by Staggs, Sam
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Goofs and Non Sequiturs
• Mankiewicz, Zanuck, and the editor, Barbara McLean, overlooked several minor blunders in the final cut. The first concerns a letter to Margo that comes out of nowhere and means nothing. In her dressing room, as Margo and Bill prepare to leave for the airport, he says, “Throw that dreary letter away, it bores me.” She does so and that’s that. It’s possible that Mankiewicz had in mind a deceitful letter written by Eve Harrington in Mary Orr’s story. In the movie, however, no such thing occurs.
A more whimsical explanation is that this letter is an oblique reference to A Letter to Three Wives. Or, if Mankiewicz were able to read the future, a foreshadowing of Bette’s notorious “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy” in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Curiously, the same thing happens in Hamlet. In Act IV, scene VI, a messenger enters, giving Claudius a letter from Hamlet. “And this to the queen,” says the messenger. But, as Hardin Craig notes in his edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, “One hears no more of the letter to the queen.”
• A possible mistake occurs when we see Margo taking curtain calls after a performance of Aged in Wood. The curtain rises, and she looks completely surprised. “Who, me?” is the expression on her face. Is it a directorial error, as Charles Affron suggests in his book Star Acting, or is Margo feigning star humility?
• During Margo’s fierce quarrel with Lloyd, she snarls this line: “I’m lied to, attacked behind my back, accused of reading your silly dialogue as if it were the Holy Gospel.” In the heat of that scene, her line seems to make sense. But what Mankiewicz wrote was: “… accused of reading your silly dialogue inaccurately as if it were the Holy Gospel.” And that’s what Bette should have said. With the word “inaccurately” omitted, the line is absurd.
• When Barbara Bates, as Phoebe, flatters Eve with a mention of “the Eve Harrington Clubs they have in most of the girls’ high schools” it sounds false. That’s because it is. Fan clubs were for movie stars, and although Eve has already packed for Hollywood, she hasn’t yet made a film. The Eve Harrington Clubs are as phony as the John Doe Clubs in Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe (1941). (Was Mankiewicz perhaps poking fun at that off-center movie?)
• There’s also a goof in the final credits. The name of Gary Merrill’s character, Bill Sampson, is misspelled as “Bill Simpson.”
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Years later, after his retirement, Mankiewicz spoke to an interviewer about editing a film: “I get the best editor I can find and explain what I have in mind—what I want the scene to express. Then I leave the editor alone to do his work. I can profit from the editor’s previous experience because he can give me ideas I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. And I don’t take a hands-on approach. Of course I know what a Steenbeck editing table is, and a Moviola, but I’d be totally incapable of using them myself.”
To illustrate his relative indifference to the technical aspects of filmmaking, Mankiewicz talked about the time he—like Bill Sampson in Eve—looked through the wrong end of the camera finder. It happened while making Dragonwyck (1946), Mankiewicz’s first film as a director. After the gaffe, Arthur Miller, the cinematographer, told the novice director, “Just leave it all to me.” Mankiewicz did. From then on, he said, “Arthur handled the camera and I handled the actors. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only way to do it.”
Mankiewicz took the same attitude toward a good editor like McLean. She, in consultation with Mankiewicz and Zanuck, “built” All About Eve from the ground up, using what Mankiewicz delivered. McLean paid attention chiefly to technical points of expertise and to rhythm and timing in the film. Mankiewicz, with his long takes, his even, cantering pace, and sparing use of fancy work, was an orderly filmmaker. With certain other directors, however, McLean found herself trying to figure out the beginning, middle, and end of a picture.
As her job neared completion, McLean knew that Zanuck was pleased. So pleased, in fact, that he decided not to preview All About Eve. At that time, previews often indicated uneasiness about a movie, or some part of it, such as the running time or the ending. In this case Zanuck was confident they had what it took.
