1950: All About Eve

 

There aren’t any good All About Eve posters floating around, that I could I find, so we’ll just make do with the DVD cover

“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” Margo Channing (Bette Davis) preparing a party for one of her diva tantrums, All About Eve.

“Margo is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.” – Addison DeWitt (George Sanders), giving his only compliment, All About Eve

Another cynical movie – and another movie starting with the word All – won best picture in 1950. While 1949’s winner All the King’s Men looked at the fakers and showmen in politics, 1950’s Best Picture, All About Eve, turned the camera’s gaze on those who are paid to be fake for a living – actors and the “real life” behind show business itself. The movie is actually a rather sleazy story told in a distinguished way with great actors (or ACT-tors, as they’d see in a theater) so it comes off much more classy than it really is. Either way, I think All About Eve is a fantastic movie, full of sharp characters who reel off nasty one-liners and put-downs.

All About Eve begins when young, practically penniless Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) meets her idol, renowned Broadway dramatic actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis, one of the greatest actresses of all time and the owner of the namesake “Bette Davis Eyes” in a song thirty years later). Channing is a grand diva of the stage, abusing friends and servants (who are basically one and the same), turning a snobby nose up on the audiences who come to see her and basically throwing tantrums at the drop of a hat. But Eve’s sob story (she’s a young war widow who has been following Channing’s performances around the country) touch Margo and she hires Eve as a secretary.

Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is NOT impressed by you

At first everyone loves the overly humble, mousy little assistant who “just wants to help the great Miss Channing” but Margo begins to suspect Eve’s motives aren’t entirely selfless. Eve is just a little too good at her job; she increasingly oversteps her bounds to “assist” Margo, such as arranging a party for Margo’s absent boyfriend, play director Bill (Gary Merrill). Margo’s friends – like Bill and her best friend Karen (Celeste Holm) and her husband writer Lloyd Richard (Hugh Marlowe) – chalk Margo’s distrust to Eve to her wildly temperamental nature. Eve, pleasant as always, slides into a plum role as Margo’s understudy on her most recent play, and suddenly the audience begins to believe Margo may not be entirely incorrect about young Eve’s motives.

All About Eve is likely the most catty movie to every win best picture. The film is narrated by Addison DeWitt, a theater critic no one in the movie can stand, and who comments on every piece of action with a jaded, snide putdown. Although the movie’s pedigree of stars (particularly Davis) and surface subject matters (the world of theatre) might lead one to think it’s a highbrow drama, the movie is actually fairly scandalous and lurid (in a 1950s way), a backstage drama full of backstabbing, spoiled divas, drunken rants and even infidelity (One thing I’ve realized watching these movies is that Hollywood was NEVER as prudish as later generations have made it out to be – although the Richards do sleep in separate beds).

Anne Baxter as sweet, virginal Eve. Wouldn’t YOU trust her?

Many of the movie’s themes and conflicts are still major issues today! Margot struggles with the eternal conflict of feeling pulled between a career and family life (this being 1950, she ultimately chooses family, of course, and Eve is vilified for pursuing a career, but the conflict is there). The movie also is pretty frank about discussing show business’s fascination and glorification of youth (Margo openly admits to being too old for the parts she is playing but can’t find any good parts that are age appropriate – EXACTLY like today’s Hollywood!).

The movie also rather smartly deconstructs one of show business’s most cherished myths – the young ingénue plucked off the street who finds instant stardom. While Eve initially appears innocent, we learn she is duplicitous and has been scheming to become famous for a long time and is willing to betray anyone she has to in order to achieve her goal. Even though the movie is set in the world of theater, its primary themes and conflicts ring just as true for the movie business.

Trivia: All About Eve is not the only show biz satire nominated for Best Picture in 1950. The similarly themed Sunset Boulevard – satirized Hollywood in much the same way All About Eve did the theater. Ironically, Sunset Boulevard eventually became a play on Broadway.

More Trivia: All About Eve set a record for most nominations – 14, a record it still holds along with Titanic.

