Did You Know?
Claudette Colbert was originally cast as Margo Channing, but suffered a ruptured disc during filming on Three Came Home and had to withdraw. Bette Davis stepped into the role, even though 20th Century-Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck and Davis couldn't stand each other, going back to when Davis walked out from her post as president of the Motion Picture Academy in 1941.
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Although he received screen credit, actor Eddie Fisher's scene was cut before the film's release.
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Darryl F. Zanuck envisioned Marlene Dietrich as Margo Channing, Jeanne Crain as Eve Harrington, and José Ferrer as Addison DeWitt. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's early choices for the Margo Channing role were Claudette Colbert and Gertrude Lawrence. When Crain became pregnant, Mankiewicz's final choice for the Eve Harrington part was Anne Baxter because she displayed a "bitch virtuosity" that he believed Crain could not provide. Other actresses were also named and considered for the part of Margo Channing, among them Tallulah Bankhead and Susan Hayward.
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Bette Davis' marriage to William Grant Sherry was in the throes of breaking up while she was making the film. Her raspy voice in the film is largely due to the fact that she burst a blood vessel in her throat from screaming at her soon-to-be-ex-husband during one of their many rows. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz liked the croaky quality so he didn't have Davis change it.
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Zsa Zsa Gabor kept arriving on the set because she was jealous of her husband George Sanders in his scenes with the young blonde ingénue Marilyn Monroe.
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Ingrid Bergman was another actress considered for the part of Margo Channing but she had just fallen in love with Italian director Roberto Rossellini and didn't want to leave Italy.
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Holds the record for the film with the greatest number of female acting Oscar nominations.
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In real life, Bette Davis had just turned 42 as she undertook the role of Margo Channing, and Anne Baxter, still an up-and-comer, not only wowed audiences with her performance, but successfully pressured the powers that be to get her nominated for an Oscar in the Best Actress category rather than Best Supporting Actress. This is thought to have split the vote between herself and Davis. The winner for the 1950 Best Actress was Judy Holliday for her noticeable turn in Born Yesterday, so Baxter's actions in effect blocked Davis' chances for the win.
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In 1970 the story was adapted into a Broadway musical called "Applause" and in 1973 a made-for-TV movie (Applause). Lauren Bacall played Margo Channing. When Bacall left the show, the actress who took over the role was Anne Baxter, who had played the role of Eve in the film.
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The theatre scenes in the film were shot at San Francisco's Curran Theatre at 445 Geary Street a couple of blocks from Union Square.
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Ranks first in the Most Academy Award Nominated Films with 14 nominations, set a record which has been tied only by the No.2 Titanic.
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The original story "The Wisdom of Eve" appeared in "Cosmopolitan" magazine in 1946, and was produced as a radio drama for NBC - but every studio rejected it as a film project. Eventually Fox bought the rights for $3500 with no credit stipulations. Joseph L. Mankiewicz combined "The Wisdom of Eve" with a story he had been developing about an actress who recalls her life when receiving an award.
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Bette Davis's voice was strained from her recent divorce, and she had to re-record all her dialogue from the theater scene.
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Angela Lansbury and Zsa Zsa Gabor were considered for the role of Miss Caswell. Gabor's then-husband, George Sanders, did get the role of Miss Caswell's mentor, Addison DeWitt.
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According to the casting director's list, future White House occupants Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were considered for the roles of Bill Sampson and Eve Harrington.
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Contrary to popular belief, Margo Channing is not based on Tallulah Bankhead. The film was adapted from an original story "The Wisdom of Eve" by Mary Orr (uncredited in this film), based on a real-life incident involving Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner during her run in the hit stage thriller "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" in 1943-44. The story about it being based on Bankhead persisted, however, and when Bankhead heard it, she reportedly told a live radio audience that the next time she saw Bette Davis, she would "tear every hair out of her mustache".
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Bette Davis admitted later on that Joseph L. Mankiewicz's casting her in this movie saved her career from oblivion after a series of unsuccessful movies. She said in a 1983 interview, "He resurrected me from the dead."
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Bette Davis fell in love with her co-star Gary Merrill during the shoot of this movie and the two married in July 1950 a few weeks after filming was completed. They adopted a baby girl, whom they named Margot.
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It was Darryl F. Zanuck who decided to change the working title "Best Performance" to "All About Eve" after reading one of Addison DeWitt's lines in the opening narration of the script.
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The movie's line "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night" was voted as the #9 movie quote by the American Film Institute
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The movie's line "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" was voted as the #12 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
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The movie's line "All of a sudden she's playing Hamlet's mother." was voted as the #53 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
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The movie's line "You won't bore him, honey. You won't even get a chance to talk." was voted as the #25 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
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Bette Davis's performance as Margo Channing is ranked #5 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.
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In the theatre scene, Bette Davis mentions playwright Arthur Miller. Marilyn Monroe, who had one of her first roles in this film, later married Miller.
