YMMV / All About Eve

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• Accidental Aesop: "Easily disproven" lies will often be the undoing in a cover story.
• Adaptation Displacement: The film was based on a short story "The Wisdom of Eve" in which the title character is a Karma Houdini (which The Hays Code wouldn't allow in the film). The short story, in turn, is believed to be Very Loosely Based on a True Story with actress Elisabeth Bergner as the inspiration for Margo.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • Don't make your whole life about just your career, or you'll end up lonely and bitter.
  • There's also a strong lesson to be found in not invalidating someone else's experience because it's different to yours. As noted below, Margo and Birdie are the ones who live with Eve, and have the most dealings with her on a day-to-day basis. The others like Karen, Lloyd and Bill only drop by for short periods and thus only see Eve when she's being polite to visitors, and yet they dismiss Margo's concerns about her. This is especially glaring on Bill's part, since he's away for months and his birthday party is in fact only the second time he's with Eve in person. Sure enough, the experiences of the person who spends the most time with Eve are proved right.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • George Sanders himself sees Eve as "the closest thing to a heroine" in the story and Margo as immensely dislikable and unrelatable. This is probably why Showgirls — which is this except with Vegas showgirls — made the 'Eve' equivalent the main character (who then gets thought of as the Designated Hero).
  • Could Karen's sabotage of Margo's lift to the train station (making her miss her performance) be just her trying to give Eve a chance — or a moment of frustration wanting to knock Margo down a peg after weeks of her being unbearable. Probably a combination of both, since she wanted to help Eve but also get back at Margo. Given that she seems afraid of Eve telling on the stunt, it's possibly the former.
  • Once the truth about Eve is revealed, her meeting Karen has this thrown into it. Karen's narration says that she had glimpsed Eve there several times already. Had Eve deliberately stood there because she knew Karen would be walking by?
  • Margo's paranoia about Eve attempting to take over her position as a leading lady. Given she's completely right, is this just paranoia stemming from her growing insecurity about her age, or can she, an actress, spot something false in Eve's performance (even if she's not totally aware of it)? Birdie was previously an actress too and she spots the fakery pretty soon. There's also the fact that they're the only two who live with Eve all the time, while the others are only seeing her briefly when they visit.
  • Miss Caswell's audition. Was she genuinely bad? Or did Eve just completely throw her off? After all, it's the job of the reader to enhance the performance of the person auditioning. It's entirely possible Eve did her best to heighten Miss Caswell's nerves or throw her off to make herself look better.
  • Technically, Addison doesn't outright force Eve to marry him; he says she belongs to him. What, exactly, this means, is ambiguous. Given the era, they couldn't have him explicitly blackmailing her for sex, but they could easily imply that with them being married in the epilogue, and in the final scene, Eve appears to live alone. There's also little to indicate that Addison is sexually interested in her at all. We know for certain he's keeping her on a short leash, but what exactly that entails is a mystery—besides plain old psychological torture. And actually, towards the end, when Eve insists she doesn't want to go the party because she's tired he lets her go back to her room and rest.
  • Addison's column about Eve's performance...perhaps he had an even bigger ulterior motive. As he was already onto her at that point, did he write it with the intent that it would properly alienate Eve from the others? Beforehand it was still in doubt if she meant well in Margo's household, but afterwards Margo refuses to trust her again. Possibly he was already laying the groundwork for making sure Eve would have no choice but to marry him.
  • Eve taking in Phoebe at the end. She is admittedly exhausted from the awards ceremony, and too tired to go to the party, so she might not have the energy to throw the girl out. But what if she's more pragmatic, and hoping to use Phoebe to get back at Addison in some way? It would be extremely unlike Eve to not notice the obvious similarities between her actions and Phoebe's, so maybe she's planning to make use of the girl to rid herself of Addison.
  • It's assumed that Lloyd and Karen's marriage is on the rocks by the end but, if you notice Lloyd's reaction to Eve's speech, he doesn't look too impressed with her either. Sure, Eve's plan was for him to leave Karen for her, but Addison's statements lean towards that being a lie (her and Lloyd agreeing to it at least). So maybe she propositioned him, and he rejected her, now knowing that Karen and Margo were right about her.
• Award Snub: With both Bette Davis and Anne Baxter competing for Best Actress at the Academy Awards that year, they canceled each other out - and Judy Holliday ended up winning for Born Yesterday. This is considered a great snub for another nominee - Gloria Swanson for Sunset Boulevard. These days it's felt that Anne Baxter should have gone for Best Supporting Actress instead - as neither Celeste Holm nor Thelma Ritter's nominated performances have stood the test of time.
