On the Waterfront: A Method for Greatness

Oscar winners in the 1950’s reflected the reactions of the film industry to historical and cultural events and changes. In general, the biggest changes the film industry faced were the threats from television. This is why the big budget musicals and epic films became dominant throughout the latter half of the decade and throughout the 1960’s. The socially conscious films that were rewarded in the 1940’s (especially after the end of WWII) would eventually fall out of favor with Academy voters in favor of films focusing on pure entertainment and demonstrated the might of the studio system.

History, though, was still a major force in shaping acclaimed entertainment. On the Waterfront represents the zenith of the socially-conscious message film. The film can be seen as the culmination of what worked best about all of the previous socially conscious Best Picture winners preceding it. On the Waterfront is also permanently linked to the conflict between Hollywood and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, with McCarthy relentless in his zeal to eradicate the perceived threat of Communism by blacklisting anyone within the film industry associated with it. On the Waterfront’s director, Elia Kazan, achieved infamy by naming names of people associated with communism in Hollywood (though, it should be noted, with significant threat to Kazan’s career—an argument can be made that Kazan was blackmailed into cooperating) to HUAC. The film is seen both as Kazan’s apology and a defense of his actions. No matter which side of the Kazan debate you lay on, On the Waterfront is the picture most associated with the Red Scare of the 1950’s (and it isn’t even about Communism).

In my review, I am going to focus less on the Kazan controversy and more on why the film has achieved its success as the finest social issues picture ever made in America. When compared especially to the 1947 Best Picture winner, the Kazan-directed Gentleman’s Agreement, it is clear that Kazan learned that the best, most effective, and longest lasting way to ensure a social issue is addressed through film is not by putting the message before the movie. Where Gentleman’s Agreement bludgeons its audience over the head with its message that anti-Semitism is morally wrong at the expense of memorable and interesting characters, On the Waterfront reverses that notion, creating characters that have upheld themselves mightily in the fifty-six years since the picture’s release. With its unforgettable characters, the power of On the Waterfront will never be diminished.

The primary cast is as follows:

• Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy. In my opinion Terry Malloy is Brando’s greatest role—a once promising boxer who works as hired muscle for the corrupt union bosses running the Hoboken, NJ waterfront. Terry’s burgeoning conscience provides the narrative thrust of On the Waterfront.
• Eva Marie Saint as Edie Doyle. Edie’s brother, Joey, is murdered for being “a canary” at the start of the film. Terry, while not directly responsible for Joey’s murder, is indirectly complicit. When Terry tries to win over the angelic Edie, his guilt over Joey’s death provides an impetus for a conscience to be coaxed out of him. Edie and Terry begin a tender relationship.
• Karl Malden as Father Barry. Father Barry is the local priest determined to eradicate corruption on the docks. He takes an active, moral stance that takes him out of his parish and into the everyday lives of his parishioners. Father Barry is one of the few people who see that there is more to Terry than simply being a hired goon.
• Lee J. Cobb as Johnny Friendly. Johnny Friendly is the villain of the piece. He is the boss of the longshoreman’s union. Friendly is anything but, and makes no bones about resorting to murder to keep his pockets lined and his corrupt operation running smoothly.
• Rod Steiger as Charley “The Gent” Malloy. Charley is Terry’s older brother, and consigliere to Johnny Friendly. Charley ultimately shows more loyalty to his crime family than his blood family.

Each of these five actors received Oscar nominations for their roles in On the Waterfront (with Brando and Saint winning, and Malden, Cobb, and Steiger competing against each other in the Supporting Actor category). Each actor contributes to the core theme of the film—that it is the duty of an honest man to take an active moral stand against corruption.

On the Waterfront is impossible to discuss without digressing into the absolute greatness of Marlon Brando’s turn as Terry Malloy. The picture could easily have been titled Terry Malloy, so crucial is his character to the success of the film. Brando has the most difficult job an actor can have: effectively portraying an inner struggle. In the case of Terry Malloy that inner struggle is growing a conscience at the risk of his life. The entire success of the picture hinges on if the audience believes that Terry can make the journey from being a man who is nonchalant about witnessing a murder to a man who can galvanize his fellow dockworkers to take a stand against the union bosses who dominate their lives. Of course, Brando was magnificently successful in doing exactly that, and the strength of his performance lies within the style of his acting.

