All About Eve (1950)
Bette Davis: Margo
Photos
Quotes
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Margo : Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!
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Margo : Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.
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Margo : Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.
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Margo : Lloyd, honey, be a playwright with guts. Write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.
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Margo : Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.
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Margo : So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.
Karen : You're Margo, just Margo.
Margo : And what is that, besides something spelled out in light bulbs, I mean - besides something called a temperament, which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice? Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave - they'd get drunk if they knew how - when they can't have what they want, when they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.
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Margo : I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.
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Margo : I detest cheap sentiment.
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Margo : As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.
Bill Sampson : For instance what?
Margo : For instance: you!
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Lloyd Richards : I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're HER words she's saying, and HER thoughts she's expressing?
Margo : Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theatre!
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Lloyd Richards : How about calling it a night?
Margo : And you pose as a playwright? A situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is everybody go to sleep.
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Lloyd Richards : A Hollywood movie star just arrived.
Margo : Shucks, and I sent my autograph book to the cleaner.
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Bill Sampson : This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to - I'm too mad.
Margo : Guilty!
Bill Sampson : Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage and off. I love you for some of them, in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp - all right - but I will not have you sharpen them on me, or on Eve!
Margo : What about her teeth? What about her fangs?
Bill Sampson : She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it! Eve Harrington has never, by word, look, thought, or suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me - it spells a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!
Margo : Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?
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Bill Sampson : We have to go to City Hall for the marriage license and blood test.
Margo : I'd marry you if it turned out you had no blood at all.
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Margo : [in front of her boyfriend, Bill] I love you, Max. I really mean it. I love you. Come to the pantry.
[she leaves]
Max Fabian : [to Bill] She loves me like a father. Also, she's loaded.
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Margo : Thank you, Eve. I'd like a martini, very dry.
Bill Sampson : I'll get it.
[to Eve]
Bill Sampson : What'll you have?
Margo : A milkshake?
Eve : A martini, very dry, please.
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Bill Sampson : Have you no human consideration?
Margo : Show me a human, and I might have!
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Margo : Heaven help me. I love a psychotic!
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Bill Sampson : Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would not be considered either queenly or motherly.
Margo : You are in a beehive, pal. Didn't you know? We are all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night. Aren't we honey?
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Margo : I'm being rude now, aren't I? Or should I say, ain't I?
Addison DeWitt : You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent!
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Bill Sampson : You know, there isn't a playwright in the world who could make me believe this would happen between two adult people. Goodbye, Margo.
Margo : Bill? Where are you going? To find Eve?
Bill Sampson : That suddenly makes the whole thing believable.
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Margo : [to Bill] You be the host. It's your party. Happy birthday, welcome home, and we who are about to die salute you.
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[Margo is getting drunk at the party]
Bill Sampson : Many of your guests have been wondering when they may be permitted to view the body. Where has it been laid out?
Margo : It hasn't been laid out, we haven't finished with the embalming. As a matter of fact, you're looking at it - the remains of Margo Channing, sitting up. It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.
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Margo : Margo Channing is ageless - spoken like a press agent.
Lloyd Richards : I know what I'm talking about. After all, they're my plays.
Margo : Spoken like an author. Lloyd, I'm not twenty-ish, I'm not thirty-ish. Three months ago I was forty years old. Forty. Four O. That slipped out. I hadn't quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.
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Margo : Peace and quiet is for libraries!
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Margo : I distinctly remember, Addison, crossing you off of my guest list. What are you doing here?
Addison DeWitt : Dear Margo, you were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again, soon. You remember Miss Casswell.
Margo : I do not. How do you do?
Miss Casswell : We've never met. Maybe that's why?
Addison DeWitt : Miss Casswell is an actress, a graduate of the Copacabana school of the dramatic arts.
[Eve enters]
Addison DeWitt : Ah, Eve.
Eve : Good evening, Mr. DeWitt.
Margo : I'd no idea you two knew each other.
Addison DeWitt : This must be at long last our formal introduction. Until now, we've only met in passing.
Miss Casswell : That's how you met me... in passing.
Margo : Eve, this is an old friend of Mr. DeWitt's mother. Miss Casswell, Miss Harrington.
Eve : Miss Casswell.
Miss Casswell : How do you do?
Margo : Addison, I've been waiting for you to meet Eve for the longest time.
Addison DeWitt : It could only have been your natural timidity that kept you from mentioning it.
Margo : You've heard of her great interest in the theater.
