Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Fans of "All About Eve" will enjoy this exploration of the making of a classic. It's hard to put down and consistently entertaining. A perfect companion piece for the film as the backstage story of a backstage story of life in the theater from a life in Hollywood viewpoint. Celeste Holm's remarks are particularly revealing. You could say this is a bitchy look at a bitchy movie and it's well worth the read. Don't miss this one.

Buckle your seat belts ... it's gonna be a bumpy night ahead! Bumpy because author Sam Staggs has written a warts-and-all, behind-the-scenes look at one of the Hollywood's greatest and wittiest films. The film won six Oscars, and was nominated for a titanic total 14 of the golden naked men, a record broken only recently by "Titanic." All the bitchery, butchery and backstage babble is here: From the performance that revived the flailing career of star Bette Davis to the introduction of a starlet by the name of Marilyn Monroe. Applause! Applause!

This book is filled with anecdotes, gossip and sometimes downright nasty little tidbits of information regarding the movie stars, director, production people and writer of the original story that All About Eve was based on. While full of fascinating stories about the production itself the style of the author left a great deal to be desired. We follow the production of movie from beginning to end including facts about the author of a story originally printed in Cosmopolitan Magazine, "The Wisdom of Eve" that the movied was based on. In chronological order, following the movie itself (which is actually told in flashback/retrospect) we travel with the cast and crew as the plot of the movie unfolds and the stories behind the movie unfold. The only remaining cast member, Celeste Holm, declined to be interviewed for the book and I would love to read what she has to say in detail about the production. Gary Merrill and Bete Davis have both written interesting (and recommended by me) autobiographies, in Ms. Davis' case several, which include references to the making "Eve" and their affair during which ended with their subsequent marriage.

It's a good read for the story of the movie and some good Hollywood gossip but if I had a chance to edit this book I would have removed a fair amount of extraneous wording.

If you want more of All About Eve that goes beyond just watching it again, this is the book for you. This isn't any kind of scholarly analysis, nor is it a work of pure gossip. It's an intelligent and informed discussion of how this brilliant film came to be. It's purely shocking how every single part could have gone to several others, fascinating and sometimes sad to read how these great actors interacted with each other. Staggs also includes discussion of the short story on which the film was based, and discussion of the reality on which that story was based. I enjoyed knowing that all the more since I wasn't really familiar with Broadway Theater of the time or its great stars. We also learn that there was a sequel short story More About Eve. My only disappointment with All About All About Eve was that the author didn't see fit to include the short story, or its follow-up in the book, nor even to explain why he didn't. That would have been very interesting reading.

Marilyn shines in this one, she outdoes everybody, even upstaging Bette Davis, there all betting on how many men go into marilyns hotel room, a pretty good book, Marilyn has so many! Reminds me of todays stars and how they envy the public, no privacy, no anonymity, they can't go back and be a waitress, etc. I think Morisa Tomei and Drew Barrymore would be a good bet to write a new version about 2002-they could call it, Cinderella 2:Dreams come true- the most self-centered movie made in modern times about some obviously new Marilyn Monroe. Who she is in this century is obviously anonimous, and a local, which so quite obviously infuriates Hollywood even more. This book is a crack up, If you buy it, pass on the word that everyone in this book is jealous of Marilyn Monroe- except of course Marilyn...

In All About All About Eve, Sam Staggs tells of the birth, life and legend of one of the greatest films ever made (and certainly the best screenplay--in English at least). We get good looks at the personalities and paranoia of Joseph Mankiewicz, Bette Davis, Celeste Holm, Marilyn Monroe, George Sanders and Mrs. Sanders a.k.a. Zsa Zsa Gabor who turns out to be more hot-headed than Bette or a truckload of paprika.
Staggs' detailing of the process of the film is quite interesting and often bitchy fun. He gives the same treatment to the 1970 musical play "Applause" which is based on AAE. His analysis of the script, costumes, music and production design are also interesting. Where the book breaks down is in his pseudo-scholarly explanation of the subtexts, the films latent lesbian strain and its "camp" and ongoing appeal to gay men. These subtexts cannot be denied, but Staggs stretches credulity in some of his attempts to justify them. More knowledge of the practicalities of film making and the director's methods would have kept Staggs out of this trap. For example, photographing Randy Stuart in profile was probably dictated by her use of a candlestick phone rather than the need to show her as an incomplete woman. Many of Staggs’ painstakingly complied coincidences and connections will illicit an "oh brother" from some readers.
A close reading can be used to justify just about anything. On page 311 Staggs describes the meeting between Lauren Bacall and Joe Mankiewicz during her run in Applause. Staggs concludes his report with the sentence "Or was he just being kind?" By this Staggs must be implying that there had been a love affair between Bacall and Mankiewicz in the Forties or Fifties. Why else would he quote Steven Sondheim's song "Losing my Mind" about a long ago passion that never came to full fruition? Of course the author means no such thing, but I can read it that way if I want to.
All About All About Eve makes a cozy companion to the film and can help you draw more meaning, appreciation and pleasure from the masterpiece...