Brando was a pioneer in Method acting. Brando brought Method with him from stage to screen and revolutionized acting in film. Method is often misconceived as staying in character even after the cameras have stopped rolling and going to such extremes as if one was playing a blind person, then the actor would live as a blind person for a period of time to try and comprehend their world from the inside. While both of those techniques can be part of Method acting, Method is more simply defined as an actor drawing on internal techniques instead of external means to create and develop character. Whereas a more classically trained actor would use differing facial expressions and voice intonation to convey meaning, Method actors seek to discover the psychological and sensory motivations for their characters. In film, before Method, actors were largely cast to type. This is why—and I am in no way meaning to diminish any of these actors—Clark Gable played the roguish alpha male over and over again, Humphrey Bogart perfected weary cynicism, Bette Davis was the bitch. These actors played to type.

Brando, and other Method actors like him, could be chameleonic. For example, in 1953—a year prior to On the Waterfront—Brando played both a leader of a motorcycle gang in The Wild One and Marc Antony in the film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. His previous roles also included Emiliano Zapata and his iconic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. These roles came within four years of one another. More classical actors in Hollywood would take nearly their entire careers to break type and develop that type of range (of course, this is also largely a function of the studio system, but Brando made studio financed pictures, so his arrival to film represented a sea change in the function of actors).

With his internally-based Method, Brando did nothing but exist within the psychoses of Terry Malloy. The technique is ideally suited to showing how a man would grow a conscience. Method is also ideally suited to improvisation, and Brando made liberal use of the freedoms given to him by Kazan.

Two of the most famous scenes in the film show Brando using improvisation to reveal the soul of Terry Malloy. First is on a date with Edie. Terry is clearly smitten with her, and Edie is very tentative, but Brando makes an excellent, improvised choice that reveals Terry’s true feelings. During the scene where Terry and Edie are walking home through a park, Edie drops one of her white gloves. Brando has Terry pick the glove up and brush it off, but he first puts the glove on his left hand instead of immediately returning it to Edie. This action is code for Terry wanting to get close to Edie—it is a way he can hold her hand without holding her hand—but still displaying both an innocence and tenderness that will she will eventually warm to. Brando and Saint have a very unforced chemistry in the picture. Saint, for her part, recalled that Brando was constantly teasing her on set, and she was always kept on edge by him. That edginess transferred marvelously onto the screen.

The other major act of improvisation is within the most famous sequence of the film, where Charley and Terry share a taxi. By this point in the film, Johnny Friendly is afraid of Terry’s newfound conscience. Charley is sent to test his brother’s loyalty, and if it is no longer there, Charley must assassinate Terry. Friendly instructs Charley: “All I want to know is, is he D and D (deaf and dumb, the code the Hoboken longshoremen live by if they wish to keep a job) or is he a canary?” In the taxi, Charley presses his brother for an answer and doesn’t get one. In frustration, Charley pulls a gun on his brother, and it is how Brando has Terry react that tells the whole story. Instead of acting rashly—like immediately grabbing Charley’s gun, or resorting to physical violence—Terry slowly, gently pushes the gun away and says, “Charley…Charley…Oh, Charley. Wow.” That, right there is the essence of heartbreak.

Only a bit later, after Charley tries to cheer Terry up by waxing nostalgic—yet inaccurate—about his boxing career, does Terry become bitter. Finally realizing that Charley was in on the fixed fights that doomed his career as a prizefighter, that his own brother has betrayed him for years, Terry finds the strength to turn away from the corruption of the life led by Charley and Johnny Friendly.

"It wasn't him, Charley! It was you. You remember that night in the Garden; you came down to my dressing room and said: 'Kid, this ain't your night. We're going for the price on Wilson.' You remember that? 'This ain't your night!' My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors in the ball park - and whadda I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville. You was my brother, Charley. You shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me - just a little bit - so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money. (Charley: "I had some bets down for you. You saw some money.") You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am. Let's face it…It was you, Charley."

