All About All About Eve: The Complete Behind-The-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made! by Sam Staggs

Author:Sam Staggs
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Cinema, Movies, Biography, Film, Media Tie-In
ISBN: 9780312273156
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 2001-06-22T23:00:00+00:00

(Answers: 1-B; 2-E; 3-A; 4-D; 5-C)

* * *

Chapter 22

Those Awards Presented Annually by That Film Society

At the end of 1949, the San Francisco Drama Critics Council had named Bette “Worst Actress of the Year” for Beyond the Forest. At the end of 1950, the same group voted her Best Actress for All About Eve. Accolades arrived almost daily: Bette Davis, “Actress of the Year,” Look magazine; “Best Actress,” the French film industry; “Most Popular Actress,” Photoplay. Bette shared the latter award with Joan Crawford.

Joan herself made several minor 1950 best-lists, for she had appeared in two Vincent Sherman pictures: The Damned Don’t Cry and Harriet Craig. In January 1951, when both Joan and Bette made the Photoplay list, both agreed to attend the ceremony the following month to accept their gold medals.

February 12, the day of the Photoplay awards party. In the middle of the afternoon Bette’s phone started ringing. “Haven’t you heard? You’re nominated! And All About Eve got more nominations than any other picture, ever.”

Joan Crawford, who had expected an Academy Award nomination for one of her Vincent Sherman pictures, got none. She was shattered. Feeling ill, she took to her bed and canceled her scheduled appearance at the Photoplay awards dinner that night.

Bette, wearing a black cocktail dress and a flowered hat, swept into the party with her arm locked in Gary’s. She drank champagne. She accepted a kiss from her former co-star Ronald Reagan and congratulations from his fiancée, Nancy Davis. Jane Wyman and her new beau, Hollywood attorney Greg Bautzer, seated beside Bette and Gary, congratulated her on her honors and wished them all the best as newlyweds.

The evening was well underway when Bette stretched across Greg Bautzer to ask Jane Wyman a question. Waving her cigarette toward an adjacent table, Bette whispered, “Who is that kid between Ann Blyth and Elizabeth Taylor? He keeps staring in my face.”

“Don’t you know him? That’s Joan Crawford’s son, Christopher. He’s only nine years old, but he’s accepting the award tonight for his mother.”

“How sweet,” said Bette. “And just where is Joan?”

“She’s at home ill,” Jane Wyman explained.

“Oh,” replied Bette in a stage whisper. “Something fatal, I hope.”

* * *

It was Anne Baxter’s fault that Bette didn’t win the Oscar. If Anne hadn’t insisted on running against Bette for Best Actress, Baxter herself might well have gotten the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, and Bette might have won another Oscar, her third, for her performance as Margo Channing.

Although Baxter played the title role, and was on-screen as much as Davis, the part of Eve Harrington seemed less important than the role of Margo Channing. It still does. For one thing, Anne Baxter had the ingenue role, while Bette played the star. Also, Eve was younger, while Margo had reached her full-bodied zenith. And, using a purely intuitive criterion to determine whose role is supporting and whose is not, everyone feels that the movie would survive without Anne Baxter, though not without Bette Davis.

Baxter had already won an

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