Required Viewing 08: All About Eve

We're in Wayne Media. We're in Wayne. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Required Viewing, a sub-feed on the CultureCast feed. I am one of your hosts, Chris Stashew of the CultureCast, and I'm joined by my good friend all the way from West Texas, where he is a professor of media and communications at Texas Tech, your friend and mine, Dr. David D.

Perlmutter. Howdy, Chris and Susan. And also joining us all the way from her show on weirdingwaymedia.com, where it has won several awards. If you're not listening to it, you should be. She is a hell of a podcaster.

I'll give her that, among being a lot of other things, but she's a hell of a podcaster. Susan Lambert-Hattem. Aw, thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here. And Susan knows how to pick movies because on this episode of Required Viewing, which, like I mentioned, is a sub-feed on my feed, we're going to be talking about 1950s Joseph Mankiewicz's, I guess, All About Eve.

And I mentioned, Susan, you're a hell of a podcaster, but you also like to pick good movies because you have, on several occasions, picked films for the CultureCast series. that have been fantastic films. And then you're now here picking this film for us to talk about. And I don't want to bury the lead or anything, but I think that this is once again, a great pick in a long laundry list of great picks. But I just wanted to say thank you ahead of time before we have this conversation, because there's no universe where I would have watched this movie before this, not because I wouldn't have, but just because I feel woefully underrepresented when it comes to films of this time and place. Maybe a lot of people my age, probably.

No, I mean, you have to seek out, I think, anything before 1970 in terms of films. You have to be looking for that kind of film. And so I was very glad to be able to suggest this and pick this because it is one of my favorite films. I've seen it many, many times. And yet going back and revisiting it is always such a treat as this was.

And so, yeah, on this episode of Required Viewing, we're going to be talking about all about Eve. So the film is written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, produced by Daryl F. Zanuck. I'm mentioning these names because they're very important.

It's based on The Wisdom of Eve by Mary Orr, though it's uncredited. She's uncredited on screen. It stars Betty Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, George Merrill, Hugh Marlowe. Thelma Ritter, Gregory Radoff, Marilyn Monroe, whatever happened to her, and Barbara Bates. But most importantly, Anne Baxter plays the titular Eve Harrington. a devoted fan who, well, she starts out as a fan and ends up as, well, the biggest star, I guess, in the world of this film.

And yeah, she supplants the character Betty Davis plays Margot Channing, who is the star at the beginning of the film. It's one of those kinds of films, which is to say there's a lot going on. There's a lot to unpack. There's a whole lot of Important meaning and reasons why we're talking about this film that we'll talk about as we talk about the film. But Susan, I want to give you the first opportunity here, since you are our guest.

Why, oh why, did you pick, of all things, All About Eve? Well, as I said, it is one of my favorite films. One of my favorite classic and sort of awarded films. I think it deserves all its awards. And I just...

I always love revisiting it. So, and I always love introducing it to people as well. Dr. Perlmutter, um, before we kind of talk about the film specifically, had you seen this before? I mean, I know we had kind of, you had kind of talked about some options cause we had kind of given Susan some, like, it was like four options.

Uh, and this is the one Susan picked, but why, why were the options, the ones that we gave, I guess is the better question because you kind of delineated the options and then Susan picked the final one. So what was it about, uh, all about Eve that got you so excited to bring this one up, possibly, Dr. Perlmutter? Well, you know, we talk about films having many lives, the life of their incarnation when they come out, and we can discuss the context, the history of the time, maybe the production details, the reception of a film. why it was probably made, what the target audience was. But when you deal with a film like this one, you're also dealing with sort of an icon, right?

And I was introduced to this film probably maybe 40 years ago. I had not seen it, but somebody had in a class I was taking at on classical Hollywood film had put it as number one on the list of women's films or films that gave front place to women actresses and stories of women. And I thought that was very interesting. Circa, you know, 1980 or so, 85, what was considered to be a woman's movie. And I interpreted– and I think the people in the class and the people who put the list together, who I don't even remember where they were.