Again, improvised reactions are the most telling here. Steiger, playing Charley, can barely look at Terry in the scene. And Brando, although he is playing Terry with anger and bitterness, isn’t directing all of the animosity toward Charley. There is a sense of internal loss and regret within Terry, for if he only would have had a conscience when he was boxing, if he had stood up to Johnny Friendly and Charley then, he would be a champion. He would have class. He would have been somebody. Ultimately, this is what provides Terry with the motivation he carries with him into the finale of the picture, when he stands up to Johnny Friendly (and in many ways, gets his championship bout—Kazan stages a bloody fistfight between the two men where Terry is ultimately overcome by Friendly’s goons).

Kazan also provides external motivation for Terry. While Terry, Charley and Edie make changes, develop and grow as characters (and Brando, Saint, and Steiger make the most of Method in conveying them), static characters like Father Barry and Johnny Friendly are just as crucial in the development of Terry Malloy. Here, casting to type works, as Malden and Cobb play opposing forces of good and evil, each in battle for Terry’s soul. Oddly, both Malden and Cobb are quite similar looking—large, hard-nosed (and nobody in Hollywood has ever had a more prominent proboscis than Malden) and intimidating men—as if they were two sides of the same coin. Each embodies their characters in ironic ways. Cobb plays Friendly as the ultimate smooth operator; trying his best to live up to his name all the while knowing that he uses everyone around him. Malden plays Father Barry as an instigator, demanding that the dockworkers become men of conscience and basically strong-arming Terry into cooperating with him. On a surface level, the smooth criminal is more appealing than the cajoling priest. Cobb and Malden know this instinctively, and play those aspects up to maximum effect.

Again though, it is how Brando has Terry react to the men that tells the story. When Friendly slips a fifty into Terry’s pocket, Brando makes Terry look physically uncomfortable. When Father Barry is sermonizing, he is asking questions like, “There's one thing we've got in this country and that's ways of fightin' back. Gettin' the facts to the public. Testifyin' for what you know is right against what you know is wrong. Now what's ratting to them is telling the truth for you. Now can't you see that? Can't you see that?” What Kazan focuses on is Terry. Brando initially is poker-faced when first asked these questions (and note also, how those questions are also directed at the audience). But after a man is killed on the job, and Father Barry—with trash being hurled at him by Friendly’s sympathizers—in his “sermon on the docks” speech (“You want to know what's wrong with our waterfront? It's the love of a lousy buck. It's making the love of the lousy buck—the cushy job—more important than the love of man! It's forgettin' that every fellow down here is your brother in Christ! But remember, Christ is always with you. Christ is in the shape up.”), elicits a reaction of affiliation from Terry. Kazan uses these effective performances from Cobb and Malden in type roles to show the audience how Terry is changing as well as probe the consciences of the audience watching the film.

Lastly, aside from the performances, Kazan strove to be authentic as possible in capturing the waterfront of Hoboken. It helps that the film was actually shot there. Unlike All the King’s Men, which was set in Louisiana but shot in California, Kazan knows that no studio could effectively recreate the locations he needed for his film to feel real. Adding to the authenticity of the film were real-life ex-boxers hired to play Johnny Friendly’s goons, and the use of actual dock workers as extras. On the Waterfront’s screenplay was derived from fact; a series of articles from the (now defunct) New York Sun about mob crimes and other corruption on the Hoboken waterfront provided the basis of Budd Schulberg’s screenplay. Of course, the story also had personal resonance for Kazan, who was undoubtedly attracted to the message of the power of testimony as a central theme of the film (of course, many feel that when Kazan played “canary” to HUAC, he was doing the ignoble thing…). Each of these elements contributed to On the Waterfront being an unforgettable cinematic experience that refined the socially conscious message picture. Authenticity in performance, story, setting, and character would be primary, and only with that authenticity could any sort of lasting moral, social or political message be gleaned.

The film, though popular and justly feted with Oscar gold, marked the end of an era for the socially conscious picture winning Academy Awards. First of all, not many “message pictures” are made better than On the Waterfront (if at all), and second, the movies faced significant threats from the popularity of television, and film storytelling became bigger, more spectacular, and simpler. The films of the 1950’s reflected the trends of the times. Unfairly or not, On the Waterfront is the film most closely associated with the Red Scare that gripped America. While the country remained afraid of communism, Hollywood is always eager to put politics in the rear view mirror.

