Karen Richards quotes from All About Eve (1950)

Karen Richards

Karen Richards
Then stop being a star. And stop treating your guests as your supporting cast...It's about time Margo realized that what's attractive on stage need not necessarily be attractive off.

Karen Richards

She can play Peck's Bad Boy all she wants and who's to stop her? Who's to give her that boot in the rear she needs and deserves?

Karen Richards

Newton, they say, thought of gravity by getting hit on the head by an apple. And the man who invented the steam engine - he was watching a tea kettle. Not me. My big idea came to me just sitting on a couch. That boot in the rear to Margo. Heaven knows she had one coming. From me, from Lloyd, from Eve, Bill, Max, and so on. We'd all felt those size 5's of hers often enough. But how? The answer was buzzing around me like a fly. I had it. But I let it go. Screaming and calling names is one thing, but this could mean...Why not? Why, I said to myself, not? It would all seem perfectly legitimate. And there were only two people in the world who would know. Also, the boot would land where it would do the most good for all concerned. And after all, it was no more than a perfectly harmless joke that Margo herself would be the first to enjoy. And no reason why she shouldn't be told about it - in time.

Karen Richards

Eve would ask Abbott to give her Costello.

Karen Richards

Lloyd never got around somehow to asking whether it was all right with me for Eve to play Cora. Bill, oddly enough, refused to direct the play at first - with Eve in it. Lloyd and Max finally won him over. Margo never came to rehearsal. Too much to do around the house, she said. I'd never known Bill and Lloyd to fight as bitterly and often and always over some business for Eve, or a move, or the way she read a speech. But then I'd never known Lloyd to meddle as much with Bill's directing, as far as it affected Eve, that is. Somehow Eve kept them going. Bill stuck it out. Lloyd seemed happy. And I thought it might be best if I skipped rehearsals from then on. It seemed to me I had known always that it would happen, and here it was. I felt helpless, that helplessness you feel when you have no talent to offer - outside of loving your husband. How could I compete? Everything Lloyd loved about me, he had gotten used to long ago.

Karen

Margo, nothing you've ever done has made me as happy as your taking Eve in.

Margo

I'm so happy you're happy.

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

So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.

Karen

You're Margo, just Margo.

Margo

And what is that besides something spelled out in lightbulbs, I mean, besides something called a temperament which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice. Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave. They'd get drunk if they knew how, when they can't have what they want. When they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.

Margo

Bill's in love with Margo Channing. He's fought with her, worked with her, and loved her. But ten years from now, Margo Channing will have ceased to exist. And what's left will be - what?

Karen

Margo, Bill is all of eight years younger than you.

Margo

Those years stretch as the years go on. I've seen it happen too often.

Karen

Not to you, not to Bill.

Margo

Isn't that what they always say?...About Eve, I've acted pretty disgracefully toward her too.

Karen

Well,...

Margo

Don't fumble for excuses, not here and now with my hair down. At best, let's say I've been oversensitive to her...to the fact that she's so young, so feminine and so helpless, too so many things I want to be for Bill. Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. There's one career all females have in common - whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And, in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed - and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a - a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain. The End.

Lloyd

For once to write something and have it realized completely. For once not to compromise.

Karen

Lloyd Richards! You are not to consider giving that contemptible little worm the part of Cora.

Lloyd

Now just a minute.

Karen

Margo Channing's not been exactly a compromise all these years. Why, half the playwrights in the world would give their shirts for that particular compromise.

Lloyd

Now just a minute.

Karen

It strikes me that Eve's disloyalty and ingratitude must be contagious.

Lloyd

All this fuss and hysteria because an impulsive kid got carried away by excitement and the conniving of a professional manure-slinger named De Witt. She apologized, didn't she?

Karen

On her knees, I've no doubt. Very touching. Very Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Lloyd

That bitter cynicism of yours is something you've acquired since you left Radcliffe.

Karen

That cynicism you refer to I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys.

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.