Still the only film in which all female principals were Oscar nominated, this is a movie where no-one puts a foot wrong, from Hollywood also-rans Gary Merrill as Margo’s director and devoted lover and Hugh Marlowe as her regular playwright, to Davis, Baxter and Celeste Holm as Marlowe’s well-meaning but naïve wife who allows Eve into Margo’s life.
Special mention also to George Sanders, rightly picking up a golden statuette as a misanthropic critic, dripping with self-confident wit and vitriol, who can smell his own in Eve.
Along with Scorsese’s The King of Comedy this is the benchmark dissection of star obsession and fame-craving, and a bitter satire on an actress’ short life expectancy in that business called show. Every X-Factor hopeful has a touch of Eve’s greed about them while the judges are the unholy offspring of Sanders’ spiteful critic.
Best known as a satirical comedy of bad manners, Mankiewicz genius was to throw in some Hitchcockian suspense. For a long time it is unclear how much of Eve’s plotting is a figment of Margo’s neurotic imagination, and the see-sawing balance of power in the final thirty minutes is as scintillating as Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross (which could be argued as a male version of All About Eve).
Apart from the monochrome photography, all that dates the film is the chain-smoking and the fact that these are theatre folk rather than movie stars (frequent in-jokes about the low art of Hollywood pepper the script).
In a case of life imitating art, Baxter lobbied hard to get a Best Actress Oscar nomination alongside Bette Davis, which split the vote and sent the statuette to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday.
As a morbid postscript, Sanders, Marilyn Monroe, memorably playing a wide-eyed budding actress, and Barbara Bates, who gives the film its delicious final image, all committed suicide later in life.
A happier post-postscript is that Mankiewicz dropped references to All About Eve in his final film, Sleuth. Watch them both to see a Hollywood legend at the top of his game.
Rob Daniel
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