• Common Knowledge: It was widely accepted that Margo Channing was directly based on Tallulah Bankhead - who was a famous Broadway star of the early twentieth century, with a reputation for drinking and smoking. Bette Davis indeed was sometimes seen as the Poor Man's Substitute, since she ended up playing the film version of several roles Tallulah had originated on the stage (The Little Foxes and Jezebel most notably). Margo however was actually inspired by Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner, who took on a fan as an assistant and "that terrible girl" proceeded to undermine her. The costume designer did admit that she used some of Tallulah's more famous outfits as inspiration, but the similarities between her and Margo seem to be more coincidental, since she and Bette Davis were already very similar actresses to begin with (which is why they were often up for the same roles).
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Eve of course got this from a couple of the film's very cast members. Some viewers like to interpret her just as an ambitious feminist businesswoman who wants to do well in her career. This is ignoring that she does so by scheming and manipulating everyone with a pack of lies, rather than attempting to actually work for success. In fact, had she simply asked Margo for advice and help in getting started, she could easily have become an actress through consistent auditioning and networking.
  • Some viewers have a tendency to downplay the fact that Addison's at least as bad as Eve. Yes, he brings down Eve in the end, but that does not make him a hero, nor does he do it out of any sense of honor—he does it out of a sadistic desire to completely own her.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Addison Freaking DeWitt! Not only for practically driving the film with his wit, cynicism and smarts, he's also the only person who was capable of Out Gambitting the title character herself. His actor even won an Academy Award for his performance.
  • Birdie Coonan is a pretty popular character despite her limited screentime due to being the only one who initially saw through Eve's lies and deceptions, even if everyone thought she was just jealous. Thelma Ritter likewise took home the Best Supporting Actress award over her more prominent co-star Celeste Holm.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Eve Harrington is an incredible villain with just how easily she can manipulate nearly everyone around her including the audience and being an incredibly fast learner.
  • Addison likewise for proving to be such a Magnificent Bastard that he basically breaks Eve.
• Fanon: Eve and Addison are often interpreted to be really gay. However unlike films such as Rebel Without a Cause, Rope or The Haunting (1963) where the subtext is much more obvious, there's no definite evidence beyond Wild Mass Guessing. Eve has an obsession with Margo, but is set on becoming her rather than being romantically involved in her. She also attempts to seduce two men (to further her career yes) and it's revealed she was run out of town for having an affair with a married man. Addison meanwhile only has his I Am Very British way of speaking, and he appears to have some level of sexual interest in Eve.
• Fanfic Fuel: How exactly did Phoebe take over take over Eve's life after the film ended? How will her scheming turn out compared to Eve? Just how many Eves and Phoebes had there been over the years? What's Phoebe's real name? Also, it's common for people to name their fanwork All About Phoebe to match with the film's spirit.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Karen and Margo's rocky friendship imploding and then getting rekindled is harsher to watch with the knowledge that Celeste Holm and Bette Davis did not get on at all during filming - and years later Davis would say Holm was "the only bitch in the cast".
  • Margo and Bill getting their happily ever after (which is one of the few bright spots in the Bittersweet Ending) can be a bit sad with the knowledge that Bette Davis and Garry Merrill split up ten years later.
  • Marilyn Monroe spends a good portion of her screen time trying to get a drink, and she botches an audition because of how nervous she is. She would later be known for substance abuse to cope with her nerves and anxiety, leading to her death by overdose at the age of 36.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Our first impression of Margo is a slightly arrogant diva but, after she hears Eve's story about losing her husband, she's moved to tears and eventually invites her along to spend the evening. In fact, had Eve not decided to pit everyone against each other, Margo would have been a genuine friend to her.
  • When Margo catches Eve posing in front of the mirror with her stage costume, Margo smiles and gently lets Eve know that she should let the wardrobe mistress take care of it.
  • It's a frequent source of angst for Margo in the film that she's eight years older than Bill, and worried that he'll lose interest in her in favour of a younger woman. When Eve makes a pass at him, he turns her own immediately, because he loves Margo. And after Addison prints his column, he goes straight to Margo to let her know he's on her side.
  • Margo announcing that she's going to accept Bill's proposal and take some time off from touring to actually have a life. Those two sure do earn their happy ending.
  • Karen also is the first other character to suspect Eve's ulterior motives, and she defends Margo when Lloyd starts complaining about her. She too is on her friend's side once she sees the column.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • At one point, Margo quotes from Julius Caesar ("the evil that men do", though she can't remember what comes after that). Three years later, Joseph L. Mankiewicz went on to direct an adaptation of Julius Caesar.
  • Margo refers to her maid Birdie as a "fifth rate vaudeville star". Fast forward to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? where Bette Davis would play a formerly famous vaudeville child star, in the shadow of another woman who went on to become a noted film star.