It was just some list that was going around on– this is before the internet, right? So there wasn't a billion over-analyses of anything like there is today. But that was an interesting question, and I'll lead into some answers that came across some other discussions then. But also– I have talked about on Required Viewing the role of the screenplay. And I think, Chris, you and I came at it from different directions.

And Susan, I got the sense the last time we talked, too, that we all agree Hollywood can throw a lot of money and get pretty good carpentry and good sets and catering and just everything that's part of a movie. But it seems to be inescapably hard to get or guarantee a movie, whether it has a $ 200 million budget or a $ 1 million budget, to have a fantastic screenplay. And This movie was also introduced to me as in the short list of the top 30 Hollywood screenplays. Like you could read– and I did. I did read the screenplay.

I read the original story. I also read the screenplay for the radio program that was made about this. There's a whole history there we'll talk about. But they just– its entry into the film pantheon was assured– Aside from the fact that it's a really interesting movie to watch, and I think even today's audiences can enjoy it. And, you know, it'll come as no surprise to anyone that this was the first time I'd seen this film, because a lot of the films, Susan, that you kind of have brought to my show or now to this show are things that are films that have resonated with you, but I have not seen, not for any reason, but just because, again, I.

Think it's just a... primarily an age thing, I would say more than. Likely, I think just like, just based on some of the things that we've talked about and some of the things that we've seen and that you've brought to the show. And so it's interesting because this, this movie in a lot of ways, I feel like, and you guys might laugh or maybe I'm off base here, but With a different musical score and maybe a little bit more of a foreboding tone, this is just a horror movie in a lot of ways. I mean, it really is. Because again, there are so many notes of this movie that they underplay it. intentionally because it's, there's such a long payoff to the movie and it takes, it really takes its time in a great way of like really establishing who this character is.

And then kind of the facade starts slipping. But all of what I've described is like a horror movie. Like the character of Eve is so like, it's, it's not a horror movie because again, it's so much more than that. But so much of what's going on is really like single white female characters. You know, again, like a lot of again, like the tropes that you would see later on in these kind of like female stalking, female horror movies or these jealous obsession.

Yeah, exactly. Like these horror movies that are driven by greed and envy, but of. A certain kind, it's like. These, these themes are here in this movie and they're obviously very human themes, but that's the thing for me that I was like, when I was watching this movie, I was like, it starts off very, light and airy. And by the end of it, it's like, this movie has become kind of like a nightmare, like a real genuine nightmare.

And I mean, especially to go all the, not to jump to the ending, but by the way, the film ends, you're just like, oh, right. Okay. So I, now I understand what the, I mean, the movie kind of waits as long as it can to play its hand. And when it truly and fully finally plays its hand, I think that this movie also at its core is very cynical as well, which I appreciate. I appreciate the cynicism of the film because, like we've already kind of alluded to, this film coming out when it did, this kind of film is an outlier in terms of the amount of cynicism on screen and this kind of question that it's having about the human... condition and then the nature of human beings.

And it was like, this movie in a lot of ways is like condemning a certain kind of thing, but also just bemused by the triviality of like, well, it's. Just going to keep happening over and over again. And there's nothing you can do to stop it. It's like, ah, right. Okay.

Also that. So. I really enjoyed this movie, but this movie was a bit of a downer. It's a bit of a bummer of a movie. It's not like the most uplifting thing I've seen, but I really enjoyed it.

And I'm really excited to. Hear y'all's perspective on things, because again, there's a lot to unpack here. There's a lot going on. And Not every movie from this time and place is like this. I mean, there's I know this assumption.

Where it's like an older movie and it's serious and heady and has a lot of important themes. Like, no, there were movies from this time that were just existing to be entertaining. This is entertaining, but it also has something more to say than just, you know, being entertaining for entertaining sake. Oh, Chris, you've given me so much to talk about and think about. One, since Dr.

