Who Were The Inspiration for “All About Eve”

I don't know, but I saw it last week for the first time and I've already rewatched it. I wish they'd make more psychological, character-driven movies and less superhero bullshit.

Apparently a once known theater actress named Elizabeth Bergner was the inspiration for Margo Channing.

I'm curious how audiences reacted to it in the day it was released. It was very forward-thinking in showing the women/wives onto Eve's bullshit and the husbands as easily duped.

R2 is right. Mary Orr's short story "The Wisdom of Eve" was based on an incident related to her by the Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner. Orr's husband was a stage director, and she and Bergner and their spouses became friendly. Bergner told her of a young female fan who used to stand outside the theater and seemed very devoted. Bergner received her in her dressing room, and the girl told her a hard-luck story that touched Bergner. Bergner took her on a secretary and personal assistant (possibly lover as well?). Bergner was married to a great director, Paul Czinner, and this young woman turned out to have her own theatrical ambitions and may have tried to seduce Czinner, among other betrayals.

Per one account, the mystery woman was a serial offender, later attempting to ingratiate herself with opera diva Renata Tebaldi.

Sam Staggs's book All About 'All About Eve' is a good read for fans of the film; it's full of information. He's written similar books since about Sunset Blvd., A Streetcar Named Desire, and the Douglas Sirk version of Imitation of Life, but the All About Eve one was the first and the best.

To add to R4, Paul Czinner was gay and his marriage to Bergner was mostly for companionship and appearances. Bergner was most likely bisexual. If Martina (the real "Eve") tried to seduce Czinner to further an acting career, she likely got no farther than Eve does with Bill, although for different reasons.

I think the author of the Mankiewicz biography Kenneth Giest mentioned that Mank's wife Rose Stradner had some connection to the story's origin.

I've never saw this movie. How is it?

Lizabeth Scott and Tallulah Bankhead is another:

Martina Lawrence-Elizabeth Bergner origin[44] of Mary Orr's short story, The Wisdom of Eve (1946),[45] the basis of the 1950 film All About Eve. Broadway legend had it that Bankhead was being victimized by Scott, who supposedly was the basis for the fictional Eve Harrington.[

Great thread

Helen Lawson and Neely O'Hara.

My coworker

I thought Scott was hired as Tallulah's understudy specifically to keep Tallulah on her toes, r8. Beyond that, I don't think there's a similarity.

Streisand was the inspiration for Margo Channing and Lanie Kazan was the inspiration for Eve.

R11 😂

Elisabeth Bergner

Beanie Feldstein and Julie Benko

Elisabeth Bergner was indeed the inspiration for Mary Orr's original magazine story The Wisdom of Eve, but Tallulah Bankhead was clearly the model for Bette Davis' portrayal of Margo, from the peek-a-boo brunette page boy to the careless trailing of her full length mink coat. Margo's star vehicle Aged in Wood was sort of based on Tallu's The Little Foxes.

Had Claudette Colbert (originally cast as Margo until a back operation kept her from filming) done the film, Margo would have had a very different look and manner (think soubrette bangs and a prominent featuring of her left profile).

Jeanne Crain was originally cast as Eve because Fox producer Darryl Zanuck thought she resembled Claudette (just, no!) but her pregnancy led to Fox contract player Anne Baxter getting the coveted role. Crain's syrupy sweetness would have been interesting to see put to use for Eve.

I don't think any of the male characters are based on any particular playwrights (or their wives), directors, producers or columnists. The columnist Addison de Witt, famously played by George Sanders, was actually an invention of screenwriter/director Joe Mankiewicz, as was Birdie Coonan, Thelma's unforgettable portrayal of Margo's dresser and confidante. They're not in Orr's original story and don't appear in the Broadway musical version APPLAUSE because the Broadway producers could not secure the rights to the film, only the story.

Would've been fun with Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis (Reagan).

Lizabeth Scott didn't need to victimize anybody. My God, that woman could have turned this gold star gay straight for a weekend.

The looks and manners were Tallulah Bankhead, but the story was inspired by Elisabeth Bergner's experience.

Bette Davis resembled Tallulah Bankhead. Also, Tallulah Bankhead did the stage versions of "Jezebel", and "The Little Foxes", and "Dark Victory." Davis played them on film, much to Tallulah's chagrin.

[quote]Tallulah Bankhead did the stage versions of "Jezebel",

Guess again, r20.

R21, Tallulah Bankhead played "Jezebel" on stage, first. She was very ill, shortly thereafter. Miriam Hopkins replaced her.

I sit corrected, r22.

Fantastic movie

Margo Channing was based upon Jeanne Eagels (who created the role of Sadie Thompson in Rain) while Eve Harrington was based on Bunny Le Fluer, who later changed her name to Helen Lawson.

