Addison DeWitt quotes from All About Eve (1950)

Addison DeWitt

Addison DeWitt
The Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement is perhaps unknown to you. It has been spared the sensational and commercial publicity that attends such questionable 'honors' as the Pulitzer Prize - and those awards presented annually by that film society. This is the dining hall of the Sarah Siddons Society. The occasion is its annual banquet and presentation of the highest honor our theater knows - the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement...The minor awards, as you can see, have already been presented. Minor awards are for such as the writer and director [playwright Lloyd Richards and director Bill Sampson are briefly viewed] since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it. And no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington. Eve. But more of Eve later, all about Eve, in fact.

Addison DeWitt

To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs or know anything of the world in which you live - it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison De Witt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater.

Addison DeWitt

She is the wife of a playwright, therefore of the theater by marriage. Nothing in her background or breeding should have brought her any closer to the stage than Row E, Center. However, during her senior year at Radcliffe, Lloyd Richards lectured on the drama. The following year, Karen became Mrs. Lloyd Richards.

Addison DeWitt

There are in general two types of theatrical producers. One has a great many wealthier friends who will risk a tax deductible loss. This type is interested in art. The other is one to whom each production means potential ruin or fortune. This type is out to make a buck.

Addison DeWitt

Margo Channing is a Star of the Theater. She made her first stage appearance, at the age of four, in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered - quite unexpectedly - stark naked. She has been a Star ever since. Margo is a great Star. A true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.

Addison DeWitt

Eve. Eve the Golden Girl, the Cover Girl, the Girl Next Door, the Girl on the Moon. Time has been good to Eve. Life goes where she goes. She's the profiled, covered, revealed, reported. What she eats and what she wears and whom she knows and where she was, and when and where she's going. Eve. You all know All About Eve. What can there be to know that you don't know?

Addison DeWitt

Dear Margo. You were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again soon.

Addison DeWitt

Every now and then some elder statesman of the theater or cinema assures the public that actors and actresses are just plain folks. Ignoring the fact that their greatest attraction to the public is their complete lack of resemblance to normal human beings.

Addison DeWitt

We all have abnormality in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk; We are the original displaced personalities.

Addison DeWitt

I had lunch with Karen not three hours ago. As always with women who try to find out things, she told more than she learned. Now do you want to change your story about Lloyd beating at your door the other night? ... That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability, but that, in itself, is probably the reason. You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also a contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition - and talent. We deserve each other...and you realize and you agree how completely you belong to me?

Do you see that man? That's Max Fabian, the producer. Now go and do yourself some good.

Why do they always look like unhappy rabbits?

Because that's what they are. Now go and make him happy.

We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theater folk. We are the original displaced personalities.

Oh, waiter!

That isn't a waiter, my dear. That's a butler.

Well, I can't yell, 'Oh, butler!' can I? Maybe somebody's name is Butler.

You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.

I don't want to make trouble. All I want is a drink.

Leave it to me. I'll get you one.

Thank you, Mr. Fabian.

Well done. I can see your career rising in the east like the sun.

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.

Margo

You be host. It's your party. Happy birthday, welcome home. And we who are about to die...

Too bad, we're gonna miss the third act. They're gonna play it off stage.

It wasn't a reading. It was a performance. Brilliant, vivid, something made of music and fire.

Margo

How nice.

In time, she'll be what you are.

Margo

A mass of music and fire.

Now what?

Your next move, it seems to me, should be towards television.

Tell me this. Do they have auditions for television?

That's, uh, all television is, my dear. Nothing but auditions.

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.

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!

Phoebe

I call myself Phoebe.

And why not? Tell me, Phoebe, do you want someday to have an award like that of your own?

Phoebe

More than anything else in the world.

Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.