All About “All About Eve” Read Free

tuneful, tap-dancing story of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), another silent star—this one with a screechy voice that dooms her when talkies arrive. Even Marlene Dietrich was about to play a sultry actress resembling herself in the early airplane film No Highway in the Sky , speaking throaty lines such as “My films are a few cans of celluloid on the junk heap someday.” And at 20th Century-Fox, Joseph L. Mankiewicz had just started All About Eve , a film that, while technically about Broadway rather than Hollywood, amounted to exploratory surgery on the dysphoric underbelly of show business.
    It was something of a miracle that his movie got made at all, at least the way it did, for Bette Davis hadn’t spoken to Darryl Zanuck, the producer, in nine years. And besides, Claudette Colbert had already signed to play the role of Margo Channing. Variety and The Hollywood Reporter had announced the Colbert coup late in 1949.
    Zanuck, moreover, had John Garfield in mind for Bill Sampson, Margo’s lover. He also thought José Ferrer would make a fine Addison DeWitt, and he wanted Jeanne Crain for the role of Eve Harrington. All these possibilities, and others, Zanuck jotted in pencil on the inside back cover of Mankiewicz’s original treatment of Eve . Zanuck’s early casting notes reveal Barbara Stanwyck, in addition to Claudette Colbert, as a possibility for Margo Channing. From the start, however, he favored Celeste Holm for Karen, Hugh Marlowe for Lloyd Richards, and Thelma Ritter for Birdie.
    In early April 1950 Bette Davis was finishing The Story of a Divorce at RKO. This film, later retitled Payment on Demand , was her first after leaving Warner Bros., where she had been under contract for eighteen difficult years.
    One day, during a lull in shooting while Curtis Bernhardt, the director, conferred with his cameraman, Bette got word that she was wanted on the telephone. Since filming had stopped for a time, she was able to leave the set and take the call in her dressing room. She had on one of the rather matronly dresses designed for her to wear in the picture.
    “Hello, Bette, this is Darryl Zanuck,” said the production chief of 20th Century-Fox. His high-pitched Nebraska accent, full of sharp r ’s and words bitten off at the end, was in marked contrast with Bette’s r -less New England speech, naturally full of broad a ’s that had broadened even further as she acquired the florid stage diction of the time.
    Bette knew Zanuck’s voice—and she didn’t believe this was Zanuck. Always suspicious, on screen and off, she assumed it was a friend playing a joke. After all, the last thing Zanuck had said to her, during their falling-out in 1941, was “You’ll never work in Hollywood again!”
    “Hello, Darryl dear,” Bette crooned, sounding more Broadway-British than ever. “Lovely to heah from you.”
    “Bette, I’ve got a script I want you to take a look at,” Zanuck said. “I think you’ll like it. And I hope you’ll want to do it.”
    “Anything you say, my deah.” She sounded even saucier on the phone than she did on-screen. “If I like it, I will do it,” she said with a trace of malice and a soupçon of insolence. Bette couldn’t figure out which one of her friends was pretending to be Darryl F. Zanuck, so she decided to have a little fun herself, string him along, do an imitation of Bette Davis. Why not? Everyone else did.
    By the end of the conversation, she expected this young man—who on earth could it be?—to end his charade with a guffaw. All the while, of course, Bette was puffing her cigarette like … well, just like Bette Davis.
    “The only thing is, Bette, if you like it you’ve got to be ready to start shooting in ten days, wardrobe finished and all.”
    “Right away, Darryl deah.” Bette said it as though she were Judith Traherne, the Long Island playgirl and horsewoman she played in Dark Victory .
    “So you’re interested in the script?” Zanuck continued, making allowances