All About Eve Joseph Mankiewicz

Box office

The film earned $3.1 million in receipts in the United States during its release,[14] more than double its original budget of $1.4 million.[3][4] To date the film has a cumulative gross of $8.4 million,[5] more than five times its production costs.

Critical response

All About Eve received widespread critical acclaim upon its release on October 13, 1950, at a New York City premiere. The film's competitor, Sunset Boulevard, released the same year, drew similar praise, and the two were often favorably compared. Film critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times loved the picture, stating that "a fine Darryl Zanuck production, excellent music and an air of ultra-class complete this superior satire."[15] Variety called it "a literate, adult film" with "exceedingly well-cast performances,"[16] while Harrison's Reports called it "a fascinating, continually absorbing story about Broadway theatrical people, given a mature treatment and penetrated with realistic dialogue and flashes of slick, sardonic humor."[17] John McCarten of The New Yorker called it "a thoroughly entertaining movie."[18]

Writing in 2000, film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times praised the film, saying of Bette Davis that "veteran actress Margo Channing in All About Eve was her greatest role."[19] Boxoffice.com stated that it "is a classic of the American cinema – to this day the quintessential depiction of ruthless ambition in the entertainment industry, with legendary performances from Bette Davis, Anne Baxter and George Sanders anchoring one of the very best films from one of Hollywood's very best Golden Era filmmakers: Joseph L. Mankiewicz."[20]

As of 2021 review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, All About Eve holds an approval rating of 99% based on 107 reviews, with an average rating of 9.30/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Smart, sophisticated, and devastatingly funny, All About Eve is a Hollywood classic that only improves with age."[21] In 2019 Metacritic assigned a weighted average score of 98 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[22]

Thematic content

Critics and academics have delineated various themes in the film. Rebecca Flint Marx, in her Allmovie review, notes the antagonism (active hostility or opposition) that existed between Broadway and Hollywood at the time, stating that the "script summoned into existence a whole array of painfully recognizable theatre types, from the aging, egomaniacal grand dame to the outwardly docile, inwardly scheming ingenue to the powerful critic who reeks of malignant charm."[23] Abel Green, writing in Variety said, "The snide references to picture people, the plug for San Francisco ("an oasis of civilization in the California desert") and the like are purposeful and manifest an intelligent reflex from a group of hyper-talented people towards the picture business."[16]

Roger Ebert, in his review in The Great Movies, says Eve Harrington is "a universal type", and focuses on the aging actress plot line, comparing the film to Sunset Boulevard.[24] Similarly, Marc Lee's 2006 review of the film for The Daily Telegraph describes a subtext "into the darker corners of show business, exposing its inherent ageism, especially when it comes to female stars."[25] Kathleen Woodward's 1999 book, Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generations (Theories of Contemporary Culture), also discusses themes that appeared in many of the "aging actress" films of the 1950s and 1960s, including All About Eve. She reasons that Margo has three options: "To continue to work, she can perform the role of a young woman, one she no longer seems that interested in. She can take up the position of the angry bitch, the drama queen who holds court (the deliberate camp that Susan Sontag finds in this film). Or she can accept her culture's gendered discourse of aging which figures her as in her moment of fading. Margo ultimately chooses the latter option, accepting her position as one of loss."[26]

All About Eve has long been a favored film among gay audiences, likely due to its campy overtones (in part due to the casting of Davis) and its general sophistication. Davis, who long had a strong gay fan base, expressed support for gay men in her 1972 interview with The Advocate.[27][28][29]

Awards and honors

Later recognition and rankings

In 1990, All About Eve was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[6] The Academy Film Archive preserved All About Eve in 2000.[31] The film received in 1997 a placement on the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame. The film has been selected by the American Film Institute for many of their 100 Years lists.

When AFI named Bette Davis #2 on its list of the greatest female American screen legends, All About Eve was the film selected to highlight Davis' legendary career. The Writers Guild of America has ranked the film's screenplay as the fifth greatest ever written.[32]

Sarah Siddons Award

The film opens with the image of a fictitious award trophy, described by DeWitt as the "highest honor our theater knows: the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement." The statuette is modeled after the famous painting of Siddons costumed as the tragic Muse by Joshua Reynolds, a copy of which hangs in the entrance of Margo's apartment and often visible during the party scene. In 1952, a small group of distinguished Chicago theater-goers began to give an award with that name, which was sculpted to look like the one used in the film. It has been given annually, with past honorees including Bette Davis and Celeste Holm.