McLean liked the picture, too, and that was important. Studio executives knew that when Zanuck prefaced a statement with, “Bobbie says…” he was not expressing an opinion but announcing a decision. If “Bobbie” hadn’t liked it, she would have let him know. Whenever McLean and Zanuck disagreed, she stuck to her guns. “I don’t care,” she would tell the boss. “If you’re not going to listen, then don’t ask me. If you’re going to ask me, then pay attention to what I say.” Such uppity talk might have gotten her kicked out of other studios, but Zanuck knew her value. Besides, they had worked together so long that a certain gruff frankness had become their shorthand.
The unpolished version that McLean patched together during the filming of All About Eve was the assembly—that is, the initial joining together of shots in proper continuity. This involves a selection of takes, the elimination of unwanted footage, the trimming of scenes to a more or less desirable length, and the marking of transitions. A film’s assembly is the stage just prior to the rough cut.
Soon after the final day of shooting, McLean and Mankiewicz completed the rough cut—i.e., the editing stage immediately before fine cut. A rough cut might be compared to the second or third draft in writing, which is often publishable even though it lacks the author’s final burnish.
On Saturday, June 24, Mankiewicz delivered his rough cut to Zanuck. Zanuck, with McLean beside him, screened this cut two days later. We can extrapolate details of the ambience at their first viewing of the rough cut if we study a photograph of Zanuck and McLean taken in Zanuck’s private screening room in 1952. This photo shows the two seated in oversized leather armchairs in the front row. Zanuck, in sports jacket, slacks, shirt, and tie, seems impatient for the screening to begin. McLean looks very much at ease in a light-colored skirt and blouse. Her face is alert, like someone poised to catch the slighest discrepancy between any two shots—and to correct them forthwith.
Since screenings and modifications of the edited work print usually took place at night in Zanuck’s projection room at the studio, we can imagine him and McLean in a similar pose, and in similar attire, that Monday evening, June 26, 1950, as they sit down after dinner to finish off a long workday. Zanuck presses the buzzer to signal the projectionist, the lights dim, and this early version of Eve fills the screen.
“In the projection room,” McLean said, “nobody made a sound. Even if you had a cigarette pack with that cellophane on it, you’d take it off before. Zanuck’s powers of concentration were terrific. The editor sat next to him and when he didn’t like something, he’d just touch you on the arm. I’d write in the dark.”
At this rough-cut stage, of course, there was no 20th Century-Fox logo, no titles or credits, and no music. The abrupt start of the picture was either a long shot of the dining hall of the Sarah Siddons Society, which was Shot Number One in the shooting script; or a full close-up of the Sarah Siddons Award, which Mankiewicz had designated as Shot Number Two.
We don’t know which shot came first in the rough cut, but we do know that the picture opens with the close-up of the award—“a gold statuette, about a foot high, of Sarah Siddons as ‘the Tragic Muse,’” as Mankiewicz described it in the script. Did Mankiewicz decide on this as his opening shot while establishing the rough cut, or did Zanuck make the decision, perhaps in consultation with McLean? As production chief, Zanuck of course retained editing room privileges. In that editing room he personally supervised the cutting of many of the major Fox films.
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Who Was Sarah Siddons and Why Did They Name Those Awards for Her?
Sarah Siddons encloses All About Eve like dramatic parentheses. The film’s first shot is a close-up of the Sarah Siddons Award, and in the final shot Barbara Bates, as the conspiratorial young Phoebe, clasps this same statuette to her bosom. In addition, mi
dway through the movie there’s a close-up of the Siddons portrait that hangs at the top of Margo’s staircase.
Considered one of the greatest actresses of the English stage, Siddons (1755–1831) was beautiful, talented, and shrewd. A great actress, yes, but also a celebrity in the modern sense, for she used her fame as a tool to manipulate her image. She promoted herself two centuries before the advent of press agents.