  • Marilyn Monroe as an aspiring starlet. Her last scene is being laughed out of her theatre audition and told to try television^note In the Golden Age of Hollywood, turning to television was considered a real step down for any actor. Not only did she become a superstar in real life, she never starred in any television productions.
  • Anne Baxter, who played Eve Harrington, would eventually play Margo in the musical adaptation.
  • Meta example. Bette Davis traveled by train to San Francisco for production, while the rest of the cast flew out on a private jet. Celeste Holm reportedly said to Gary Merrill "I wonder what it'll be like working with the Queen Bee" and Merrill responded with something to the effect of "it'll be over in eight weeks". Merrill and Davis fell in love on set and were married for ten years.
  • Playwright Arthur Miller is name-dropped in the film. Marilyn Monroe, who plays Miss Caswell, would eventually marry him. And fast forward to the film The Misfits, written by him and starring her...and her landlady is played by Thelma Ritter (Birdie).
• I Am Not Shazam: Since Bette Davis is front and centre on the poster, it can be a surprise that her character is Margo Channing and not the Eve in the title.
• It Was His Sled: On the first watch, it's genuinely a mystery whether Eve is just an overeager fan and Margo is obsessively paranoid. Eve has gone down in history as a classic screen villain, so most viewers are already aware that she'll become the antagonist.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • While Margo initially seems like a moody and combative diva, it's very obvious that she's suffering from painful insecurities about her age and whether she'll be worth anything when she inevitably has to retire. Not to mention her increasing worries about Eve slowly taking over her life.
  • Given that it is commonly accepted (and implied in the text) that Addison forces Eve to marry him (or at least have some sort of relationship with him) in exchange for his silence, many have admitted to feeling a tiny bit sorry for her, since any such relationship would essentially be rape. You want to see Eve punished for her actions, but probably not in that way.
• Les Yay: Whatever Eve's feelings for Margo (or Phoebe), it's about as clear as The Hays Code would allow that Eve leans toward women, one scene even closing with her and a female cohort retiring arm in arm to their boudoir.
• LGBT Fanbase: Due to the focus on theatre, featuring lots of splendid Costume Porn and a running theme of women being pit against each other in Snark-to-Snark Combat, All About Eve was quite popular in gay circles and drag culture. It helps that Margo Channing aesthetically resembles Tallulah Bankhead, a famous queer icon, and Bette Davis herself is arguably one in her own right.
• Magnificent Bastard: Addison DeWitt is a brilliant and manipulative critic. Spotting the ascent of the titular Eve Harrington through the acting industry at the expense of others, DeWitt aids her in her rise to fame while pretending to be her ally and underling. Playing along with her, he effortlessly creates a paranoia which undermines Eve's rival Margo Channing and turns the tables, netting Eve a profitable career. However, when Eve decides to marry Lloyd Richards and rise to fame, DeWitt verbally breaks her down, making it clear that he alone is responsible for his career and that she has been outplayed, taking control of her life. As the film ends, DeWitt meets a similar woman to Eve and invites her to take lessons from Eve, beginning the cycle once again and always coming out on top.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Do we even need to say it? Something about seat belts...
  • Then there's Karen's infamous confrontation with Margo when she gets tired of her and her teammates always getting mistreated by Margo.
• Mind Game Ship: Addison and Eve is an unholy union of two manipulative sociopaths both trying to dominate and out-gambit the other. Very disturbing. He even lampshades it.
  Addison: That I should want you at all, suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that, in itself, is probably the reason. You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, our contempt for humanity and inability to love, and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.
• Narm: In an otherwise great scene of Snark-to-Snark Combat, Bill jumps up and says he's had enough of Margo's "paranoiac outbursts". Margo repeats the word "paranoiac!" and turns around as if the two were suddenly in a pantomime.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The concept of someone slowly destabilising your life and your nearest and dearest friends not believing you when you turn to them for help makes Margo's frequent angry outbursts very understandable.
  • The way Eve's whole demeanor goes from caring and sympathetic to cold and menacing in an instant. Her voice deepens and she grabs Karen's hand in a tight grip as she says to her "There is something you can do. Something most important". Karen is appalled by her behavior and all the more frightened when Eve blackmails her.
  • The ending with Eve letting her Loony Fan Phoebe stay in her apartment while she relaxes is a morbid Bookend for the film, as Phoebe not only secretly broke into her place (which not even Eve dared to do with Margo), but is already trying on Eve's cape and holding her award with a crazy shine in her eyes.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Marilyn Monroe makes one of her first film appearances, playing a Dumb Blonde.
  • Phoebe only appears in the end sequence, but her character is ripe for interpretation.
• Protagonist Title Fallacy: Margo is the protagonist, and it's also an ensemble that gives prominence to Karen and Bill as well. Eve is the antagonist.