Addison DeWitt : We have that in common.
Margo : Then you two must have a long talk.
Eve : I'm afraid Mr. DeWitt would find me boring before too long.
Miss Casswell : You won't bore him, honey. You won't even get a chance to talk.
Addison DeWitt : Claudia, come here.
[takes her aside]
Addison DeWitt : You see that man, that's Max Fabian, the producer. Now, go do yourself some good.
Miss Casswell : Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?
Addison DeWitt : Because that's what they are.
[taking her coat]
Addison DeWitt : Now, go and make him happy.
[goes back to Margo and drapes the coat over her arm]
Addison DeWitt : Now, don't worry about your little charge, she'll be in safe hands.
[walks off with Eve]
Margo : [watches them go, then lifts her martini] Ah-men.
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Margo : You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited and thoughtless and messy.
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Margo : Why so remote Addison? I should think you'd be at your protégé's side lending her moral support.
Addison DeWitt : Miss Casswell at the moment is where I can lend no support, moral or otherwise.
Margo : In the lady's, shall we say, lounge?
Addison DeWitt : ...being violently ill to her tummy.
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Lloyd Richards : What makes you think either Miller or Sherwood would stand for the nonsense I take from you? You'd better stick to Beaumont and Fletcher! They've been dead for three hundred years!
Margo : ALL playwrights should be dead for three hundred years!
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Bill Sampson : You have every reason for happiness.
Margo : Except happiness!
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Bill Sampson : [to Eve] "Don't let it worry you", said the camera man, "Even DeMille couldn't see anything looking through the wrong end!" So that was the first and last...
Margo : [entering] Don't let me kill the point. Or isn't it a story for grownups?
Bill Sampson : You've heard it - about the time I looked into the wrong end of the camera finder.
Margo : Remind me to tell you about the time I looked into the heart of an artichoke.
Eve : I'd like to hear it.
Margo : Some snowy night, in front of the fire.
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Bill Sampson : Looks like I'm going to have a very fancy party...
Margo : I thought you were going to be late.
Bill Sampson : When I'm guest of honor?
Margo : I had no idea you were even here.
Bill Sampson : I ran into Eve on my way upstairs; she told me you were dressing.
Margo : That never stopped you before.
Bill Sampson : Well, we started talking, she wanted to know all about Hollywood, she seemed so interested...
Margo : She's a girl of so many interests.
Bill Sampson : It's a pretty rare quality these days.
Margo : She's a girl of so many rare qualities.
Bill Sampson : So she seems.
Margo : So you've pointed out, so often. So many qualities, so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection - and so young! So young and so fair...
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Margo : I'll admit I may have seen better days, but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail like a salted peanut.
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Lloyd Richards : There comes a time that a piano realizes that it has not written a concerto.
Margo : And you, I take it, are the Paderewski who plays his concerto on me, the piano?
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Bill Sampson : I start shooting a week from Monday. Zanuck is impatient. He wants me, he needs me.
Margo : Zanuck, Zanuck, Zanuck. What are you two, lovers?
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Llyod Richards : I understand that your understudy, Miss Harrington, has given her notice.
Margo : Too bad.
Bill Sampson : I'm broken up about it.
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Llyod Richards : You knew when you came in that the audition was over, that Eve was your understudy, playing that childish little game of cat and mouse.
Margo : Not mouse, never mouse. If anything *rat*!
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Margo : She thinks only of me, doesn't she?
Birdie : Well, let's say she thinks only about you, anyway.
Margo : How do you mean that?
Birdie : I'll tell you how: like... like she's studying you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints - how you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep...
Margo : I'm sure that's very flattering, Birdie. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it.
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Margo : Where is Princess... fire and music?
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Margo : Please don't play governess, Karen. I haven't your unyielding good taste. I wish *I* could have gone to Radcliffe, too, but Father wouldn't hear of it... He needed help behind the notions counter.
Margo : [continues] I'm being rude now, aren't I? Or should I say "ain't I"?
Addison DeWitt : You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent.
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Bill Sampson : I can't believe you're making this up. It sounds like something out of an old Clyde Fitch play!
Margo : Clyde Fitch, though you may not think so, was well before my time.
Bill Sampson : I've always denied the legend that you were in "Our American Cousin" the night Lincoln was shot.
Margo : I *don't* think that's funny!
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Margo : I'm a junkyard.
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Margo : It's obvious you're not a woman.
Bill Sampson : I've been aware of that for some time.
