MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 500 titles—from the silent era through the ’90s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
All About Eve (1950, 138 minutes)
As theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) dryly narrates the “overnight-sensation” aspect to the current deification of Broadway’s newest stage star, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), with her acceptance of this year’s Sarah Siddons Award, it would be all but impossible to miss the icy glare coming from Margo Channing (Bette Davis). Odd, one might think, since Margo was the person most responsible for Eve getting her foot in the door of this august Broadway company in the first place.
A year earlier, Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), the wife of the playwright for Channing’s current dramatic triumph, took pity on the poor, rain-soaked young girl, waiting every night at the stage door for her idol to appear. “What do you do in between the time Margo comes in and Margo goes out? Do you huddle in that doorway and wait?” asks Karen. Eve replies, “Oh no, I see the play.” Surprised, Karen asks, “You’ve seen every performance of this play? Don’t you find that expensive?” “Standing room doesn’t cost much. I manage,” answers the shy young girl.
Karen takes Eve inside out of the rain and introduces her to Margo as she’s applying facial cream in her dressing room. Barely glancing at the new arrival, Margo is already feeling her fast-approaching 40th birthday as if it’s the solitary headlight of a runaway locomotive bearing down on what remains of her acting career. Eve tells her idol that she’s seen every performance of Margo’s current smash, Aged In Wood, and the star immediately takes notice with just a hint of pity for this young kid.
“I became the secretary of a local brewery. When you’re the secretary of a brewery, all there is to your world is beer,” Eve replies when asked how she’s managed to arrive on the Great White Way from a modest Wisconsin upbringing. “It wasn’t much fun,” she continues, “but there was a little theater. It was like a drop of rain in the desert. We played Lilliom for three performances, and I was awful.” She wound up in San Francisco just in time to meet Eddie, her young husband, on leave from the Pacific Front in World War II, she continues. “That’s where I received the telegram, forwarded from the War Office, that Eddie had been killed in battle.”
Eve decided to stay in San Francisco. “One night, Margo Channing came to town to play in Remembrance, and here I am,” she says quietly to a small audience she already has wrapped firmly in the palm of her trembling hand. It’s the performance of a young lifetime. Before the evening is through, Margo will offer Eve a job as her personal assistant. But Eve has already parlayed her good fortune into a higher rung of the ladder, quietly contemplating how she might become Margo’s understudy.
