you off my guest list.’”

Sam: “One criticism often leveled at Mankiewicz is that the smart people in Margo’s set would never have fallen for Eve’s manipulation and deceit. They would have seen through her right away.”

Glenn: “The audience is privy to her schemes before the other characters are.”

Gary: “Her deception is very subtle at first. It rises to a crescendo later, but in the beginning she seems genuine.”

Sam: “And theatre people can indeed be taken in by just the right kind of flattery. Think of Elisabeth Bergner.”

Glenn: “When Margo says, ‘Amen’ as Addison and Eve stroll away together at the party, what does she mean?”

Evan: “The word
Amen
is used at the end of a prayer or a statement to express approval. Margo seems to mean, ‘They are two of a kind; so be it. Let them scheme their evil schemes together.’”

Steve: “Just before that, when Addison sneers, ‘Dear Margo, you were an unforgettable Peter Pan—you must play it again, soon.’ What does he mean?”

Evan: “It’s a dig about her age. Peter Pan was ever youthful; Margo isn’t.”

Robert: “Karen’s remark about ‘That boot in the rear to Margo. Heaven knows she had one coming.… We’d all felt those size-fives of hers often enough.’ Just what is the literal meaning?”

Brian: “‘Size-fives’ refers to Margo’s shoe size. Meaning she had kicked all of them in the butt at one time or another. Or given them a ‘boot in the rear,’ to use Karen’s genteel phrase.”

Robert: “Does Eve have lesbian designs on Margo?”

Sam: “Wouldn’t you, if you were a lesbian?”

Chapter 25

Tell That to Dr. Freud Along With the Rest of It

Eve’s designs on Margo, if that’s what they are, never emerge, although the scene on the stairs hints that they exist.

MARGO

Put me to bed? Take my clothes off, hold my head, tuck me in, turn out the lights, and tiptoe out.… Eve would. Wouldn’t you, Eve?

EVE

If you’d like.

MARGO

I wouldn’t like!

If Eve’s acceptance of Margo’s “proposition” implies lesbianism, it’s Margo, ironically, who plays it like a bull dyke. Her point is this: Leave me alone, sister; tonight it’s Bill I’m after. When she’s drunk, Margo turns into a dominatrix with a tongue like a whip.

Earlier, Margo was not so dismissive. Less than an hour after Bill’s departure for California, she moved a stranger—Eve Harrington—into her house. “That same night, we sent for Eve’s things.… The next three weeks were out of a fairy tale, and I was Cinderella in the last act.… The honeymoon was on.”

This part of Margo’s voice-over narration suggests a great deal. For one thing, this is not how you hire an assistant; it’s how you start a love affair. Such haste, alas, leads to disaster, as it nearly did for Margo. But beginning that night, “the honeymoon was on,” since Margo Channing, like Cinderella in the last act, had found her “prince.” (And they lived happily for the next month or so, until Bill’s picture wrapped and he returned to New York.) How could Mankiewicz
not
have meant us to read Margo’s bisexuality from these clues? Maybe Bankhead’s, too; maybe everybody’s. After all, he had devoured Freud, and he lived in Hollywood.

Eve, of course, will sleep with anyone to boost her career. She beds both Addison and Lloyd, and makes a pass at Bill. Such expediency, however, doesn’t necessarily make her bisexual. Away from the theatre, she chooses women. She has a girlfriend at the rooming house, and in the final sequence she takes in Phoebe, the devious young fan, for the night. Or so it’s hinted. The lines, and the line readings, are suggestive. Eve says, “You won’t get home till all hours,” and Phoebe replies, “I don’t care if I never get home.”

Addison DeWitt—partially based on Mankiewicz, remember—is nobody’s fool, least of all Eve’s. Except for Birdie, he’s the only one who never falls for Eve’s deception. In these lines from the “Temporary Script” of March 1, 1950 (some later deleted—the deletions are shown in italics), Addison practically “outs” his protegée as they stroll down the street in New Haven:

ADDISON

Tomorrow morning, you will have your beachhead on the shores of Immortality.

EVE

Stop rehearsing your column.

ADDISON

I understand Eisenhower had a bad case of opening night jitters.

EVE

Isn’t it strange, Addison. I thought I’d be panic-stricken. Run away or something.

ADDISON

Eisenhower isn’t half the man you are.

These loaded references to General Eisenhower and the Normandy invasion are superfluous because Mankiewicz implies Eve’s masculinity in a number of scenes. The first tip-off comes when she emerges from the shadows in the theatre alley and calls out to Karen Richards in a voice from her lowest register. It’s almost a growl. Beginning with her next line, however, Eve speaks in a creamier, more feminine voice. From then on, she uses polished, actressy tones in the presence of her theatre friends. And she always speaks to Margo in her top register, her highest, most girlish pitch. Only in private—e.g., in her apartment in the final scenes—does Eve use her deeper “real” voice. Speaking to Phoebe, her young admirer, she sounds husky, rough-edged, aroused.

In a sense Anne Baxter read her lines as though she were singing opera: from lower register all the way to top notes. As Eve, she accomplished a diva’s feat. Her voice rose from contralto, through mezzo, all the way to soprano, and at each step she colored it to express the character’s deceit.

It was undoubtedly Mankiewicz who devised this vocal subtlety, since he loved opera as he loved all things theatrical. (The only time he ever directed for the stage was a 1952 production of
La Bohème
at the Metropolitan Opera, with Patrice Munsel, Richard Tucker, and Robert Merrill.) Our only real clue, however, to the source of Anne Baxter’s vocal virtuosity in
Eve
comes from Tom Mankiewicz, the director’s son. “One of Anne’s greatest line readings,” he says, “is only two words. It comes at the end, when Phoebe says to her, ‘You’re going to Hollywood, aren’t you? From the trunks you’re packing, you must be going to stay a long time.’ And Eve answers, ‘I might.’ There is this thing in the way she says ‘I might’—you just know she’ll stay forever, that she’s never coming back to the theatre, even though she said in her acceptance speech that her heart would remain there, on Broadway.”