All About Eve

The definitive Hollywood satire, though it is really about the theatre and, underneath that, about what the industry does to actresses who age. Bette Davis's Margo Channing is forty and knows the parts are drying up; Anne Baxter's Eve Harrington is the adoring fan who talks her way into Margo's dressing room and then into her roles. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's script is the most quotable in American film and never lets you settle - almost everyone narrates, and nobody is reliable. It drew fourteen Academy Award nominations, a record that stood for decades, and it remains the only film ever nominated in four female acting categories. Davis and Baxter cancelled each other out and both lost. Six wins, including Mankiewicz for both Director and Adapted Screenplay.