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Margo : How was Miss Casswell?
Addison DeWitt : Frankly, I don't remember.
Margo : Just slipped your mind?
Addison DeWitt : Completely. Nor I am sure anyone else can tell you how Miss Casswell read or whether Miss Casswell read or rode a pogo stick.
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Margo : He can't take his eyes off my legs.
Bill Sampson : Like a nylon lemon peel.
Margo : Byron couldn't have said it more graciously.
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Margo : This is my dear friend and companion, Miss Birdie Coonan.
Birdie : Oh, brother!
Eve : Miss Coonan.
Lloyd Richards : Oh, brother, what?
Birdie : When she gets like this, all of the sudden she's playin' Hamlet's mother.
Margo : I'm sure you must have things to do in the bathroom, Birdie, dear.
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Margo : "I don't think you can rightly say we lost the war. We was more starved out, you might say. That's why I don't understand all these plays about love-starved Southern women. Love was one thing we were never starved for in the South."
Lloyd Richards : Margo's interview with a lady reporter from the South.
Birdie : And the minute it gets printed, they're gonna fire on Gettysburg all over again.
Margo : It was Fort Sumter they fired on.
Birdie : I never played Fort Sumter.
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Addison DeWitt : Margo, I have lived in the theatre as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world, no other life. And once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another, Paula Wessely, Hayes. There are others, three or four. Eve Harrington will be among them.
Margo : I take it she read well.
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Addison DeWitt : It wasn't a reading, it was a performance. Brilliant! Vivid, something made of music and fire.
Margo : How nice.
Addison DeWitt : In time, she'll be what you are.
Margo : A mass of music and fire. That's me. An old kazoo with some sparklers.
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Margo : Heartburn? It's that Miss Casswell. I don't see why she hasn't given Addison heartburn.
Bill Sampson : No heart to burn!
Margo : Everybody has a heart - except some people.
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Lloyd Richards : You've been talking to that venomous fishwife Addison DeWitt!
Margo : In this case, apparently as trustworthy as the World Almanac!
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Margo : Bill's welcome home birthday party might go down in history. Even before the party started, I could smell disaster in the air. I knew it, I sensed it, even as I finished dressing for the blasted party.
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Margo : If she can act, she might not be bad. She looks like she might burn down a plantation.
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Margo : Did she tell you about the theatre and what it meant?
Bill Sampson : No, I told her. I sounded off.
Margo : All the religions in the world rolled into one, and we're gods and goddesses.
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Margo : Bill, don't get stuck on some glamour puss.
Bill Sampson : I'll try.
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Margo : You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited and thoughtless and messy.
Bill Sampson : Well, everybody can't be Gregory Peck.
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Margo : If my guests do not like it here, I suggest they accompany you to the nursery, where I'm sure you will all feel more at home.
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Margo : You disapprove of me when I'm like this, don't you?
Lloyd Richards : Not exactly. Sometimes, though, I wish I understood you better.
Margo : When you do, let me in on it.
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Margo : Don't worry, Lloyd. I'll play your play. I'll wear rompers and come in rolling a hoop, if you like.
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Margo : Think of your health. More time to relax in the fresh air at a racetrack.
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Margo : More than anything in this world, I love Bill. And I want Bill. And I want him to want me. But me, not Margo Channing. And if I can't tell them apart, how can he?
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Margo : Max, you sly puss.
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Addison DeWitt : The audition is over.
Margo : It can't be. I came here to read with Miss Casswell. I promised Max.
Addison DeWitt : The audition was at 2.30. It's now nearly four.
Margo : Is it really? I must start wearing a watch.
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Margo : In this rat race, everybody's guilty until they're proved innocent. One of the differences between the theatre and civilization.
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Margo : The little witch must have sent out Indian Runners, snatching critics out of bars and steam rooms and museums or wherever they hole up!
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Margo : If Equity or my lawyer can't or won't do anything about it, I shall personally stuff that pathetic little lost lamb down Mr. DeWitt's ugly throat!
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Margo : Karen, in all the years of our friendship, I have never let you go to the ladies' room alone. Now I must.
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Margo : Isn't it a lovely room? The Cub Room. What a lovely, clever name. Where the elite meet.
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Margo : It's a great part and a fine play. But not for me anymore. Not for a foursquare, upright, downright, forthright, married lady.
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Margo : Even Eve. I forgive Eve. There they go. There goes Eve. Eve Evil, little Miss Evil.