A film as incandescent as On the Waterfront is hard to top, and it wouldn’t be until the late 1960’s/1970’s that more films tackled issues of conscience. Not at all coincidentally, that period of time is when many, many Method trained actors came into prominence (Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Jane Fonda, Dustin Hoffman, and Ellen Burstyn). They all have Brando to thank for leading the way.

DETAILS

On the Waterfront (1954)

Director: Elia Kazan
Starring: Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Total Oscars: 8 (Best Picture—Sam Spiegel, Best Director—Elia Kazan, Best Actor—Marlon Brando, Best Supporting Actress—Eva Marie Saint*, Best Original Screenplay—Budd Schulberg, Best Art Direction (B&W), Best Cinematography (B&W), Best Editing) from 12 total nominations (Best Supporting Actor—Lee J. Cobb, Best Supporting Actor—Karl Malden, Best Supporting Actor—Rod Steiger, Best Score—Leonard Bernstein**)

*Eva Marie Saint won an Oscar in her debut motion picture performance
**The score for On the Waterfront marked the only time Leonard Bernstein delivered a score for a non-musical picture

NEXT BLOG: Marty

All About Eve: When Unreal Is More Real Than Real

All About Eve holds the Oscar record for most nominations: fourteen, with six wins. The film is atypical of a feted Oscar nominee—it isn’t an epic, a musical, a period drama, a biopic, a war film (well, not any sort of actual historical war). In fact, All About Eve, with its storylines about backstabbing actresses, seems more like it is ripped from the headlines of a 1950 edition of Us Weekly. How does a film that sounds like the 1950 version of Mean Girls end up one of the most honored Best Pictures of all time?

Mere synopses and source material can be deceiving. Just one year previous to All About Eve, All the King’s Men—adapted from no less than a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel—won Best Picture, but that film was one of the dullest movies I have ever watched. All About Eve was adapted from a short story that first appeared in Cosmopolitan (a magazine that the characters of this film would most certainly be reading), and this is one of the most awesome movies I have ever seen. You know why? People like the kind of stuff you read about in Cosmo. Fashion, gossip, lifestyles, relationships, sex advice, the arts—these are the kinds of subjects most human beings spend the hours talking about in one way or another. Corruption in politics, anti-Semitism, WWII—those sound like college courses someone would have to twist my arm to attend. Bitchiness, backstabbing, jealousy—these are the kinds of things people stretch their ears to eavesdrop on. Which movie would you rather watch?

Titillation alone does not account for the greatness of All About Eve. Certainly one could pop the film into your DVD player and be entertained by the surface aspects about the story. Yet all great films—like all great works of art—operate on many levels. First, helping tell the story is some of the greatest, wittiest, and most venomous dialogue ever written. Next, some damn talented and perfectly cast actors bring those words to life. Finally, after you’ve been hooked by the subject matter, the story, the dialogue, the acting—you realize what All About Eve is really all about. The cost of vanity and ambition. The fear of aging. The responsibility (or lack thereof) of people in power. Loyalty. Friendship. Love. Others have dug deeper to find both homosexual and anti-Communist subtexts (which I won’t be discussing here, but both are present in the film). Unlike All the King’s Men, which is transparent about its subject matter, beating out its moral to the viewer as if they were a piece of metal being forged and hammered out on an anvil, All About Eve appears to be about trifling subject material but the film gradually unveils itself to be about deeper universal themes.

The film has a great opening scene. Like The Godfather twenty-two years later, within the opening sequence of the film the audience is introduced to every important character and we get a glimpse of each of their motivations and personalities. The film opens at the beginning of the final act, making the remainder of the movie a long flashback. The scene is an award ceremony for the Sarah Siddons Society (and here’s how you know a film becomes a classic: the actual Sarah Siddons Society was established in 1952—two years after All About Eve was released—yet the award and the society were an invention of director/screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz; the film proved to be so influential that a Chicago theater patrons made what was in a movie a reality, life imitating art), where according the narrator, the top award is “the highest honor our theater knows” is awarded to the greatest star of the theater and that the minor awards “for such as the writer and the director since their function is to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes upon it,” have already been presented. Who is the light flashing upon the tower? Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), whom, according to the narrator, “no brighter light ever dazzled the eye.”