Perlmutter has invited me into these conversations, I now have to think about the historical context of all of these films. And I will say that, Chris... I'm not old enough to have been around. You're making it sound like I was around in 1950. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, I'm talking more to like the influences of what we were watching growing up more like, because, you know, the tale of the stuff that I was seeing only went about 10 years. Yeah. So, yeah. 70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not even really, barely even the 70s. I will say, What's interesting is the context when you talk about these films. There's a number of films from the late 40s, early 50s that are absolutely fantastic. They are beautifully written. They are beautifully created.

They are brilliant to watch and super fun and also very dark. We are talking about the aftermath of World War II, right? We are talking about a worldwide and American culture that was both lifting itself up and crashing itself down. So it's very interesting that you see it as a horror film. I do too in some ways, but it is so much fun to watch.

And for someone that is in theater and in movies and in entertainment and knows a lot of actresses and a lot of critics and a lot of writers, it's so... much fun to watch. The language is so beautiful. The design of this film is so incredible. It really is just every aspect of this film is so well crafted that it's a pleasure to watch. Even as it is, I guess, pretty darn dark, but I wouldn't call it a horror film.

I mean, again, it's not I wouldn't say it's not a horror film because it's not angled that way. But again, it has so much of those like notes of a film, like you said, where there's an obsession angle or a character that's trying to, you know, underhandedly. I mean, she's trying to replace her idol. I mean, that's, you know, you can tell that story a number of different ways. I'm just so used to it being.

Kind of a more. horror or thriller angle. And this is, I wouldn't say this like wholesomely done, but it's done with such a smile. On its face. It's very disarming, which is much appreciated. Cause again, you know, there's, there is, like you said, there are other films like this coming out at the time, but this one is, is always, you know, I've heard about this film for a.

So much. And there are so many names in this movie that I've heard before that I had not seen in other things. And yeah, it's, it's kind of reputation precedes it and it's all well deserved. I mean, I had such a, I had such a good time watching this movie, just the watching part of it, because again, it does kind of takes you on a full journey with the characters. They are nowhere, they are nowhere, you understand them way better.

You're nowhere near where you were with them at the beginning of the film, where you are at the end. But yet I love that the film comes back to where we are at the beginning of the film. And it's like, Oh man, like I've gone on a complete journey with everyone now in this film. Uh, and now I understand the sentiment aired out towards this person who seems so nice on the face of it. But it's like, by the end, I completely understand now this, yeah, this is a film that I'm, I'm really glad that we're, we're sitting here and talking about it.

Cause it, It feels important, and I want the audience to understand more why it's so important in the history of cinema. I want to bring in what you guys have raised about its place in cinema, but also why... The plot, even if you've never seen it before, and I'm guessing a lot of people who are listening to this have not seen this film or maybe they may have just seen one or two scenes from this film or. In this film, on IMDb, I think there's like 150 famous quotes from this screenplay. The fasten your seatbelt is going to be a bumpy night is probably the one that gets more repeated more often that people know but don't even sort of remember the context of it.

But the reason that this film feels familiar is that it is– A tale as old as time. It's within mythology. The original story, The Wisdom of Eve, maybe foregrounded that a little bit. Like Eve not just like happened to be named Eve, like Eve as in the biblical character. And that, you know, her wisdom, which in the story is not maybe played up as much.

But when I was watching this the latest time, I think I've watched this about five times now. The latest time I was going, you know, this is Game of Thrones. This is Mad Men. This is Succession. This is Nashville.

This is The Wire. And this is Chaucer, right? You go back to Chaucer, the smiler with the knife under the cloak, right? Right. So so I think human beings from I don't know, I'm guessing back in hunter gatherer times, there was an Anne Baxter, you know, who who showed up with a sad story, but, you know, tried to infiltrate and take over and displace somebody.

