This Month

Susan Hayward, Marlene Dietrich, Gertrude Lawrence, Ingrid Bergman and Barbara Stanwyck were among the actresses considered to play Margo Channing in All About Eve.

Joseph Mankiewicz's original title for All About Eve was Best Performance.

Margo Channing's character was named Margola Cranston in Mary Orr's original story The Wisdom of Eve.

Joseph Mankiewicz wrote the character of Birdie, which did not appear in Mary Orr's original story, with actress Thelma Ritter specifically in mind. He had worked with her before on A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and liked her a lot.

It was long rumored that Bette Davis based her portrayal of Margo Channing on another great real-life star: Tallulah Bankhead. Though Davis and Mankiewicz always denied this, Bankhead always believed that she was being imitated. In 1952 Bankhead herself played the role of Margo Channing in an NBC radio adaptation on The Big Show.

Regarding Margo Channing's resemblance to Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis later remarked, "Tallulah herself, more than anyone else, accused me of imitating her as Margo Channing. The problem was that I had no voice at all when I started filming All About Eve due to emotional stress...This gave me the famous Bankhead husky voice. Otherwise, I don't think the similarity to Bankhead in my performance would ever have been thought of."

Mary Orr, author of the original story The Wisdom of Eve, said that Tallulah Bankhead asked her personally if she had based the character of Margo Channing (nee Margola Cranston) on her. When Orr said no, "this made her so angry," recalled the author, "she never spoke to me again."

The on screen credits for All About Eve list the name of Gary Merrill's character as Bill "Simpson," though throughout the film he is clearly referred to as Bill "Sampson".

All About Eve received a record fourteen Academy Award nominations. This holds the record to this day. Titanic tied the record in 1998.

Though Bette Davis and co-star Gary Merrill married after All About Eve, following their divorce ten years later, Davis was convinced that they had carried too much of their on-screen characters into their real lives. "We met while we were filming All About Eve," said Davis. "I was Margo Channing and he was my director, Bill Sampson. We fell in love with each other in the film and in real life. We then got married in real life. But he thought he was marrying Margo and I thought I was marrying Bill. It wasn't long before he found out that I wasn't Margo, and he was certainly no Bill Sampson."

Regarding the Academy Award he received as Best Supporting Actor for All About Eve, George Sanders remarked in his 1960 autobiography Memoirs of a Professional Cad, " I got an Oscar® for my performance in All About Eve which, I suppose, makes this film the high point of my career. If I sound doubtful about it, it is because Oscars®-for which so many actors and actresses pine and scheme-have affected the recipients' careers in such an adverse way as to make them view the whole thing with some apprehension as well as pride. I was grateful and flattered to get mine, but apart from making my already large ego one size larger it did absolutely nothing for me."

The success of All About Eve coincided with Bette Davis finally being invited to immortalize her hand and footprints outside the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood on November 6, 1950.

When Bette Davis and Anne Baxter both received Academy Award nominations for their roles in All About Eve, it was the first time in history that two actresses from the same film were up against each other in the category of Best Actress.

When the winner of the Best Actress award was announced at the 1951 Academy Awards, it was a shocking upset: the award went to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday (1950). Many people believe that with both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter nominated in the same category, they split the vote and cancelled each other out, opening the victory up to Holliday.

All About Eve was restored in anticipation of its 50th anniversary in 2000.

The original camera negative for All About Eve was one of the last film prints to ever be shot on the highly flammable nitrate-based stock at 20th Century Fox.

Famous Quotes from ALL ABOUT EVE

"To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs or know anything in the world in which you live, it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison De Witt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater." – George Sanders, as Addison De Witt.

"Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance, at the age of four, in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered quite unexpectedly stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star. A true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else." – George Sanders, as Addison De Witt.

"Autograph fiends, they're not people. Those are little beasts that run around in packs like coyotes...They're nobody's fans. They're juvenile delinquents, they're mental defective, and nobody's audience. They never see a play or a movie even. They're never indoors long enough." – Bette Davis, as Margo Channing.

"There are some human experiences, Birdie, that do not take place in a vaudeville house, and that even a fifth-rate vaudevillian should understand and respect!" – Bette Davis, as Margo Channing to Thelma Ritter's Birdie.

"You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited, and faultless and messy." –Bette Davis, as Margo Channing to Gary Merrill's Bill.

"Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke." – Bette Davis, as Margo Channing.

"Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous onstage and off. I love you for some of them and in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp, all right. But I will not have you sharpen them on me or on Eve." – Gary Merrill, as Bill to Davis's Margo Channing.

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."-Bette Davis, as Margo Channing.

"Miss Casswell is an actress. A graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art."-George Sanders, as Addison De Witt.

"Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?" – Marilyn Monroe, as Miss Casswell, referring to theatrical producers in general.

"Lloyd, I am not twenty-ish. I am not thirty-ish. Three months ago I was forty years old. Forty. 4-0. 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." – Bette Davis, as Margo Channing to Hugh Marlowe's Lloyd.

"Bill's 32. He looks 32. He looked it five years ago. He'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men." -- Bette Davis, as Margo Channing to Hugh Marlowe's Lloyd.

"I've listened backstage to people's applause. It's like 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, and their eyes shine. You've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything." – Anne Baxter, as Eve Harrington.

"Stop being a star. And stop treating your guests as your supporting cast." – Celeste Holm, as Karen Richards to Davis' Margo.

"I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're her words she's saying and her thoughts she's expressing?...It's about time the piano realized it has not written the concerto." – Hugh Marlowe, as Lloyd Richards to Davis's 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." – Bette Davis, as Margo Channing to Gary Merrill's 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 book full of clippings, but you're not a woman." – Bette Davis, as Margo Channing to Celeste Holm's Karen.

"Now remember as long as you live never to laugh at me. At anything or anyone else, but never at me." – George Sanders, as Addison De Witt to Anne Baxter's Eve.

"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." -- George Sanders, as Addison De Witt to Anne Baxter's Eve.

"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." – Bette Davis, as Margo Channing to Anne Baxter's Eve.

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume