All About “All About Eve” (28 page)

Even more dispiriting is the sad fact that professionally they had declined, in less than a decade, from the acidulous wit of Mankiewicz to the folksy pieties of Sandburg, the Norman Rockwell of American Literature. The pithiest comment on their endeavor came from an unlikely source.

Ethel Barrymore lay on her deathbed, drifting in and out of consciousness. A friend, uncertain whether she was even awake, tried to rouse her with light conversation. “And you know,” he said, “Bette Davis and Gary Merrill are touring in ‘The World of Carl Sandburg,’ reading his poetry.” Ethel’s eyes flew open. “Thanks for the warning,” she whispered.

Bette’s career during the next three decades, until her death in 1989, includes few of the performances one wants or expects. The public never turned against her, however, and many of her fans dutifully attended the trashy movies and watched the tepid TV dramas in hopes of another comeback. The closest thing to it arrived in 1962, when Bette teamed up with Joan Crawford for the infamous
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Whatever its shortcomings, it’s fixed forever in the Davis canon. Just when she seemed most passé, she gave perhaps the strongest screen performance of the early sixties, a moribund time for old Hollywood but a final electroshock to Bette’s legend.

Gary Merrill didn’t have a legend, and so the countless movies and TV appearances he made after
All About Eve
are hardly remembered at all. One day about 1965, in a deep depression, he considered jumping from the terrace of his small New York apartment. But he lacked the energy and the courage. He had sunk to the bottom of his life. A few days later, when he turned on the television, he heard familiar voices.
All About Eve
was on the late show. “I sat and watched it unfold,” Gary recalled in his memoirs. “I hadn’t seen that movie since it first came out, fifteen years before.”

By the time the movie ended, Gary realized that he would never quite know where Margo Channing and Bill Sampson ended and Bette Davis and Gary Merrill began. And it no longer mattered. To Gary, that night in front of the TV, the fault for what went wrong between them seemed mostly Bette’s. “She had totally cut herself off from others. I finally understood why she had chosen
The Lonely Life
as the title of her book—and she was welcome to it. I began to laugh at the marvelous joke. I felt a sense of liberation when I realized that Bette had been as big a fool as I.”

After their divorce the former lovers rarely crossed paths, though Gary publicly denied the accusations made against Bette by her daughter, B. D. Hyman, in
My Mother’s Keeper
. Gary Merrill died of lung cancer on March 5, 1990, exactly five months after Bette.

Chapter 21

You’ll Give the Performance of Your Life

Zanuck’s confidence in
All About Eve
verging on enthusiasm, he saw no need for audience previews with their questionnaires and dubious suggestions for improving a film. The only screening was for members of the press from Hollywood and around Los Angeles.

All About Eve
and Its Trailers

The studio produced four trailers, one way of signaling exhibitors that this was an important picture. As a signal to theatregoers, three of the four trailers included special material. For example, one opened with this title: “Scoop! Bette Davis Tells
Newsweek
Magazine
All About Eve
. Reporter Leonard Slater Interviews Famous Actress on the Set.”

In a contrived interview conducted on a sofa, the stiff reporter says, “Miss Davis, may I have your opinion of her?” Bette’s answer, surprisingly, is entirely the words of Addison DeWitt: “The golden girl, the cover girl. The girl next door [etc.].” She winds up her animated speech with more of Addison’s words: “A contempt for humanity and the inability to love or be loved … insatiable ambition and talent.” (Bette’s pronunciation of those two words, here and in her movies, always sounded like “luff” and “luffed.”)

The one-minute interview is followed by half a dozen lively scenes from the picture, lasting about two minutes.

In a separate trailer, Anne Baxter is interviewed by a different reporter, and Celeste Holm by a third, who asks, “Miss Holm, what was your experience with Eve?” Her saucy reply: “Well, she never fooled me much—just too much. I recognized all her weapons of warfare a little too late. Her beauty—her heartlessness. She had the manners of an ambassador and the morals of a pirate.”

The regular trailer was more formal, beginning with the title, “Ladies and Gentlemen, This Theatre Announces a Motion Picture So Unusual in Quality…”

These entertainment journalists no doubt arrived at the studio screening room expecting a fairly good picture. The more skeptical among them, however, recalling Bette’s recent flops, weren’t betting on the Davis future. Who could remember the last time she was really good?

The lights went down. Over two hours later, when they went on again, there was a moment of silence. And then it burst out—applause, more and more of it. They began to stand up, and an instant later the most influential movie audience in Southern California was on its feet. The tribute was to
All About Eve
and everyone responsible for it. But especially Bette Davis. Applause lasted until the room was half empty. By the time they got back to their typewriters, the press had forgotten all about Bette’s last few movies. This new one proved how good she was. It had “Box Office Hit” written all over it.

Soon, the buzz in Hollywood was that
All About Eve
looked like a masterpiece and that Bette Davis had orchestrated the comeback of the year. Everyone in town was eager to see it, but first there was the New York opening. The Hollywood premiere would follow a few weeks later.

The picture opened at the 6,200-seat Roxy, on Seventh Avenue at Fiftieth Street in the Theatre District, on Friday, October 13. No actor would have opened a movie on such an unlucky day, but moguls and businessmen and theatre exhibitors don’t depend on luck. They depend on cash, good reviews, word of mouth, weekend crowds. And fanfare.

The Roxy itself had enough decorative fanfare to upstage most films that played there. Built on a scale to rival Radio City Music Hall, the Roxy could have passed for a tarted-up branch of the Metropolitan Museum. The theatre featured a five-story rotunda large enough to hold 4,000 people, an architectural theme that grafted Renaissance details on Gothic forms with fanciful Moorish overtones, a music library, a set of twenty-one grand chimes weighing 10,000 pounds, fourteen Steinway pianos scattered throughout the theatre, an electrical plant sufficient to serve a town of 25,000, and washroom facilities for 10,000. The theatre’s battalion of ushers, drilled by a former Marine, so impressed Cole Porter that he paid the young men a musical compliment. In “You’re the Top,” one of his witty superlatives is “You’re the pants on a Roxy usher.”

Having chosen this sumptuous setting, Fox attempted a prestigious road-show policy for
Eve
. Ads in the New York papers, allegedly placed by “the Men and Women of 20th Century-Fox,” explained that “when we first saw
All About Eve
, we became aware that its utter fascination and charm were immeasurably due to the fact that we were seeing it the only way it should be seen—from the beginning.” Patrons of the Roxy, therefore, would be admitted only at the start of scheduled showings—four a day. Prices started at $1.00 for a 10:30
A.M
. weekday show and increased to $2.00 on weekends.

As sensible as it seems today, the innovative policy of seeing a movie from the beginning was ahead of its time in 1950. Cinephiles welcomed the absence of people climbing over their feet, but most moviegoers were confused. “Why are we standing on line outside in the cold when there are empty seats inside?” some complained. “Save the ‘theatrical experience’ for Broadway shows,” grumbled others. The flood of telephone calls to the box office became so heavy that the management hired an extra operator to provide information.

And so a week later Fox and the Roxy abandoned their highfalutin plan. Back to the “grind” policy of continuous performances, with people arriving and leaving throughout the show. After the theatre reverted to a customary schedule, ticket sales increased 25 percent.
Variety
reported that “while the Roxy will probably gross a big $91,000 on the initial week ending tomorrow, a combination of favorable word-of-mouth and unanimous rave reviews indicated the figure would have gone much higher had
Eve
been playing on a straight exhibition policy.”

The reviews were not unanimous raves. Bosley Crowther of the
New York Times
wrote that “Mr. Mankiewicz has been too full of fight—too full of cutlass-edged derision of Broadway’s theatrical tribe.… Two hours and eighteen minutes have been taken by him to achieve the ripping apart of an illusion which might have been comfortably done in an hour and a half.” Crowther never got around to telling a thing about the plot. Instead, he described the characters in monster-movie terms: “Eve, who would make a black-widow spider look like a ladybug” and Margo, “an aging, acid creature with a cankerous ego and a stinging tongue.… George Sanders is walking wormwood.” (Crowther makes the movie sound like a documentary on lethal arthropods.)

More typical of the reviews is this one by Leo Mishkin in the
New York Morning Telegraph
: “
All About Eve
is probably the wittiest, the most devastating, the most adult and literate motion picture ever made that had anything to do with the New York stage … a crackling, sparkling, brilliantly written and magnificently acted commentary on the legitimate theatre. Bette Davis gives the finest performance she has ever played on the screen.”