The narrator then introduces himself as Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), an egomaniacal and bitterly cynical theater critic who describes his occupation as “essential to the theater.” How else do we know that Addison is a snob? Easy—he’s the kind of guy who can’t just say “theater”. In his mouth, the word becomes a sonorous, trilled “theee-aaaah-taaah” as if it were the word of God. Addison then introduces the rest of the characters (director Bill Sampson—played by Gary Merrill—and playwright Lloyd Richards—played by Hugh Marlowe—are introduced first in Addison’s line about “minor awards”). First up is Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), the playwright’s wife, who has “nothing in her breeding or background that should have brought her any closer to the stage than Row E, Center” but because she is Mrs. Lloyd Richards, she is an important part of the periphery of the theater community. To Addison, Karen is simply “the lowest form of celebrity.” Next is producer Max Fabian (Gregory Ratoff). Addison says “there are two types of theatrical producers. One has a great many wealthier friends who will risk a tax deductible loss. This type is interested in art. The other is one to whom each production means potential ruin or fortune. This type is out to make a buck.” Max is of the former.

Finally, there is Margo Channing (Bette Davis, in her greatest role), whom Addison praises as “a great Star. A true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.” Mankiewicz responds appropriately to Margo’s introduction with a close-up. As Eve accepts the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement, she is greeted by canned applause and indifferent looks. Margo’s disdain burns the brightest. Mankiewicz freeze frames right as Eve—who is the youngest person to receive the Distinguished Achievement Award—is about to clasp her claws around the coveted prize. The film then flashes back as we learn all about Eve.

Eve is introduced to Margo after a performance of Fabian’s play Aged in Wood. Karen arranges the meeting, after she learns that Eve has attended every performance Margo has delivered in the play. Margo is Eve’s idol. Karen feels that Margo ought to throw her biggest fan a bone, but Margo derides her fans as “autograph fiends” and “juvenile delinquents”, noting that they’re “never indoors long enough” to even see a play. Yet when the nature of Eve’s devotion is revealed to her, Margo softens. Eve wins over Karen, Bill and Margo with her wide-eyed innocence and star-struck behavior and her tale of growing up in Wisconsin (where “everything is beer”), where she lived a dreary existence as a secretary for a brewery where “it was pretty hard to make-believe you are anyone else.” Eve became drawn to plays—for reasons almost identical to my own love of movies—because “the unreal seemed more real to me.” Her stories win over her audience—save for Margo’s backstage maid and companion Birdie (Thelma Ritter), who sees right through Eve and how she is manipulating the others and says: “What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end!” Birdie’s warnings go unheeded, and Eve insinuates herself into every aspect of Margo’s life when Margo later offers Eve a job as her personal assistant. The bond between Margo and Eve strengthens when Bill—who is also Margo’s fiancée—leaves New York temporarily to pursue a directing opportunity in Hollywood (the script makes many jokes about the differences between the theater community and Hollywood community).

The next big set piece in the film involves a party celebrating Bill’s return from Hollywood. By this point in the film, Eve’s ruthless ambition is made crystal clear—most strikingly when Margo catches Eve dressed in her own costume (Birdie notes: “She’s studyin’ you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints. How you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep.”)—and Margo, while understanding Eve’s envy toward her acting career, becomes unglued when she learns that Eve has planned the party for Bill’s return without her say-so. Margo’s deepest fear is made open and raw: that Bill will leave her for a younger woman. When Bill returns, Margo remarks “there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges. For instance, you.” When she misinterprets Bill speaking with Eve as flirting, she admonishes him: “Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.” The claws have come out; Margo is a woman who means war.