There was politics. Have we ever seen? in our career lives ever talked to anybody from any industry. It doesn't matter whether it's the oil industry or politics, politics or television or whatever, who hasn't said, well, you know, the stuff that goes on behind the scenes would turn your hair white. And this is like the prototypical movie about these people who, of course, their whole job is to get in front of an audience and pretend to be something. and to entertain and people to think of them as a person, Margot Channing, for example, this glamorous person who's the queen of Broadway and achieves all of these things. And then there's this other world, the private world of ferocious knife wielding politics that is behind the curtain.

And That has been done so many times because it's endlessly interesting when it's done well. And in these other shows that I mentioned and movies, it was also done well. But it's a primordial theme. You can go back to the most ancient of tales and– There's the elements of it. And I think that's what appeals to us.

And it doesn't age. Like, obviously, we can watch movies from the 1940s where and this movie, too, where we feel some anachronisms. We feel like, OK, you know, people wouldn't be doing that and saying that today. But so much of this film. could be remade. It shouldn't be.

Nobody should remake this movie. But they are remaking this movie. If you saw, again, the Nashville TV series or Game of Thrones, Succession, I think they were essentially situational remakes of All About Eve. I know they've remade A Star is Born a handful of times, but it's one of those same things where it's like they've remade A Star is Born a handful of times under that name, but they've also remade it a bunch of times under every other name of a similar kind of influence story. And that's that is the thing about this movie where it's like, I do think that, and you know, similar professor to when we talked about the Maltese Falcon recently, it's like, this is where a lot of that comes from.

Like this is the proto spot, the progenitor spot, like the, the version of it that's done so well, that's why everyone else is doing it is because this is the one that puts it in such a way that it gets ahead of all the other ones. It does it in a way where it's early cinema. It does it in a way where it covers like kind of all the bases. And it does it in a way where I feel like, and as someone, again, who's kind of watching this in 2026 for the first time, the time and place when this is released lends to the timeless nature of the film for me. And I think that that's what so many of these films from this time and place do for someone like myself now is it's like, okay, this, I'm watching this as the starting point, the historical starting point for cinema of a certain kind of cinema, of a certain kind of place.

And this film is right in there. And again, to the other point that you made, Susan, the theater and Broadway of it all, I think is also like, So important because it's speaking to a time and a place in this country when this was like the biggest thing. I mean, cinema was massive as well, but Broadway was, you know, just as massive as cinema. And I'm not saying that that's not the case now, but it's not the way it is that way somewhat now around certain things, but not just cinema. Period.

Like at this time in American culture, it is period, a massive thing across the country. Like not, you know, now it takes something like a Hamilton coming out for everyone to take notice, but there are plenty of massive musicals that come out every year that are not Hamilton level that make a huge splash on Broadway that aren't making waves in, you know, middle America or elsewhere. But at this time, when this movie is existing, Broadway is like, everybody knows what Broadway is across the country. Yeah, I think that's a very important point, Chris, that at this point, Broadway is the biggest American entertainment industry that's happening. It's bigger and more prestigious than movies.

And they make a lot of digs in the movie about that, where everyone's talking about they're diminishing themselves to go do Hollywood, to go do a movie, the director. And she's sort of how could you possibly go to Hollywood and do that? And then, of course, by the end, that's her next step because that's the next step of stardom. And so it's such a nod to both the incoming power of what Hollywood would become, but also this kind of dismissing of it. I also, I just want to point out that when the director... at the beginning is like, I'm going to go, you know, why would I go to Hollywood, you know, and make more money?

They'll just take 80% of it. He's making a point that it doesn't make any sense for him to make any more money because he would be taxed at an 80% tax rate back then. Anyway, moving on. And so there's just so many, every line, has a reason to be there. And that's what makes an incredibly great screenplay.

There's no line that's just trying to get from point A to point B. Every line is so incredibly important in this movie. It really is a screenplay and a movie to watch. And I want to shout out Joseph Mankiewicz. You've The year before, he made Letter to Three Wives and talked about another women's film you have to see.