This is a highly entertainment try at one of the most witty films of all time. It's a pity that every memo and record from the film was destroyed in a van accident many years ago, as the author tells us in the prologue. A fun ride, though, but, remember, before reading it, fasten your seatbelts!

To put it simply, if you LOVE the film, ALL ABOUT EVE, you are going to love this book. If you're not gaga over the film, then this book has much more than you'll probably be interested in. Some chapters are what I bought the book for: true insight into the making of one of my favorite films. The history of the short story from which the film is based, and the chapter covering the creation of the stage version, APPLAUSE, are fascinating. The remainder of the book, however, contains much camp and personal opinion, more than fact. A different cup of tea for each individual reader. A mixed bag of style and content, but still a fun and worthwhile read. Bold, brassy and gossipy, written much in the style of the film it covers.

Personally, this was both more than I wanted to know about Eve and not enough about ALL ABOUT EVE. There's a lot of information here about the person who inspired the story of Eve Harrington but what I was looking for was information about the filming of the movie. The most detailed information involves the filming that took place at the old theatre in San Francisco. The research is impressive, especially concerning the director Mankiewicz, all the actors and the original story written by Mary Orr. Best of all are the boxes within the text which give wonderful details and add levity to what could have been a tedious tome. It is fun to read and although I wanted to put it down, I found I couldn't.

This is an almost encyclopedic description of the greatest "backstage" movie ever made (along with "Stage Door"), 1950's Oscar-winner "All About Eve." Believe the title: This is all about the movie, and people who haven't seen the movie or who don't like it will indeed find this stuffed with too much information.

That caveat aside, this is a superb book, taking both a lowbrow and highbrow analysis of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz scripted and directed film starring Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Thelma Ritter, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Ratoff, and Hugh Marlowe. Author Sam Staggs takes us behind the on- and off-stage scenes, to deliver the subtext of the movie: The various meanings transacted among the text--the film itself--and its audience (including those who made the film). There are brawls, feuds, insults, lawsuits, legal challenges, large egos, and a Rashomon-like recollection of who said what to whom more than 50 years ago.

Staggs tells the real event on which "Eve" is based, and then traces its evolution from short story to film. (We later meet the "real" Eve Harrington, as Staggs turns sleuth). The book is juicy, but the prose is occasionally overripe: Drawing a flimsy parallel between the fire in his brother's film Citizen Kane, and the real fire that (much later) consumed a van filled with many of Joe Mankiewicz's belongings, Staggs writes: That final fire at Xanadu, and the later one that consumed the Mankiewicz moving fan, rhyme like a combustible couplet." Really now! Fortunately, such purple prose is rare. Staggs give you the dish on "the bitchiest movie ever made," but he also dwells like a scholar on technical aspects of the film, including lighting, costumes, script revisions, editing, casting decisions, and art direction, to name a few.

There's an excellent section on the special meanings of the movie to some members of the gay subculture, and how it has influenced (and been influenced by) general culture as well ("Eve" was acted out in movie houses long before "The Rocky Horror Picture Show.") Again, Staggs makes a deft transition between "hi-brow" and "low-brow" culture and criticism, the former represented by his command of film semiotics, the latter by his references to "Hollywood Babylon" and porn films influenced by the movie.

It's a fun and informative book, and I can't imagine any fan of the movie, or movies in general, not liking it. (But remember we're talking "fan" here). With 16 pages of black and white photos, an index, and sidebars (e.g., "No [sic] Innuendos Please-We're Anglo-Saxon" is a half-page box showing the lines cut by censors in Massachusetts and in Australia.) Highly recommended!