Her first entrance was inauspicious, for she was born at the Shoulder of Mutton public house in Brecon, Wales, where her parents were touring with a theatrical troupe. At age eleven she made her stage debut as Ariel in The Tempest with her father’s company. Although her stage charisma was remarkable, she trod the usual uneven road to stardom. Success was not immediate, but eventually it made her the First Lady of the British Stage. She mesmerized audiences, then made them weep. Susceptible ladies fainted from the potency of a Siddons performance. Fans worshiped her, and in Scotland the word “Siddonimania” was coined to describe the hysterical adulation poured out by victims of “Siddons Fever.” But fame is never cheap, and in Dublin they pelted her with apples and potatoes. More than once she was fired, thus becoming an early example of box office poison.
Siddons acted in many a play now forgotten, but earned her triumph in Shakespearean roles. Of these, it was Lady Macbeth that made the actress immortal. William Hazlitt, the English essayist and a contemporary of Siddons, described her in this role: “It was something above nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine; she was tragedy personified.” Charles Lamb, another contemporary, wrote that “we speak of Lady Macbeth while we are in reality thinking of Mrs. Siddons.” Her first biographer, lucky enough to have attended a Siddons Macbeth, paid the supreme compliment: “It was an era in one’s life to have seen her in it.”
Mankiewicz understood such enthusiasm. He told an interviewer, “My passion is eighteenth-century theatre.” He seems to have assessed the stars of two hundred years past as acutely as he scrutinized performances in Hollywood. Besides Sarah Siddons, Mankiewicz also admired Peg Woffington (ca. 1717–1760), a tempestuous Irish actress as theatrical off the stage as on. He said, “I think I’ve read everything written about her.” Mankiewicz stated flatly that Woffington was the prototype of Margo Channing.
But he named his imaginary award for Sarah Siddons, perhaps because the name rings with glamour and authority. The award was indeed pure fiction at the time of All About Eve, but two years later life imitated art.
In 1952 several prominent Chicago ladies founded the Sarah Siddons Society to recognize the role of women in the theatre. One of the founders, and an early president of the group, was Mrs. Loyal Davis, mother of Nancy Reagan. Every year since then the society has presented its annual award to an actress for an outstanding performance in a Chicago theatrical production. The first winner, for the 1952–53 season, was Helen Hayes. Soon the Sarah Siddons Award became the most prestigious in the American theatre, after the Tony.
Celeste Holm won a Siddons in 1968 for Mame, Lauren Bacall in 1972 for Applause and again in 1985 for Woman of the Year. The 1973 award went to Bette Davis. It was a special recognition for All About Eve on the twentieth anniversary of the society’s founding. The presenter was Anne Baxter. “I made an absolute fool of myself,” Bette said later. “Anne went on and on about me and I cried. It was the first time that I’ve ever broken down in public.”
Mankiewicz relished the sweet irony of all this, for he couldn’t suppress a smirk when discussing the Siddons Award. After all, he had dreamed it up to poke fun at the Oscars, the Tonys, and all manner of plaques, globes, medals, and certificates in the entertainment industry. But no one else took it lightly. His mock award was regarded very seriously by those who gave it and by the honorees. He told an interviewer, “I know Celeste Holm wept and thought it was a terribly important award. She wrote me a letter scolding me for not recognizing the importance of it.”
Perhaps her letter was superfluous. In 1991 an interviewer noticed Mankiewicz’s various awards on the mantel of his home in Westchester County, New York. There were his four Oscars; an Edgar for Sleuth; a D. W. Griffith Special Achievement Award; and “seemingly in a place of honor amid all the other awards, the Sarah Siddons Award for Achievement in the Theatre.” Made by a propman at Fox, it was the very one that opens All About Eve.
Sarah Siddons, meanwhile, has made a comeback. In the summer of 1999 a joint exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Huntington Library and Art Collections in nearby San Marino paid tribute to her. The centerpiece of the Getty’s exhibition was Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait, Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse. (It’s a copy of the Reynolds portrait that’s used in the movie.) Owned by the Huntington since the early 1920s, it was loaned to the Getty to hang with other grandiose portraits of Siddons painted by Gainsborough, Romney, Fuseli, and Thomas Lawrence. In addition, several new books about Siddons have recently been published.