As the guests arrive, each of them remark how much they like Eve and admire Margo for taking her under her wing. Margo acts out, becoming drunker and surlier as the night goes on (Margo warns the party, in the film’s most famous line: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”) Lloyd Richards notes that Margo’s mood is “very Macbethish”. The unflappable Addison arrives, a dumb blonde bimbo starlet—Miss Casswell, a “graduate of the Copacabana School for the Dramatic Arts” (Marilyn Monroe, in one of her earliest roles)—on his arm, and tells Margo, “You were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again soon.” Margo’s insecurities only become more fueled when Lloyd says that the lead role in his new play is written as a “twenty-ish” woman. Margo lays the facts bare: “Lloyd, I am not twenty-ish. I am not thirty-ish. Three months ago, I was forty years old. Forty. Four oh - That slipped out. I hadn't quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.” Furthermore, Margo makes note of the sexism actresses face when they reach middle age by comparing herself to Bill. “Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago. He'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men."

By this point, with her insecurities fully revealed in the company of her friends and colleagues, Margo’s character becomes, in the words of Eve, more real than unreal. Who doesn’t—women and men both—have fears of growing old and feeling unfulfilled in life? I don’t care how confident a person is, everyone has a scab that they don’t want picked, covering an insecurity always threatening to fester. Margo is no longer simply a drama queen, spoiled actress, and bitch of the highest order (though she is always all of those things and very entertainingly so); she loses her star luster and becomes achingly human. The jokes the party guests make about coming to view the “remains of Margo Channing” as if she were a naked corpse laid out at a viewing become more poignant (but still funny).

What is a character becomes flesh and blood in the hands of Bette Davis. One aspect of the casting that works extraordinarily well in All About Eve is that Margo Channing the character closely resembled the true life of Bette Davis the actress. Davis was considered box office poison, and she was unceremoniously dumped by her longtime studio, Warner Brothers, at the end of her contract in 1949 after each of her films performed substantially worse than the last. Davis was always frank about her career coming before personal relationships or reputation. Davis wasn’t even the first choice for Margo—another actress with a reputation for being bitchy, Claudette Colbert, was—but when Colbert suffered a back injury, Davis was in. She was 42 when filming commenced. Furthermore, she developed a relationship (and eventually married) with Gary Merrill, who played her paramour in the film and was also seven years her junior. In watching Davis as Margo, actress and part develop a symbiotic relationship. Davis expertly delivers the many delicious lines Margo has but also imbues her with the humanity that could only have come from Davis’ own life experiences. I think Davis felt a kinship with Margo that could only have developed out of the compassion she felt for the character and how Margo mirrored her own life. If there was ever an example of a role an actress was born to play, it is Bette Davis as Margo Channing.

The remainder of All About Eve becomes a contrast between Eve’s ruthless ambition and Margo’s acceptance of her insecurities. A more predictable—and less great—film would have Margo and Eve facing off in the mother of all catfights, a tussle filled with hair-pulling and backbiting. Mankiewicz takes the story in a different direction, allowing Margo some moments of self-reflection. Margo tells Karen—who feels a measure of guilt toward Margo for it was she who arranged for Eve to meet her idol, and Karen also schemed to let Eve become Margo’s understudy in Aged in Wood—“Infants behave the way I do, you know.” It is in this scene where Margo realizes that she envies what Karen has—a healthy marriage. In a speech where Margo advances for feminism then simultaneously takes it two steps back, she says:

“Don't fumble for excuses, not here and now with my hair down. At best, let's say I've been oversensitive to her...to the fact that she's so young, so feminine and so helpless, too so many things I want to be for Bill. Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. There's one career all females have in common - whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And, in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed - and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a - a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain. The End.”

Margo reprioritizes her ambitions; her time as an actress in its sunset, she needs to remember how to be a woman, to be—in her eyes—worthy of Bill’s unconditional love. Margo’s next great role will be as Margo Channing, member of the human race.

