Eve Harrington quotes from All About Eve (1950)

Eve Harrington

Eve Harrington
I've seen every performance...I'd like anything Miss Channing played in...I think that part of Miss Channing's greatness lies in her ability to pick the best plays.

Eve Harrington

But somehow, acting and make believe began to fill up my life more and more. It got so I couldn't tell the real from the unreal. Except that the unreal seemed more real to me.

Eve Harrington

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

Eve Harrington

And there were theaters in San Francisco. And then one night, Margo Channing came to play in Remembrance and I went to see it. Well, here I am.

Eve Harrington

If nothing else, there's applause... like waves of love pouring over the footlights and wrapping you up.

Eve Harrington

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

Eve Harrington

Lloyd Richards. He's going to leave Karen. We're going to be married...Lloyd loves me, I love him...I'm in love with Lloyd...Oh Addison, won't it be just perfect? Lloyd and I - there's no telling how far we can go. He'll write great plays for me, I'll make them great.

Eve

I'm afraid Mr. De Witt would find me boring before too long.

You won't bore him, honey. You won't even get a chance to talk.

Bill

To be a good actor or actress or anything else in the theatre means wanting to be that more than anything else in the world.

Eve

Yes, yes it does.

Bill

It means concentration of desire or ambition, and sacrifice such as no other profession demands. And I'll agree that the man or woman who accepts those terms can't be ordinary, can't be just someone. To give so much for almost always so little.

Eve

So little. So little, did you say? Why, 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, and their eyes shine. You've pleased them. They want you. You belong. Just that alone is worth anything.

Margo

And please stop acting as if I were the Queen-Mother.

Eve

I'm sorry, I didn't...

Bill

Outside of a beehive, Margo, your behavior would hardly be considered either queenly or motherly.

Margo

You're in a beehive, pal. Didn't you know? We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey, day and night. [To Eve] Aren't we, honey?

Karen

Margo, really.

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. I'm being rude now, aren't I? Or should I say, ain't I?

You're maudlin and full of self-pity. You're magnificent.

Lloyd

How about calling it a night?

Margo

And you, posing as a playwright, a situation pregnant with possibilities and all you can think of is everybody go to sleep.

Bill

...you did it. With work and patience, you'll be a good actress if that's what you want to be.

Eve

Is that what you want me to be?

Bill

I'm talking about you and what you want.

Eve

So am I.

Bill

What have I got to do with it?

Eve

Everything.

Bill

Names I've been called, but never Svengali. Good luck.

Eve

Don't run away, Bill.

Bill

From what would I be running?

Eve

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

Bill

I'm for it.

Eve

Then face it. I have. Ever since that first night here in this dressing room.

Bill

When I told you what every young actress should know?

Eve

When you told me that whatever I became it would be because of you...

Bill

Makeup's a little heavy.

Eve

...and for you.

Bill

You're quite a girl.

Eve

You think?

Bill

I'm in love with Margo. Hadn't you heard?

Eve

You're all kinds of things.

Bill

I'm only human, rumors to the contrary. And I'm as curious as the next man.

Eve

Find out.

Bill

The only thing - what I go after, I want to go after. I don't want it to come after me. Don't cry. Just score it as an incomplete forward pass.

But if I may make a suggestion...I think the time has come for you to shed some of your humility. It is just as false not to blow your horn at all as it is to blow it too loudly.

Eve

I don't think I have anything to sound off about.

We all come into this world with our little egos, equipped with individual horns. Now if we don't blow them, who else will?

Eve

Even so, one pretty good performance by an understudy - it'll be forgotten by tomorrow.

It needn't be.

Eve

You take charge.

I believe I will.

Eve

If you told him (Lloyd) so, he'd give me the part. He said he would...It's my part now...Cora is my part. You've got to tell Lloyd it's for me...Addison wants me to play it...Addison knows how Margo happened to miss that performance, how I happened to know she'd miss it in time to call him and notify every paper in town...If I play Cora, Addison will never tell what happened, in or out of print. A simple exchange of favors. I'm so happy I can do something for you at long last. Your friendship with Margo - your deep, close friendship. What would happen to it, do you think, if she knew the cheap trick you played on her for my benefit? You and Lloyd. How long, even in the theater, before people forgot what happened and trusted you again? No, it would be so much easier for everyone concerned if I would play Cora. So much better theater too.

Karen

You'd do all that just for a part in a play?

Eve

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

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

Eve

Stop rehearsing your column. Isn't it strange, Addison? I thought I'd be panic-stricken, want to run away or something. Instead, I can't wait for tonight to come, to come and go.

Are you that sure of tomorrow?

Eve

Aren't you?

Frankly, yes.

Eve

It will be a night to remember. It will bring me everything I've ever wanted. The end of an old road. The beginning of a new one.

All paved with diamonds and gold?

Eve

You know me better than that.

It's paved with what, then?

Eve

Stars...Plenty of time for a nice long nap. We rehearsed most of last night.

You could sleep now, couldn't you?

Eve

Why not?

The mark of a true killer. Sleep tight, rest easy, and come out fighting.

Eve

Why did you call me a killer?

Oh, did I say killer? I meant champion. I get my boxing terms mixed.

Eve

The setting wasn't romantic, but Lloyd was. He woke me up at three o'clock in the morning banging on my door. He couldn't sleep, he said. He'd left Karen. Couldn't go on with the play or anything else until I promised to marry him. We sat and talked until it was light. He never went home.

You 'sat and talked' until it was light?

Eve

We 'sat and talked' Addison. I want a run-of-the-play contract.

There never was and there never will be another like you...[rising] What do you take me for?

Eve

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

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?...Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison De Witt. I am nobody's fool. Least of all - yours.

Eve

I never intended you to be.

Yes you did and you still do...It's important right now that we talk - killer to killer.

Eve

Champion to champion.

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.

Very well. Plainly and distinctly...Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.

Eve

What do you mean by that?

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've 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?

Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.

Eve

Belong to you? That sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama.

Now remember as long as you live, never to laugh at me. At anything or anyone else, but never at me.

San Francisco has no Shubert Theater. You've never been to San Francisco! That was a stupid lie, easy to expose, not worthy of you.

Eve

I had to get in to meet Margo! I had to say something, be somebody, make her like me!