Trivia / All About Eve

• Actor-Inspired Element: Margo as first conceived was more excessively polite and comedic. When Bette Davis was cast, she was tweaked to be much more combative.
• Actor-Shared Background: Walter Hampden plays the president of the society presenting Eve with the Sarah Siddons Award. At that time, he was the president of the Player's Club in New York - which also gave out lifetime achievement awards.
• Approval of God: Tallulah Bankhead had a radio show premiering around the same time the film opened up, and the show contained several jokes about the similarities between herself and Margo. Bette Davis, who had great respect for the actress, found the jokes hilarious.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Anne Baxter recalls everyone watching the rushes after the first week of filming - and having this reaction. Knowing that the film was "something special", they were all excited to go to work each day. Bette Davis later called it the most rewarding film she had ever made. George Sanders likewise listed his role as Addison as his favourite.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Margo's famous quote is "it's going to be a bumpy night", not "ride"; she was actually referring to a party.
• Career Resurrection: Bette Davis had been in a string of flops, and credits this film with saving her career from complete oblivion.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: This was George Sanders' favourite film of his own.
  The critics and the trades loved it. It was a film of distinction: witty, sophisticated, and brilliantly written and directed.
• Deleted Role: Although he's still credited for the film, Eddie Fisher's scene as the stage manager was cut.
• Defictionalization: The Sarah Siddons Award was made up by the director and was not a real theatre award. Two years later, a small group of Chicago theatre goers started presenting an award with that name - modelled after the award in the film. Celeste Holm won it in 1967, and Bette Davis was presented with an honorary one in 1973.
• Enforced Method Acting: George Sanders spent his time nodding off between scenes in his dressing room. Anne Baxter remarked that his perpetual sleepiness helped his character immensely.
• Follow the Leader: You can blame this film for an entire subgenre of "ambitious young female character aspires to become the successor of an older female character" films that includes Girl in Gold Boots, Showgirls and, with some variations, Election.
• God Never Said That: The press circulated a rumour that Margo Channing was based on actress Tallulah Bankhead - a theatre star known for her larger than life personality, and heavy drinking habit. Many reviews even reported it as fact. Joe Manciewicz and Bette Davis repeatedly insisted that the similarities were unintentional. Indeed, the similarities were largely because both actresses just had very similar looks and typecasting (and Bette Davis had played many roles that Tallulah Bankhead had been passed over for or declined for this reason). The actual inspiration for Margo was Elisabeth Bergner - who once took on a young fan as her assistant, and "that terrible girl" repeatedly tried to undermine her.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Bette Davis got on well with all her castmates, except Celeste Holm. As she put it:
    Celeste Holm: I walked onto the set on the first day and said, 'Good morning,' and do you know her reply? She said, 'Oh shit, good manners.' I never spoke to her again - ever.
  • Davis intimidated Marilyn Monroe so badly that Monroe went into the bathroom to vomit after her scenes with Davis. After one particular scene Davis whispered to her other co-stars— within poor Marilyn's hearing— "That little blonde slut can't act her way out of a paper bag! She thinks if she wiggles her ass and coos away, she can carry her scene— well, she can't!"
• Life Imitates Art: Anne Baxter would later be chosen to replace Bette Davis on Hotel when the latter fell ill, with Baxter's character being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute to Davis's. She ended up replacing her permanently.^note Ironically, Baxter died during the show's run, resulting in her characer dying with her, while Davis actually outlived the show.
• Meta Casting: Miss Caswell is an aspiring starlet hoping to get into the business. She's played by Marilyn Monroe, who at the time was one of the least experienced of the cast.
• Recursive Adaptation: The movie was based on a short story, and then got a musical adaptation on Broadway - which itself was adapted into a TV movie. Anne Baxter even played Margot in the Broadway show for a time.
• Romance on the Set: Bette Davis and Gary Merrill fell in love and married while making the film, but later divorced. They also adopted a girl, who they named Margo.
  Davis: We met while filming All About Eve. 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 I wasn’t Margo, and he was certainly no Bill Sampson.
• Stillborn Franchise: Bette Davis lobbied hard for a sequel film, as she and Gary Merrill had since married, and she wanted to continue Margo and Bill's lives. Years later, after they'd divorced, she approached Mankiewicz and said, "Forget about that sequel. I've played it and it doesn't work." Funnily enough, Mary Orr later published a sequel to her original short story, titled More About Eve, which had a Sequel Reset where Eve divorced her new husband and he went back to the writer.
• Throw It In!: The famous dress Margot wears for the "bumpy night" actually didn't quite fit Bette Davis on the shoulders, so the actress decided to slip it off the shoulders instead.
• What Could Have Been:
  • In the first drafts, Margo would have been a foreign actress - as she was inspired by Austrian theatre star Elisabeth Bergner.
  • Manciewicz' first choice for Margo Channing was Claudette Colbert, who had to drop out of the production after an injury. Other candidates included Ingrid Bergman ^note She had just fallen in love with Italian director Roberto Rossellini and didn't want to leave Italy, Joan Crawford^note She was already working on The Damned Don't Cry, Marlene Dietrich^note It was decided that she was 'too German' for the part., Joan Fontaine, Greer Garson, Susan Hayward, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Vivien Leigh, Ginger Rogers, Rosalind Russell, Norma Shearer, Barbara Stanwyck and Gloria Swanson. Fontaine was also considered for Karen Richards.
  • Zsa Zsa Gabor and Angela Lansbury were considered for Miss Caswell. Zsa Zsa still kept coming to the set anyway, jealous of her husband George Sanders having scenes with Marilyn Monroe.
  • Ann Blyth, Olivia de Havilland, Donna Reed and Elizabeth Taylor were all considered for Eve Harrington.
  • Montgomery Clift, Glenn Ford, William Holden and Robert Young were all considered for Bill Sampson.
  • José Ferrer, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone were all considered for the role of Addison De Witt.
  • Joan Fontaine and Jessica Tandy were considered for Karen Richards.
  • According to the casting director's list, future White House occupants Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan were considered for the roles of Bill Sampson and Eve Harrington.
  • Earlier drafts played up Birdie's suspicion of Eve much more. Manciewicz was advised to tone that down so as to keep it a mystery whether Eve was a villain for longer.
• Working Title: Best Actress.
• Written-In Infirmity: Bette Davis' marriage to William Grant Sherry was in the throes of breaking up while she was making the film. Her raspy voice in the film is largely due to the fact that she burst a blood vessel in her throat from screaming at her soon-to-be-ex-husband during one of their many rows. Joseph L. Mankiewicz liked the croaky quality so he didn't have Davis change it.

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