Meanwhile, Eve schemes her way to the top. Her stage debut is facilitated by Karen (in fact, when Margo is giving Karen her “funny business, a woman’s career,” speech it is on an outing meant to deliberately keep Margo off stage and allow Eve to take over the lead role for the night), but it is Addison who takes full advantage of Eve’s nascent career and accelerates the blossoming of the nubile young star. Addison tells Eve: “We all come into this world with our little egos, equipped with individual horns. Now if we don't blow them, who else will?” That sells Eve, who tells Addison to “take charge”. Addison arranges for theater critics to see her perform as Margo’s understudy, writes a rave about her performance, and introduces her to Hollywood agents. He writes fluff pieces about Eve’s humble beginnings, and encourages her to make statements that older actresses should not take parts envisioned for younger performers. Lloyd’s new play has a part, Cora, which is intended for Margo but more age appropriate for Eve. Eve’s ambitions undoubtedly lie on Cora.

At a dinner with Karen and Lloyd where Bill proposes marriage to Margo (she accepts, the marriage will be a simple ceremony at City hall where Bill and Margo will acquire a marriage license and she will wear “something simple. A fur coat over a nightgown.”), Eve and Addison are also seen dining at a nearby table. Eve summons Karen via a note to the ladies room, and by this point Margo only wishes to know what Eve is thinking out of pure curiosity, not spite, and tells Karen to find out “what’s going on in that feverish little brain waiting in there.” Eve offers Karen a phony apology about the “poison pen” article Addison wrote where Eve is quoted dressing down Margo because of her age, but she is really there to blackmail Karen into convincing Lloyd to let her play Cora. In exchange, Eve tells Karen that she won’t divulge to Addison that it was Karen who schemed to have Margo be absent on the day Eve took over the lead in Aged in Wood, thus destroying Margo and Karen’s friendship and ruining Karen’s credibility. (What Eve doesn’t know, of course, is that Karen and Margo have reconciled against Eve.) Karen, astonished at the depths of Eve’s Machiavellian calculations, tells her, “You’d do all that for a part in a play?” Eve replies: “I’d do much more for a part that good.”

What is telling about Margo’s character is her reaction. She tells Lloyd, “I don't want to play Cora...It isn't the part. It's a great part in a fine play. But not for me anymore. Not for a four-square, upright, downright, forthright married lady...It means I finally got a life to live. I don't have to play parts I'm too old for, just because I've got nothing to do with my nights.” Margo is content, happy. (Karen has the best reaction to this news—hysterical laughter.) Eve thinks she can only be content when she is on stage, receiving applause, calling it “waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine to know, every night, that different hundreds of people love you. They smile. Their eyes shine. You've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.” Eve thinks she can receive love without a relationship, by playing a role.

She receives her ultimate comeuppance when Addison exposes her entire backstory as a lie—Eve has been performing the whole time. Addison calls Eve out: “You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also a contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition—and talent. We deserve each other...and you realize and you agree how completely you belong to me?” Eve falls victim to Addison’s gambit—she will “belong” to him as his mistress and he will never reveal that the foundation of Eve’s existence as an actress is an utter lie. The two schemers inevitably end up alone together.

Cut to the awards banquet. Eve accepts the Sarah Siddons Award for her role as Cora. Eve gives a canned valedictory, giving “credit where credit is due” (cut to a shot panning over the faces of Lloyd and Karen, Bill and Margo, who know that they’ve been used), calling the night “the happiest of my life” and saying that although she will be leaving to film a movie in Hollywood, she says that “three thousand miles are too far to be away from one’s heart”, promising that she will be back to “reclaim her heart” soon. Margo gets the last laugh—“Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn’t worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.” Eve decides to forgo the after party thrown by Max Fabian in her honor, demanding that Addison take her home.

When they arrive at Eve’s suite, Phoebe (Barbara Bates), a pretty young fan, surprises the couple. Phoebe says Eve is her idol and she is there to write a report about her—“how you live, what kind of clothes you wear, what kind of perfume and books, things like that.” Eve is flattered by the attention and invites her in, just as Margo once did for her. Addison, of course, knows exactly what is happening, but does nothing to stop it. He asks if Phoebe would like to win an award someday, and Phoebe tells him “more than anything else in the world.” Addison’s reply: “Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.”
The final shot of the film has Phoebe, wearing Eve’s coat and clutching onto the Siddons Award. Phoebe vainly admires herself in Eve’s four mirrored cheval, and the mirror returns an infinite number of reflections where Phoebe bows with dignity, imagining that she is the recipient. The cycle of ambition continues. There will always be another Eve.