Bette Davis probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn about the return of Sarah Siddons. In a way she almost predicted it. In 1957, while living in Laguna Beach, Bette took part in the town’s annual Festival of Arts, one feature of which is the Pageant of the Masters—a series of tableaux vivants with townspeople posing in recreations of great works of art. Bette looks every inch the Queen of Theatre in her representation of Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Before she donned the elaborate costume of Mrs. Siddons, however, Bette performed a lesser act of volunteerism. She was given a brush and can of paint, then sent to paint numbers on the backs of seats.
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Screenwriter Philip Dunne, who knew Zanuck well, wrote that the studio head “was happiest when he was sitting in his projection room alone with his cutter, molding the picture closer to his heart’s desire.”
Zanuck himself told his biographer, Mel Gussow, “I work hard on scripts, and I’m a good script editor. But I think if I have any talent at all, it’s editing in the cutting room, more so even than editing a script.” Anyone who reads Mankiewicz’s All About Eve script and then compares it with the actual film is likely to agree.
Mankiewicz, for all his clever dialogue, sometimes didn’t know when to stop. For instance, in the scene where Addison, Miss Caswell, Bill, Eve, Karen, and Lloyd sit on the stairs discussing the maladjustments of life in the theatre, the dialogue sparkles because Addison’s self-importance ricochets off Bill’s common sense, and their weighty lines are both in counterpoint with the half-absurdist Marx Brothers frivolity of befuddled Max Fabian and the dizzy fox, Miss Caswell. But here’s the part of the scene that was cut, presumably by Zanuck, right after Max’s line “Did she say sable—or Gable?”
ADDISON
It is senseless to insist that theatrical folk are no different from the good people of Des Moines, Chillicothe, or Liverpool. By and large we are concentrated gatherings of neurotics, egomaniacs, emotional misfits, and precocious children—
MAX
(to Bill)
Gable. Why a feller like that don’t come East to do a play …
BILL
He must be miserable, the life he lives out there—
ADDISON
These so-called abnormalities—they’re our stock in trade, they make us actors, writers, directors, et cetera, in the first place—
MAX
Answer me this. What makes a man become a producer?
ADDISON
What makes a man walk into a lion cage with nothing but a chair?
MAX
This answer satisfies me a hundred percent.
This chitchat, had it stayed in, would have weakened the scene.
After viewing Mankiewicz’s rough cut, Zanuck asked for some structural changes. Besides reducing several overstuffed scenes, he also eliminated parts of the voice-over narration. The film, of course, is conceived as a story told from the poin
ts of view of its three narrators: Addison, Karen, and Margo. Addison’s voice is the first one we hear: “The Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement is perhaps unknown to you…” It continues until the freeze-frame that ends this first part of the awards banquet, then Karen’s voice takes over the narration: “When was it? How long? It seems a lifetime ago.” Margo’s narration is first heard as she and Eve leave the airport together after Bill boards the plane; she speaks in voice-over only once after that, as the party begins: “Bill’s welcome-home birthday party—a night to go down in history.”
Among the passages Zanuck deleted in the editing room was a portion of Margo’s airport voice-over explaining that they sent for Eve’s belongings that night and “she moved into the little guest room on the top floor.” This part was retained; thrown out was the following line, one of peculiar badness: “She cried when she saw it—it was so like her little room back home in Wisconsin.” (Had Mankiewicz temporarily forgotten that Margo detests cheap sentiment?)
Zanuck also discarded this purposeless voice-over passage of Karen’s as she repairs her makeup at Margo’s soirée: “It’s always convenient at a party to know the hostess well enough to use her bedroom rather than go where all the others have to go.”