Hollywood braced for a hit. On November 6, three days before the West Coast premiere, Bette Davis finally pressed her hands and feet into wet cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Why had Sid Grauman waited so long to immortalize her?

Two servicemen, S.Sgt. Jack Spencer and T.Sgt. Bert R. Nave, assisted Bette as she knelt down and then arose. Newsreel cameras recorded the belated initiation. Bette’s mood was jovial. As she stepped over Betty Grable’s legprints, she quipped, “Too bad there’s no way to imprint my poached-egg eyes down there.”

The cement had hardened by the night of the premiere. On Thursday, November 9, a thousand fans filled the specially erected bleachers in front of Grauman’s before sundown. Thousands more lined Hollywood Boulevard. A headline that morning in the
Hollywood Citizen-News
had proclaimed,
GALA PREMIERE TONIGHT FOR “EVE” AT CHINESE
.

“The fans were treated to a glittering array of evening gowns,” stated the
Hollywood Reporter
, “and to add to the lustre and significance of the evening, the Roosevelt Hotel across the street blacked out all letters on their big electric sign except the word
EVE
.”

As the stars arrived by limousine, emcee Harry Crocker introduced them over a microphone. He was kept busy, for all of these attended: Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Kirk Douglas, Linda Darnell, Van Heflin, Joan Bennett, Janet Leigh, Larry Parks and Betty Garrett, Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse, Richard Conte, Ezio Pinza, Charles Coburn, Mercedes McCambridge, Louis Jourdan, Paul Henreid, Janet Gaynor, Paul Douglas and Jan Sterling, Donald Crisp, Debra Paget, Jean Hersholt, Robert Cummings, Robert Mitchum, George Raft, Macdonald Carey, Hedy Lamarr, Danny Kaye, Dorothy McGuire, Gregory Peck, Franchot Tone, Van Johnson, Corinne Calvet, Victor McLaglen, Jeanne Crain, Glenn Ford and Eleanor Powell, Teresa Wright, and Greer Garson.

Marilyn Monroe arrived on the arm of her agent and protector, Johnny Hyde, the man who had landed her the part of Miss Caswell by twisting Zanuck’s arm. A few of the fans recognized her; others asked “Who is she?” never guessing that even the initials “M.M.” would someday be bigger than all the other names combined. Johnny looked bad. His face was ashen and he seemed to clutch Marilyn’s arm for support. He died of a heart attack five and a half weeks later.

Anne Baxter and John Hodiak, so much in love, arrived together and chatted with the emcee. They were followed by George and Zsa Zsa, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Marlowe, Darryl and Virginia Zanuck, and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Celeste Holm didn’t attend, for she was starring on Broadway in
Affairs of State
, written especially for her by the French playwright Louis Verneuil. Celeste was ecstatic, for Verneuil had also written Sarah Bernhardt’s last two plays for her. “I’m afraid some of Verneuil’s extremely French ideas on extra-marital relations have had to be revised for American audiences,” Celeste coyly told a reporter.

Along with her new play, Celeste was singing nightly at the Plaza Hotel’s Persian Room. She had turned her back on Hollywood and wouldn’t return until 1955 for
The Tender Trap
. “It was a world of showing off and tennis playing and cars,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it.” But Bette said, “I love Hollywood. The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can’t get work in movies.”

In the forecourt of Grauman’s, where her freshly pressed hand and footprints caused a stir, Bette was all smiles as she explained to reporters why she wasn’t staying for the movie. “My husband, Gary Merrill, is in Germany making
Decision Before Dawn
and I promised him I would not see our picture until he returned.”

Inside the theatre,
All About Eve
kept the audience laughing. There was perhaps the occasional wince, for some of those present surely wondered if Mankiewicz had targeted them in such lines as the one about “permitting mature actresses to continue playing roles requiring a youth and vigor of which they retain but a dim memory.”

There was not only laughter but also sporadic applause. When Addison DeWitt slapped Eve and warned her, “Now remember as long as you live, never to laugh at me,” the audience roared its approval not only for Eve’s comeuppance, but for George and Anne’s bravura acting.