Welcome to the 1950s! What better way to kick off this decade than with a big BP winner! All About Eve (1950, 20th Century-Fox) still holds the record for most Academy Award nominations with a whopping 14. It’s tied with a couple of other stellar films (Anyone know them? One is very recent; the other I’d only like to think is not as old as it actually is…). The nominations for All About Eve included a record four for actresses (Best Actress nominees Bette Davis as Margo Channing and Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, as well as Best Actress in a Supporting Role nominees Celeste Holm as Karen Richards and Thelma Ritter as Birdie)—surprisingly, none of these ladies took home the coveted statuette. The film also received nods in the following categories: Music (Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture), Art Direction (Black-and-White), Film Editing, and Cinematography (Black-and-White); and was victorious in six categories: Best Motion Picture, Sound Recording, Costume Design (Black-and-White), Directing, Writing (Screenplay), and Actor in a Supporting Role for George Sanders as Addison DeWitt.

Amid a plethora of splendid performances, Bette Davis’s is superb in this film. Ironically, at the age of 42, Davis was in a way sharing many of the experiences of her All About Eve character, Margo Channing, beginning to feel that the world had lost interest in her, that she was past her prime, that she was about to be upstaged by younger, fresher actresses—for instance, a fledgling actress by the name of Marilyn Monroe, who plays the small part of the naïve-but-sensual Miss Casswell, who is only just embarking on a hopeful career on the stage. Yet it is Davis who steals the show in All About Eve, delivering what is perhaps her greatest on-screen performance.

Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, and George Sanders in All About Eve.

The story Davis and her co-stars portray in All About Eve is not as original a story as viewers of the film (including myself) usually think. Instead, it is based on real-life events. Back in the early 1940s, a famous Jewish actress from Vienna, Elisabeth Bergner, was performing on Broadway in a play entitled The Two Mrs. Carrolls. When Bergner repeatedly noticed a young woman who stood outside the stage door for every performance, she took pity on her and invited her into her dressing room, eventually hiring her as a secretary/assistant for herself and her husband, writer/director/producer Paul Czinner. The mysterious young woman called herself Ruth Hirsch (but later changed her name to Martina Lawrence).

Elisabeth Bergner in 1935, a few years before she met Ruth Hirsch.

At first, Hirsch’s secretarial relationship to Bergner was a success; however, it wasn’t long before Bergner began to feel that Hirsch possessed sketchy motives with regard to their relationship—such as Hirsch’s desire to hijack Bergner’s role in The Two Mrs. Carrolls (as well as steal her husband!). The breaking point in their relationship came when Hirsch read in Bergner’s place during another actress’s audition for a role in the play. Those present at the reading noted how Hirsch’s performance was an exact copy of Bergner’s. When Bergner walked into the audition and witnessed Hirsch’s usurpation of her role, she was infuriated. To make matters even worse, Bergner soon received a letter praising both her and her secretary’s acting skills and encouraging her to see that Hirsch received more opportunities to act as she was a rising star. Bergner was outraged—and not totally convinced that Hirsch hadn’t written the letter herself! When Hirsch stole the letter from Bergner, their relationship was over; and Hirsch was no longer welcome in Bergner’s life or circle of acquaintances.

The story of the “real Eve” probably would have laid dormant forever if Bergner had not mentioned her entanglement with Hirsch to a friend and fellow Broadway actress Mary Orr during a dinner party. Orr happened to also be a writer; and at the suggestion of her husband, quickly penned a very short story based on Bergner’s experience with Hirsch. The story was called “The Wisdom of Eve” and was published in Cosmopolitan in 1946 (it was this story on which Joseph L. Mankiewicz based his screenplay for the film). Hirsch (by that time, known by her new name of Lawrence) read the story, immediately recognized herself as the inspiration for Eve, and was not pleased with the story, to say the least. Even well into the 1990s, she hassled Orr regarding the story, though it is not clear what result Lawrence was seeking.

Bette Davis as Margo Channing.

To make the whole “real Eve” idea even more odd, in my opinion, is the fact that Bette Davis herself was often accused of patterning her All About Eve performance on the acting style of Tallulah Bankhead. Bankhead was one of many who noted the similarities between herself and Davis’s Margo Channing, but maybe we can say that Bankhead had the last laugh when she played Margo on the radio version of All About Eve later in the 1950s. Speaking of people stealing other people’s acting jobs…when All About Eve was adapted into a Broadway play called Applause in 1970, Anne Baxter, the actress who plays the diabolical Eve in the film, actually replaced Lauren Bacall as Margo, literally acting out the role-stealing she so famously portrayed in the film.

Well, that’s show business, I guess.

For some interesting biographical information on Elisabeth Bergner, check out this link: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bergner-elisabeth. To read Mary Orr’s 2006 obituary, go here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/06/obituaries/06orr.html?mcubz=3. And, for more thoughts on All About Eve and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!