Other Oscars Won: Best Supporting Actor, George Sanders; Best Costume Design; Best Director; Best Writing, Screenplay; Best Sound Recording

Other Notable Movies released in 1950: Sunset Boulevard*; Born Yesterday*; Father of the Bride*; King Solomon’s Mines*; Cinderella#; Annie Get Your Gun; Harvey; Cyrano de Bergerac;

*Best Picture Nominee

#Top Grossing movie of the year

1949: All the King’s Men

Now that’s a tag line!

“I don’t need money. People gives me things because they believe in me.” – WIllie Stark (Broderick Crawford) on the merits of the political system, All the King’s Men.

The Academy Awards closed out the 1940s by celebrating a scathing indictment of America’s political system run amuck.

All the King’s Men, 1949’s Best Picture is a terrific movie featuring some really great performances, especially Broderick Crawford as a scheming politician who morphs from well-meaning do-gooder to all-powerful dictator, Breaking Bad style, over the course of two hours. Unlike a lot of the social ill movies that had previously won Best Picture, All the King’s Men doesn’t offer any sort of answer to fix the problem. In fact, the villain, the corrupt politician, is the main character of the movie, an early anti-hero who is captivating in just how easily he wins over the people despite his wicked ways.

Best Actor Winner Broderick Crawford as hick politician-turned-near-dictator Willie Stark

All the King’s Men is loosely based on the life of noted Louisiana politician Huey Long (or as a snooty English major would say, All the King’s Men is a roman à clef). Crawford pays Willie Stark, a self-described hick, who we’re lead to believe is an “honest man” because about 30 different people describe him that way in the first 15 minutes of the film. Stark is being pushed around in his campaign to become county treasure of a small rural town controlled by a yokel machine (Having worked around rural politics for a number of years, I found these early scenes to be eerily truthful). Stark is championed by Jack Bender, a newspaper reporter suffering from liberal guilt due to his own financially successful family. Stark loses his election, but when his cause cèlèbre – the faulty construction of a local schoolhouse – proves prescient, he is catapulted into state politics.

At first Stark is used as a pawn in the electoral machine, a way to split the vote between the rural sect to get an urban punk elected. But when Stark starts using inflammatory speeches and playing to his constituents’ emotions, he wins over the crowds. Once he’s elected governor, anything goes. Stark hires Bender as a hatchet man to keep dirt on both friends and enemies he needs to control. Increasingly power hungry, arrogant and womanizing, Stark seems unstoppable in his quest for power.

Stark at the height of power

All the King’s Men offers a lot of interesting insight into the American political landscape, not just of the 1940s but even as it carries over into today’s world. Foremost is its examination of the cult of personality that plays into any popular election. Stark doesn’t win the election because he’s the best educated – he actually picks up steam when he stops spouting “facts and figures” and just uses emotional rhetoric. His natural charisma is what wins him over with voters and keeps him popular even as his various corrupt deeds are revealed. The system Willie has to work with is also shown to be broken. Yes, Willie has to bribe and blackmail, but the movie also suggests that’s the only way to get anything done (not unlike the moral quandaries that faced Jeremy Renner’s sympathetic mayor in last year’s American Hustle).

I liked this movie because it didn’t force feed its message in ways other “social ill” movies like The Lost Weekend did and there’s no easy answer to the problem like The Lost Weekend provides. The system as a whole is filled with flaws and taken advantage of by corrupt men. Willie is a great complex character too. He isn’t just an innocent babe in the woods whose naivety leads to his folly. He’s always shown to have a streak of ambition in him, but he loses all control once he gains power. He also does do a lot of good while in office – building highways and hospitals – even if his motives aren’t necessary pure and the deals he cuts to get the jobs done are far from ethical.

My only complaint about All the King’s Men was its ending. Without giving it away, I will say it was rather abrupt and I really felt like it needed an extra five minutes to give some closure to the characters who weren’t Willie. But overall, All the King’s Men remains an exciting political thriller and fascinating character study of modern politics.

Other Oscars Won: Broderick Crawford (Best Actor), Mercedes McCambridge (Best Supporting Actress)

Other Notable Movies of 1949: Battleground*, The Heiress*, A Letter to Three Wives*,Twelve O’Clock High*, Samson and Delilah#, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Bicycle Thief, White Heat, Under Capricorn, Adam’s Rib

*Best Picture Nominee

#Top Grossing Movie of the Year