• Retroactive Recognition: This film has one of Marilyn Monroe's first speaking parts.
• Ron the Death Eater: Some people go overboard with the hate towards Margo, painting her as an evil and superficial diva who deserved everything Eve did to her. This is ignoring that while Margo has an ego, she was genuinely moved by Eve's story and took her on as an assistant out of the goodness of her heart. And even when she starts getting paranoid about Eve, she still tries to get her a job in Max's office as opposed to kicking her out on the street. Margo's stresses also come from still being expected to play young twentysomethings in her forties, and the fear that she'll be nothing without her career. And she gets annoyed with Eve when the latter does things that would be considered out of line had the other characters listened to her and Birdie - arranging a party for Bill behind Margo's back, bragging about how she remembered Bill's birthday when Margo didn't and sent him a telegram, and getting herself appointed Margo's understudy without her knowledge.
• Signature Scene: Bill's birthday party, which leads to Margo getting drunk and uttering the famous line.
  "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Birdie Coonan. She's the film's Ensemble Dark Horse for her Deadpan Snarker tendencies and being the only person who initially saw through Eve's deceptions, and knew she was studying and using Margo, not to mention being a former vaudeville actress. But for some strange reason she flies the coop midway through the film and never gets mentioned again. Maybe more of her backstory could have been revealed, maybe she could have taken part in the climax or attended the ceremony. So many missed opportunities. She apparently was going to have a slightly larger part, playing up her suspicions of Eve even more, but Word of God is that they wanted to keep it a mystery whether Eve was a villain or not.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Everyone in this universe is a selfish, cynical jackass who lacks the ability to care about others; and if a character does not start that way in this film, he or she will sure as hell be disillusioned into cynicism by the end of this film.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Margo on the second watch. She's basically a victim of subtle emotional abuse, and everyone behaves as if she's completely irrational. Even before The Reveal, Eve does several things that would be out of line if everyone just listened to Margo and Birdie; arranging a call for Bill's birthday and planning a party behind her back (presumably charging Margo for both), while also passive aggressively rubbing it in her face that she remembered her boyfriend's birthday and sent him a private telegram. And Margo says she crossed Addison off her guest list for Bill's party, meaning Eve undermined her to invite him. Not to mention that Eve's sob story is designed to make Margo feel guilty for being annoyed with her. She also has every right to be annoyed that she wasn't told Eve made her understudy for a whole week, and Lloyd's praise of Eve's performance is hard to defend as anything other than a dig at Margo herself (while Addison may have embellished, Lloyd's reaction indicates he still said it).
• Values Dissonance:
  • Addison's scathing comments to Miss Caswell about how she has no chance in theatre and must resort to television. Back in that time, television was quite new and considered a real step down for any actor, rather than the easier way to get famous it would become (in terms of theatre acting anyway).
  • Even before she does anything overtly malicious, Eve sees every single performance of Margo's play and waits outside the theatre just to see her go in and out, before finally approaching her close friend to ask about her. While this is noted as unusual, the other characters generally see her as a nice, unusually devoted fangirl—at first. These days, with more and more cases of fans stalking celebrities and even physically harming them, it's more likely that Margo would be incredibly creeped out from the start, and it's also highly unlikely that Karen, who is involved in showbusiness and thus would know about this kind of thing, would bring Eve anywhere near her.
  • Eve's backstory is that she was paid off to leave town to avoid a scandal after having an affair with a married man. This is treated as information that would destroy her career and reputation. If that happened today, she might get some negative press from Moral Guardians but would otherwise not have to worry as much. In fact, given her obvious youth when the affair happened, the public might view her more sympathetically. She certainly wouldn't have to resort to becoming Addison's slave to keep the story from spreading.
• Values Resonance:
  • Rather than employing Career Versus Man, it's shown that Margo is still fulfilled being a successful actress and her problem isn't necessarily that she needs a man - but that she needs to be nicer to those around her. She accepts the love from Bill and her friends, while still maintaining her career. Additionally, Eve and Addison's marriage at the end is shown to be empty and lifeless.
  • Sadly, the struggles Margo faces as an older actress are still alive and well today, making her remain relatable and sympathetic even as the years go on. Even now, romantic roles for actresses who are in or past middle age are something of a rarity, and there's always a new crop of bright young things to take their places. Similarly, it's still somewhat uncommon to see a gap of eight years between a couple where the man is the younger one, at least among celebrities. When it does happen, people talk, but the other way around gets no comment at all. (Just look at how some people reacted to Taylor Swift dating Joe Alwyn, only three years her junior, compared to how they reacted to her dating John Mayer, twelve years her senior.) On the bright side, this means the significance of Bill not giving a crap about Margo's age and still seeing her as the gorgeous, talented woman she is isn't lost.

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