A Little Something About "All About Eve"

Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Anne Baxter and George Sanders in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "All About Eve."

Last night’s feature on Matt & Dan Theatre was the classic comedy-drama about backstage theatrical wit, connivance and hypocrisy, “All About Eve.”

The repartee scintillates still, 63 years later. Bette at her best.

Lloyd: “I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they’re her words she's saying and her thoughts she's expressing?”

Margo: “Usually at the point when she has to rewrite and rethink them to keep the audience from leaving the theater.”

Lloyd: “It’s about time the piano realized it has not written the concerto!”

But even by 1950 standards, the backscreen projection when George Sanders and Anne Baxter are supposedly walking down Broadway was embarrassing. Couldn’t they have just walked down Broadway?

Bette Davis as Margo Channing with the incomparable Thelma Ritter as her maid Birdie

These giddy goings-on were loosely based on reality. The actress Elisabeth Bergner, performing in “The Two Mrs. Carrolls” during the 1940s, hired a young fan as her assistant and made her part of the household, only to regret it when she discovered ”that terrible girl” had betrayed her. Bergner told the tale to writer Mary Orr, who turned it into a short story, “The Wisdom of Eve.”