You have to see that. It's beautiful. And then a few years before that, it was Ghost and Mrs. Muir. He's just an incredible filmmaker, an incredible catalog.

The fact that he wrote and directed is, again, it's pretty amazing work. his talent and craft. And this is, I would say this is the best of them in my opinion, but I haven't seen all of them. So. Susan, can I ask you a question about that? Because this is, these are all footnotes that I'm about to say, but they're footnotes that would be more important as the culture changed in the sixties and beyond.

Again, this was represented to me on a list of women's films and not being like films only women could watch, but like films which foregrounded powerful women. I want to talk about that word powerful, that term in a minute. But just objectively, this Mary Orr, who I'd not heard of. I mean, I just the first three times I watched it, I did not know. that this was based on somebody's story. And she is this Mary or wrote wisdom of Eve published in cosmopolitan magazine just a few years earlier.

She has some contract that apparently, I mean, what, all I could find was that her agent like forgot or just nobody thought it would be adapted to a movie. So like it wasn't written like screen credit and she was given no screen credit. Her name doesn't appear. And I thought that was today that would be like a billion posts on that. And the studio would back down and be really embarrassed.

And, you know, they would be scrambling to cover oneself. That's number one. And then number two, this is an amazing woman's film. No women won any awards to do to do with this film, except Edith Head co-costume designing. Eden Head, who I think every I hope most people know is the character that is picked up in The Incredibles as the costume designer there.

But I just. Were there different standards of what a woman's film was in 1950? What's your reading on this poor Mary or being sort of. shunted out of a woman's film and the women not winning any awards. Well, I will say that four of them, right. We're nominated.

Yeah. So they were all the women in the film were nominated for either best supporting actors or best actress. And, and I think they, they kind of canceled each other out a little bit, you know, that, that I, I, I can't tell you the politics of the Academy Awards from 1950. It can be very political. It can be, you know, oh, we just gave that person something.

And it was a much smaller academy. It was a very smaller town. When you hear about the 50s and 60s Hollywood, everyone knew everybody. And everybody was, when they weren't making a movie, they were out at the nightclub or the, or the, you know, Musso and Franks or wherever. And they knew there was just a lot more collision of people kind of in that town.

So it, I, you know, another woman one for those that haven't looked it up, but, um, but I will say that the overlooking of women writers is definitely something that has happened throughout history. I think it is, you know, 1940s, 50s, probably even, and certainly before that, Hollywood, very much copyright was, you know, not as powerful as it is now. You could not get away with, like, loosely basing something on somebody's story and not crediting them with it. I think it was more casual in that place, in that space and time. But it's weird.

I have no idea if she got any money from it. I assume if she didn't get credit, she didn't get money from it. But, you know, and then it was also adapted into a musical applause in the 70s, I think. And All About Eve was. And I'm not sure she's credited on that, even though in her obituary she's credited with it.

So I didn't know that either. until like I was reminded, I had sort of, I had learned it again, probably like the fourth or fifth watching. And I had forgotten that point until I was watching it this time and watched a little behind the scenes documentary. And I was like, oh my God, I forgot about that. Because it's easy to forget about women. So I think what your question was, was what makes a woman's film in the fifties?

And what I will say is it was writing great, female parts. So that's what the power of Mankiewicz was in Hollywood at the time. He was known for creating great parts for women to play. Actresses wanted to be in his films because they got to do something other than being And it's so funny because Letter to Three Wives, you think, is going to be a different kind of movie than it is. And it's a really, again, kind of crafted jewel of writing and directing and an incredible women performances.

So I think that's why it's considered, you know, in the 50s, a woman's film was would have been about women, but it mostly was creating powerful roles for women to play and to be the lead in the movie and not the sidekick or the supportive or not supportive partner. And I think as someone who hasn't seen enough of these movies as kind of, again, the newcomer to this era of cinema. Because, you know, Susan, you've introduced me to a fair amount. And, you know, again, having seen The Maltese Falcon last. Week when we did our episode on.

