All About Eve (1950) on Netflix
Margo Channing is a Broadway actress. A young fan, Eve Harrington, waits at her stage door until Margo's friend Karen Richards brings her inside, and Eve becomes the star's assistant.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Karen Richards, wife of the playwright Lloyd Richards, introduces Eve Harrington to Margo Channing, the star of her husband's play. Eve says she followed Margo's tour to New York, and tells of a poor childhood and a husband lost in the South Pacific. Moved by the story, Margo takes her in as an assistant. Eve answers the telephone and brings breakfast in bed, while Margo's maid Birdie distrusts the way she studies every move her employer makes. Margo's companion, the director Bill Simpson, finds Eve helpful. Karen believes Margo is overdramatizing her resentment of the young woman. Eve asks Karen to speak for her with Lloyd, wanting to serve as Margo's understudy in the play he is writing.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about All About Eve (1950)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Mary Orr's story "The Wisdom of Eve", which became the film, was inspired by Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner, who told Orr of a young Englishwoman who waited outside the Booth Theatre for days, was hired as secretary to Bergner's husband, then became her understudy and tried to take control of her life.
- Claudette Colbert was cast as Margo Channing in February 1950 but was hospitalized for an injured back while filming Three Came Home, so Darryl F. Zanuck replaced her rather than wait; Joseph L. Mankiewicz's next choice, Gertrude Lawrence, was dropped after her attorney demanded script changes.
- All About Eve received a record 14 nominations at the 23rd Academy Awards and is the only film in Oscar history to earn four female acting nominations: Bette Davis and Anne Baxter for Best Actress, Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter for Best Supporting Actress.
- Bette Davis, then filming Payment on Demand after leaving Warner Bros., was convinced Darryl F. Zanuck's phone call offering her Margo Channing was a prank; the two had not spoken since she resigned from the Academy, and she had to be ready to film within ten days of agreeing.
- All About Eve was the first film whose screenplay was published in hardcover, by Random House in 1951; Joseph L. Mankiewicz dedicated the book "To Rosa, the critic on my hearth", a pun on "cricket on the hearth".
- Marilyn Monroe, who appears in only two scenes as Miss Casswell, auditioned for the part and was Joseph L. Mankiewicz's first choice, beating at least a dozen actresses including Sheree North who tested for it.