Mank wanted June Allyson for Eve but MGM would not loan her to Fox. June had befriended Claudette after playing her daughter in the 1946 MGM film The Secret Heart. In that film June pined after Claudette's boyfriend, Walter Pidgeon.

Andy Gibb and Rex Smith.

[quote]The columnist Addison de Witt, famously played by George Sanders, was actually an invention of screenwriter/director Joe Mankiewicz, as was Birdie Coonan, Thelma's unforgettable portrayal of Margo's dresser and confidante. They're not in Orr's original story and don't appear in the Broadway musical version APPLAUSE because the Broadway producers could not secure the rights to the film, only the story.

There's a Birdie equivalent in Applause, though: Duane, Margo's gay hairdresser. One of the times Bette Davis saw the show, she told the actor playing Duane (Lee Roy Reams) that she had not liked that updating.

Baxter is probably the weakest of the principals---she betrays the phoniness of Eve rather quickly, but June Allyson? Her perky shit would have been awful.

Aw, fuck you, r29.

Oh, I've always loved Baxter's performance as Eve, especially her different voices for different situations. When she's at liberty to be fully herself, she practically growls. There's a good switch from one mode to the other in the restroom blackmail confrontation with Karen.

I'd say the weakest of the seven biggest players is Hugh Marlowe. Lloyd Richards is the most colorless character, so it's fine that they didn't waste that part on someone more than serviceable. But in his one big opportunity, the shouting match with Margo at the rehearsal, he doesn't exactly make his comebacks sound as though they're spontaneously occurring. Stiff.

It would have been impossible luxury casting, but imagine Gregory Peck as Lloyd. He would certainly have been believable as a successful intellectual NY playwright.

I loved how at the end when Eve seems on top of the world she gets what she deserves-- someone just like her in her life. The closing scene was my favorite.

[quote] Mank wanted June Allyson for Eve but MGM would not loan her to Fox.

I thought it was because they feared she’d pee on the floor.

There’s a reporter who spoke to the REAL Eve. She denies everything. I wish I could find the article now.

[quote] It was based on an actual incident involving Austrian actress Elisabeth Bergner during her run in the hit stage thriller "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" in 1943-44. The story's main character was, like Bergner, a foreign actress named Margola Cranston, before it was changed to Margo Channing.

Margo was foreign?

Eve was based on Martina Lawrence. Here’s the article.

[quote] Martina Lawrence insisted that she had never deceived Elisabeth Bergner, that the actress had imagined all of it. There were those who believed her and those who did not. One acquaintance who'd known Lawrence from her early Broadway years reported, with conviction, that the young woman had also made her way into the inner circle of opera legend Renata Tebaldi and "played Eve Harrington to her" for a while. The friend indicated that this incident wasn't widely known because, in the lofty realm of opera, "Divas don't like to admit they've been had."

Martina also used the name Ruth Maxine Hirsch.

[quote] In 1944, while starring on Broadway in a melodrama called “The Two Mrs. Carrolls,”actress Elisabeth Bergner noticed an aspiring actress and fan, Ruth Maxine Hirsch, waiting by the stage door every night. “Touched by her devotion,” Bergner hired the young woman to work for her and her husband, producer-director Paul Czinner, and helped Hirsch secure a small role in a Broadway show. But when Bergner found her fan reading aloud the older actress’ lines to a new cast member one night, she believed Hirsch was undermining her. She also began to suspect Hirsch of trying to steal Czinner. As a result, Hirsch was banned from the theater, although she did continue working for Czinner for a time. After the show closed, Bergner shared the story with director Reginald Denham and his wife, Mary Orr, who turned it into a short story called “The Wisdom of Eve,” which was published in Cosmopolitan in 1946. Screenwriter-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz bought the rights, turning it into a classic starring Bette Davis as Margo Channing — a character based on Bergner — and Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, a stand-in for Hirsch.

The second act was plodding and boring, as there should be a murder and a few sex scenes to spice things up.

R39 = Joan Crawford

Crawford apparently was a big fan of the film. She would watch it on television every chance she got. But she wouldn't give any credit to Davis. She would say she watched it for "the SCRIPT and the DI-RECTION."

Trivia: Ronald Reagan and the future Nancy Reagan (Davis) appeared on casting lists of potential candidates for Bill Sampson and Karen Richards, respectively.

Kim Basinger and Hilaria Baldwin.

Joe Mankiewicz and Joan Crawford were friends. He produced some of her films in the 1930. Joan was a big fan of "All About Eve", but she never told Joe how profusely she admired it.

Lea Michele. Margo was based on Ryan Murphy.