It, it's interesting because I do think that there is a perception amongst people. And I'm not talking about myself, but I think there is this perception amongst people that when you watch a film from this day and age, there's going to be like, we've kind of already alluded to these like level of anachronisms to things that will kind of be off-putting or again, like they kind of don't feel the anachronisms get in the way of a story that feels still humanistic enough to resonate with us, you know, all these years later. And yeah, This is one of those movies where, again, you're just watching it and everything that's going on, it's just like, okay, so nothing here feels... There are some things that feel like, oh, of the time and place, sure.

But I think the genuine human core of this movie is... undeniably kind of evergreen in terms of like what it's talking about. And that, I think you just, you, you, like you just said, Susan, like Mankiewicz is able to really with the female characters. And I'm not saying not the male characters, but again, like great male roles were not, not a dime a dozen, but that was a thing you could get at the time, but really great. Well done. Like lead female characters.

Like, This film has that all over the place. And he, I don't know, he speaks to something that, again, is universal. It's not something that's just like, oh, this is a 1950s thing. It's like, no, this is a constant human experience thing. And I really appreciate that about this movie because, again, I think it makes the film a lot more approachable for someone who... might have a hard time being convinced to watch a film from 1950.

I don't have to, but I understand why some people do, because some people are stubborn and that's fine. But I think something like this that speaks to still a kind of universal human experience is easier to sell to someone than something that's, you know, speaking maybe more about a specific thing going on in response to something else that's of the time. I think this would be an easier film to get someone to watch in a contemporary setting than some of the films Professor Yu and I did with Susan's husband, Richard, those. World War II films. Those might be a little harder for someone in a more contemporary setting to understand than this film.

This film, I think is a little bit more universally humanistic, which is, which I appreciate. Like, I really love that about this movie. You could show this movie to pretty much anybody. And I think anybody would get it. And there that's, that's hard in this day and age because there's so much stuff coming out.

But even then that wasn't necessarily the case. And that's, I really appreciate that about this movie from like a emotional core of the movie. I'd also like to talk about and get your reaction to, Because this movie just has so many different layers of ideas and sort of philosophies and actions and things going on. And one of the marks to me of great writing is that, as Susan, you said, like, not only is there great plot, like, oh, I'm very interested in what's going to happen next, but the The lines of dialogue, the expressions, maybe even even the pauses that people have. And obviously, that's the addition of act great acting to great writing.

Those add to the storytelling and to the narrative. And I want to talk a little bit about a minor character who just impressed me so much as. in the writing, but also in sort of like the storytelling. And that's one of my favorite Hollywood supporting actresses, Thelma Ritter. Thelma Ritter, everybody should just go look on IMDb right now. She's got this immensely long screen list of things that she was in.

She plays Birdie here. Margot Channing's, you know, I guess May, you know, a costumer assistant, you know, general like Gal Friday, I guess, was an old term there, but just like her supporting servant. But Thelma Ritter, we talk about Claude Rains, George Sanders and other actors who sort of patented a type so that you got a sense in Hollywood that they'd say, oh, we really need Claude Rains for this role. Let's get Claude Rains for the Claude Rains role. Thelma Ritter was the Thelma Ritter role of the maid. who was sassy and smart and observant and like knew what was going on more than the powerful people are around her.

And I just thought her role, I mean, I don't think it takes up an immense amount of screen time and you've got these big personalities and big stars, you know, coming in and off the screen surrounding her. But I thought her presence was, especially since she's, you could argue, the smartest person in the movie. I think so. I want to hear what you have to think on this. But I appreciated taking this minor role and making it so important and going back to mythology and sort of Shakespeare and Chaucer and whatever.

I thought she played a little bit like the, the sort of stereotype of the medieval court jester, a sort of funny character. She has a funny voice. She has such a distinctive voice. Like anytime you see her in a movie, you hear her, you can hear, I can still hear her voice now, but she was always the one who would point out things that maybe the King and the queen and like the Dukes weren't getting earlier. And I just appreciated that as part of a terrific movie.

