All About Eve (1950)

Anne Baxter: Eve

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Quotes 

• Eve : If there's nothing else, there's applause. I've listened backstage to people applaud. It's like - like waves of love coming over the footlights and wrapping you up. Imagine, to know every night that different hundreds of people love you. They smile, their eyes shine, you've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.

• Addison DeWitt : You could sleep now, couldn't you?

  Eve : Why not?

  Addison DeWitt : The mark of a true killer: sleep tight, rest easy, and come out fighting.

• 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.

• Addison DeWitt : What do you take me for?

  Eve : I don't know that I'd take you for anything.

  Addison DeWitt : Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?

  Eve : I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison, but I don't know what.

  Addison DeWitt : Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.

  Eve : I never intended you to be.

  Addison DeWitt : Yes you did, and you still do.

  Eve : I still don't know what you're getting at, but right now I want to take my nap. It's important...

  Addison DeWitt : It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.

  Eve : Champion to champion.

  Addison DeWitt : Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.

  Eve : Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take my nap?

  Addison DeWitt : Very well - plainly and distinctly - though I consider it unnecessary because you know as well as I do what I'm going to say: Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.

  Eve : What do you mean by that?

  Addison DeWitt : More plainly and more distinctly: I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I have come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd, or anyone else for that matter, because I will not permit it.

  Eve : What have you got to do with it?

  Addison DeWitt : Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.

  Eve : Belong? To you? I can't believe my ears!

  Addison DeWitt : What a dull cliché.

  Eve : Belong to you - why, that sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama!

  Addison DeWitt : So does the history of the world for the past twenty years. I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this. Frankly, I'd hoped that somehow you would have known, that you would have taken it for granted that you and I...

  Eve : Taken it for granted that you and I...

  [laughs] 

  Addison DeWitt : [slaps her]  Now, remember, as long as you live, never to laugh at me - at anything or anyone else, but never at me.

  Eve : [walks to the door and opens it]  Get out!

  Addison DeWitt : You're too short for that gesture. Besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske.

• 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.

• Addison DeWitt : Well, Max has gone to a great deal of trouble. This is going to be an elaborate party, and it's for you.

  Eve : No it isn't.

  [raises the award statuette] 

  Eve : It's for this.

  Addison DeWitt : It's the same thing, isn't it?

  Eve : Exactly. Here, take it to the party instead of me.

  [hands it to him] 

• 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.

• Margo : Don't get up. And please stop acting as if I were the queen mother.

  Eve : I'm sorry, I...

• Eve : I will regard this great honor not so much as an award for what I have achieved, but a standard to hold against what I have yet to accomplish.

• Eve : When you're a secretary in a brewery, it's pretty hard to make-believe you're anything else. Everything is beer.

• Karen : [Eve walks in, carrying the fur coat of a new arrival to Margo's party]  Who'd show up at this hour? It's time people went home. Hold that coat up.

  Karen : [Eve holds up a luxurious full-length fur coat, Karen lets out a whistle]  Whose is it?

  Eve : Some Hollywood movie star's. Her plane got in late.

  Karen : Discouraging, isn't it? Women with furs like that where it never even gets cold.

  Eve : Hollywood.

  [tosses the fur coat on the bed] 

• 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.

• Karen : Margo just doesn't miss performances. If she can walk, crawl or roll, she plays.

  Eve : The show must go on.

  Karen : No, dear. Margo must go on.

• Eve : It's not modesty. I just don't try to kid myself.

  Addison DeWitt : A revolutionary approach to the Theater.

• Eve : I won't play tonight. I couldn't, not possibly. I couldn't go on.

  Addison DeWitt : Couldn't go on? You'll give the performance of your life.

• Eve : I'll never forget this night as long as I live, and I'll never forget you for making it possible.

• Karen : A part in a play. You'd do all that just for a part in a play?

  Eve : I'd do much more for a part that good.

• Eve : I hope you don't mind my speaking to you?

  Karen : Not at all.

  Eve : I've seen you so often. It took every bit of courage I could raise.

  Karen : To speak to just a playwright's wife? I'm the lowest form of celebrity.

• Eve : Mr. Sampson. What's he like?

  Karen : Bill Sampson? He's - he's a director.

  Eve : He's the best!

  Karen : He'll agree with you.

• Eve : Autograph fiends. They're not people. Those little beasts that run around in packs like coyotes.

  Karen : They're your fans!

• Eve : With Eddie gone, my life went back to beer.

• Karen : Eve, you mustn't mind Margo too much, even if I do.

  Eve : There must be some reason, something I've done without knowing.

  Karen : The reason is Margo and don't try to figure it out. Einstein couldn't.

• Eve : You're always after truth on the stage. What about off?

• Eve : I'm about to go into the shower. I won't be able to hear you.

  Addison DeWitt : Well, it can wait. Where would you like to go? We must make this a special night.

  Eve : You take charge.

  Addison DeWitt : I believe I will.

• Eve : I'll never get over it.

  Karen : Oh, yes, you will. You theatre people always do. Nothing is forever in the theatre. Whatever it is, it's here, it flares up, burns hot, and it's gone.

• Eve : What a day. What a heavenly day!

  Addison DeWitt : D-day.

  Eve : Just like it.

  Addison DeWitt : And tomorrow morning, you will have won your beachhead on the shores of immortality.

  Eve : Stop rehearsing your column.

• Addison DeWitt : Your name is not Eve Harrington. It's Gertrude Slescynski.

  Eve : What of it?

• Eve : Erasmus Hall. That's in Brooklyn, isn't it?

  Phoebe : Well, lots of actresses come from Brooklyn. Barbara Stanwyck and Susan Hayward. Of course, they're just movie stars. You're going to Hollywood, aren't you?

• Eve : It'll be a night to remember. It'll bring me everything I've ever wanted. The end of an old road, the beginning of a new one.

  Addison DeWitt : All paved with diamonds and gold?

  Eve : You know me better than that.

  Addison DeWitt : Paved with what, then?

  Eve : Stars.

• Karen : I'm gonna take you to Margo.

  Eve : Oh, no!

  Karen : Oh, yes. She's got to meet you.

  Eve : No. No, I'd be imposing on her. I'd be just another tongue-tied, gushing fan.