"Just because a man knows all the lines in ALL ABOUT EVE ....."
The quotes alone are stupendous, IMDb only has 88 of them listed - and we won't include Margo's comment about seat belts !
Anne Baxter (after that comedy western A TICKET TO TOMAHAWK forgotten now apart from that Marilyn was in it too) and George Sanders (after another biblical, the enjoyable SAMSON & DELILAH) must have relished gettng their teeth into dialogue like this (while Bette had one of her most iconic roles after her years at Warners).
Eve: Good evening, Mr. DeWitt.
Margo: I'd no idea you two knew each other.
Miss Caswell: That's how you met me... in passing.
Eve: I don't know that I take you for anything.
Eve: I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison ,
but I don't know what.
Eve:I never intended you to be.
Eve: I still don't know what you're getting at, but right
now I want to take my nap. It's important...
Eve: Champion to champion.
Eve: Addison , will you please say
what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take
my nap?
Eve: What do you mean by that?
Eve:What have you got to do with it?
Eve: Belong? To you? I can't believe my ears!
Eve: Belong to you - why, that sounds medieval, something
out of an old melodrama!
Eve:: Taken it for granted that you and I...[laughs]
Eve: [walks to the door and opens it] Get out!
Margo: And this is my dear friend and companion, Miss Bridie Coonan.
Birdie: Oh brother.
Birdie: What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.
Birdie: Oh brother.
Birdie: What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end.
Birdie: Voila!
Margo: That French ventriloquist taught you a lot, didn't he?
Birdie: There was nothing he did not know.
Margo: Write me one
about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.
Margo: I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still
not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.
Margo: I detest cheap sentiment.
Lloyd Richards: The atmosphere is very MacBeth-ish... what
has, or is about to, happen?
Margo: Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into
the heart of an artichoke.
Eve: I'd like to hear it.
Margo: Some snowy night, in front of the fire.
Margo: Thank you, Eve. I'd like a martini, very dry.
Bill: I'll get it.
Bill [to Eve]: What'll you have?
Margo: A milkshake?
Eve: A martini, very dry, please.
Margo: She's a girl of so many interests.
Bill: It's a pretty rare quality these days.
Margo: She's a girl of so many rare qualities.
Bill: So she seems.
Margo: So you've pointed out, so often. So many qualities,
so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection - and so young.
So young and so fair...
Karen: I'm sorry, Margo.
Margo: What for? It isn't as though you personally drained
the gas tank yourself.
There's tons more of course, but otherwise we would be quoting the whole movie!
There's tons more of course, but otherwise we would be quoting the whole movie!
I've read All About All About Eve and loved it, think you will too. Anyone with an interest in the film will find many tidbits.
ReplyDeleteA very appropriate post what with the passing of Lizabeth Scott recently. One rumor was that she was the inspiration for Eve from her time understudying Tallulah Bankhead in The Skin of Our Teeth.
It must have been a fun shoot. Davis was washed up at Warners by the end of the 40s and the this plum fell into her lap, as Claudette Colbert hurt her back and had to withdraw (I can't quite picture her as Margo, Baxter had a passing resemblance to her which would have worked though). Bette and boozehound Merrill hit it off (and married thereafter for a tempestuous decade or so) and it seems they formed their own clique on set, annoying Celeste who had a feud with Davis who it seemed objected to Celeste's good manners - but I dare say it will all be in the book, which I will have before too long. It only provided a temporary fillip for Davis though, who was soon back in silly melodramas as the 50s progressed.
ReplyDeleteBaxter had a lot more successes, we particularly relish her camp Nefertiti in Cecil's The Ten Commandents; George continuned his run of costume dramas and programmers, great with the Merman and singing in CALL ME MADAM, while Marilyn had erupted into stardom by then ...
Bette certainly suggests Tallulah here, to Bankhead's fury.
ReplyDeleteMichael, the above quotes really does prove you are one of the boys in the band! :)
ReplyDeleteBest-written movie of all time!! Joseph Mankiewicz's bitchy-witty script is brilliant; hard to believe this film was helmed by a heterosexual man...
ReplyDeleteI also think you'll enjoy the book...Bette really was a snob and a bitch to Celeste...which is really saying something. Ms. Holm could also put on airs and be quite the grande dame herself. "Don't act as if I were the Queen Mother..."
Ironically in their later years, Anne replaced Bette again in that 80s tv series HOTEL, I caught a few episodes at the time. By then of course EVE had become the Broadway musical APPLAUSE, with Bacall - and also Baxter - playing Margo. I hated the 1973 London production as per my review on that, Bacall label!.Probably the worst version of a movie ever staged.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right angelman66 - and his previous one A LETTER TO THREE WIVES is justas good, if not better - see my post on that, Mank label- he capture that late 40s vibe perfect, its another brilliant script full of marvellous dialogue I love the whole Lora Mae and Porter Hollingsway story (Linda Darnell & Paul Douglas) and the great long dinner sequence when Florence Bates comes to dinner with Ann Sothern and Kirk Douglas - and Thelma is the wisecracking maid! Mank got best director and screenwriter Oscar both years: 1949 and 1950. What a career peak, and he kept on going - I like his work on CLEOPATRA and THE HONEYPOT too.
ReplyDelete