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The "Sarah Siddons Award" which Eve receives was invented by writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz. In 1952 a small group of eminent Chicago theater-goers, including Mrs. Loyal Davis, mother of future First Lady Nancy Davis, began to give an award of that name which is also physically modeled on the one in the film. The 1967-1968 Actor of the Year award recipient was Celeste Holm. In 1973, during the Sarah Siddons Society Anniversary Gala, an honorary Sarah Siddons award was presented to Bette Davis, even though she never appeared in a play in Chicago. Around 1960 Davis did appear in the Tennessee Williams play "The Night of the Iguana" at the Blackstone in Chicago.
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Co-star Celeste Holm spoke about her experience with Bette Davis on the first day of shooting: "I walked onto the set . . . on the first day and said, 'Good morning,' and do you know her reply? She said, 'Oh shit, good manners.' I never spoke to her again - ever."
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Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck's casting notes revealed he had wanted John Garfield for Bill Sampson and Barbara Stanwyck for Margo Channing. Celeste Holm, Hugh Marlowe and Thelma Ritter were the first choices for their roles.
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Though most of the score is original music by Alfred Newman, the music during the car scene with Karen and Margo is an instrumental version of "Liebestraum" ("Love's Dream") by Franz Liszt, the same music the drunken, maudlin Margo had the pianist play over and over again during the party scene. The joke is that when she hears it again in the car (now sober, of course), she condemns it as "cheap sentimentality" and quickly turns it off.
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33 years later, life imitated art when Anne Baxter stepped into Bette Davis' shoes to replace her on the series Hotel after she fell ill. Ms. Davis never returned to the show.
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"Applause" (the Broadway musical version starring Lauren Bacall) opened at the Palace Theater on March 30, 1970 and ran for 896 performances.
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In an introduction to the film on Turner Classic Movies in November 2008, Robert Osborne said that everyone assumed that Bette Davis had based her characterization on Tallulah Bankhead, even Tallulah herself. In 1952, Tallulah Bankhead starred in a radio adaptation of "All About Eve" which featured in the supporting cast Mary Orr, author of the original story "The Wisdom of Eve". According to Robert Osborne, during a rehearsal Tallulah asked Mary Orr: "I was the prototype for Margo Channing, wasn't I?" and Orr set the record straight and said "no". Tallulah reportedly never spoke to Mary Orr again.
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In the Italian post-synchronized version, the actors are dubbed by: Lidia Simoneschi (Bette Davis); Dhia Cristiani (Anne Baxter); Emilio Cigoli (George Sanders); Rosetta Calavetta (Celeste Holm); Gualtiero De Angelis (Gary Merrill); Adolfo Geri (Hugh Marlowe); Maria Saccenti (Thelma Ritter); Zoe Incrocci (Marilyn Monroe); Mario Besesti (Gregory Ratoff); Miranda Bonansea (Barbara Bates) and Amilcare Pettinelli (Walter Hampden).
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The first of only two films to receive 14 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
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"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on October 1, 1951 with Bette Davis and Gary Merrill reprising their film roles.
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"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on March 8, 1951 with Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and George Sanders reprising their film roles.
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The character played by Marilyn Monroe is called Miss Casswell; Caswell was the middle name of Mary Orr, the uncredited author of the short story the movie was based on.
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For the film's Hollywood premiere at the Grauman's Chinese Theater, the neighboring Hotel Roosevelt blanked out most of its neon letters to simply spell out EVE.
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The irony was that Joseph L. Mankiewicz knew very little about the theatrical world. And yet he created one of the great classics about that world. Even more ironically when Mankiewicz tackled a world that he knew much more intimately, lampooning the film community in The Barefoot Contessa, it was a resounding flop, both creatively and financially.
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Margo Channing's famous cocktail dress was an Edith Head creation. To Head's horror, just as they were about to go film the cocktail party, she found that the dress didn't quite fit Bette Davis in the shoulders. There was no time to fix the dress but fortunately Davis hit on the bright idea of simply slipping the dress off her shoulders.
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Years later, Bette Davis said in an interview "Filming _All About Eve_ was a very happy experience....the only bitch in the cast was Celeste Holm."
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Celeste Holm had only recently left 20th Century Fox after a bitter contract dispute with Darryl F. Zanuck. Who then had to rehire her at Joseph L. Mankiewicz's insistence.
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Upon learning that he had cast Bette Davis, one of her former directors, Edmund Goulding, rang up Joseph L. Mankiewicz and warned him that she would grind him down into a fine powder. This proved to be a redundant warning as Davis knew better than to mess with Mankiewicz's finely tuned screenplay. In fact, Mankiewicz found her to be one of the most professional and agreeable actresses he'd ever worked with.
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One of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's descriptions that gave Bette Davis a huge handle on her character was that Margo treated "a mink coat like it was a poncho".
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As a special surprise, when Bette Davis was awarded the Sarah Siddons Award, the organizers secretly asked Anne Baxter to attend her presentation. Davis was not at all thrilled about having to share her spotlight with another actress.
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After the film's release, Bette Davis implored Joseph Mankiewicz to write a sequel that would focus on the characters of Margo and Bill (played by her lover on-and-off screen, Gary Merrill). Many years later, after she and Merrill had married and divorced, Davis ran into Mankiewicz at a party and said to him, "Joe, you can forget that sequel. I've played it and it doesn't work."
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In the opening banquet scene, the first time Margo appears is when her hand comes into the shot in front of the sleeping Max Fabian and steals a cigarette from his open case.
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