So, what seems like a tawdry tale about catty actresses ultimately reflects infinite insight into our own lives. All About Eve can be enjoyed simply straight up, but because the film has much deeper levels, it resonates as a classic.

Some interesting life-follows-fiction details happened after the release of the film. First off, Bette Davis—though she delivers what is universally acclaimed as not only her finest performance, but also one of the finest performances ever given by an actress—did not win Best Actress for Margo Channing. Why? Because Anne Baxter considered herself (with justification, after all it is the title role) also a lead actress in All About Eve. Both women secured Best Actress nominations for their work in the film, effectively splitting the vote and handing the award to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday. (Some mention must also go to Gloria Swanson, who also spectacularly played an aging actress—Norma Desmond—in Billy Wilder’s superb Sunset Boulevard, seen as the chief competitor to All About Eve in the 1950 Oscar race.) Many who follow the history of the Oscars have speculated that Baxter (who had already won a Supporting Actress Oscar in 1946) was pulling a real-life Eve Harrington move. In reality, Davis and Baxter became great friends on the set of All About Eve and remained that way for the rest of their lives. However, there is no doubt in my mind that had Anne Baxter considered herself a supporting actress in the film, both she and Davis would have Oscars for their indelible performances.

Happily, Davis married Gary Merrill, mirroring the Margo/Bill relationship in the film. The marriage would ultimately end in divorce ten years later, and Davis, like Margo (presumably), did not receive many substantial roles once she hit middle age. Though she received a final Oscar nomination in 1962 for the campy Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Margo Channing is widely perceived as Davis’ last hurrah.

Tragically, three of the actors who made the film—George Sanders, Marilyn Monroe, and Barbara Bates—died by their own hand. Coincidentally, each of the actors played either unhappy or empty characters in the film. Monroe everyone knows all about (and there is much speculation that her death wasn’t a suicide, but I will leave that to the conspiracy theorists). Sanders, who is so, so good as Addison DeWitt (very deservedly winning Best Supporting Actor for his efforts), did not find much happiness later in life. Sanders the man, like Bette Davis, in reality was much like his on screen counterpart in All About Eve. His autobiography was titled Memoirs of a Professional Cad (Sanders’ suggestion for the title: A Dreadful Man). He succumbed to alcoholism and on April 23, 1972, Sanders overdosed on Nembutal, his suicide note reading: “Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.” Bates parlayed her role as Phoebe into a modestly successful film career, but was prone to depression, mood swings, and bipolar behavior. When her husband died of cancer in January 1967, Bates followed him on March 18, 1969 when she committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning.

All About Eve has ensured immortality for all those involved, despite the tragic circumstances that befell some of its cast. Like Eve’s statement, the film is one of the rare works of art where the unreal is made more real than real. Watching the film, I felt as if I’ve known the story for my entire life, because in many ways, I’ve known Margo Channings and Eve Harringtons everywhere I’ve gone.

DETAILS

All About Eve (1950)

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter, Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Bates, Gregory Ratoff

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Total Oscars: 6 (Best Picture, Best Director—Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Best Supporting Actor—George Sanders, Best Adapted Screenplay—Mankiewicz, Best Costume Design Black & White—Edith Head*, Best Sound Recording) out of 14 total nominations** (Best Actress—Bette Davis, Best Actress—Anne Baxter, Best Supporting Actress—Celeste Holm, Best Supporting Actress—Thelma Ritter***, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score, Best Set Decoration Black & White)

*Edith Head is the most celebrated costume designer ever in Hollywood history. She received an Oscar nomination in every year from 1949 to 1967, representing 30 nominations in total. She eventually received 35 nominations in total, winning 8 Oscars (and won in both the B&W and color costume categories in 1950).
**14 Oscar nominations is the Academy record, shared by Titanic (1997)
***The nominations secured by Davis, Baxter, Holm and Ritter represented the first and only time four actresses had been nominated from one film. None of the actresses won, though Davis, Baxter, and Holm had won Oscars previously. Ritter received six total career nominations and never once was victorious, an all-time Academy injustice.

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