I totally agree. You know, I'm actually at the moment teaching a playwriting class and we were just talking about distinctive voices and creating characters with distinctive voices and how do you do that? And so one of the things I was writing down when I was sort of getting ready was all those actors that you know have a distinctive voice already. So you could, you know, you could write for them. You could go, oh, I'm going to do the Christopher Walken role here.

And you know exactly how to write that character. You may or may not get Christopher Walken, but, you know, that there's such a character in their voices, in the way they act. James Earl Jones, you know, But Thelma Ritter was definitely one of those. When you say someone with a distinctive voice and presence, she had that. And she played that role in a lot of places.

And what's great is each time you're delighted to watch her do it. It's not like she's playing the same person every time. It's just that she is one of those people who's often in a second or third role and yet is the smartest person in the room. and is wry and can say so much with a look as much as with a line of dialogue that it's great. She is a perfect foil for Margot, played by Bette Davis. You put Bette Davis in, you have to fill, everybody has to rise to that level of presence.

And they needed that presence for this role. And then you need people around her who can compete. And like you said, she doesn't have a ton of screen time. She doesn't have a lot of lines, but it is a memorable role and an important one in this piece because she is basically helping the queen see what's really happening in her court. And anyway, so we haven't really said what the film is about or like who's in it, I realize. as I'm saying this, you know, Betty Davis, Ann Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, you know, Thelma Ritter, And when you started talking about a small part, the very first thought I had was the Marilyn Monroe part as well, which is a little bit smaller, but is an early Marilyn Monroe.

And it's so lovely. It's just, again, another lovely look at actors and actresses in the entertainment industry and what their roles were given to them. You see, you know, why Marilyn Monroe became Marilyn Monroe, because that was the role she sort of had to play to move forward in Hollywood. Well, and she definitely commands the screen when she's on it, which is very funny. Cause you know, you, you, you understand, I mean, look, obviously it's like, well, in retrospect now it's like.

Oh, she's in this movie and she's in this movie. Like halfway through it for maybe five minutes, 10 minutes, if that, like it's a handful of scenes. And then, you know, when you get to the movie, you're like, Oh right. Marilyn Monroe was in this movie, but she is, I. Don't know.

I have not seen a whole lot of things with her in it either. And yeah, it's weird because she does stand out, obviously, not just because of her looks, but also just because of the presence. And that's what's funny. When I talk about Indian cinema, you always talk about the presence of the actors on screen. And we've kind of lost that in American cinema a little bit, not in a bad way, but now anybody could be an actor, which is a good thing.

I mean, that is a good thing, a good and bad thing in a lot of ways. But when you talk about having that presence, that like screen presence. Yeah, Marilyn Monroe has a lot of great screen presence. I did wanna mention something, and again, not to go like too, too far into it, but there have been contemporary readings of the Eve character as being, I guess, queer coded, which I find very odd because, you know, again, you've got to, you've got to wonder with, again, the kind of re-approximation of things as things go on, you know, there is a character in this who I think is obviously meant to be that character. And even he's not played as a stereotype and no one has played as a stereotype in this movie other than.

The ones that have to be. And I think that, again, like that allows this film to exist with such a longer tail, because if you were trying to really dig into something to make a specific point with this film, I don't think it would have that kind of. long-term quality of feeling important now for humans, but also the industry that it's talking about, because it's, again, it's talking about, well, not one person specifically, but a group of people broadly that all kind of have these kinds of traits, because there are people in the industry that are shades of Eve. They're not all, like, not everyone who's trying to get ahead is willing to do as much as she is, But there are people that are shades of that.

And the shades of thing is, again, in a more complex movie, you'd have more complex characters. And I'm not saying they're not complex. In this movie, but they have to be big in this movie because they're all big simultaneously. and in them all having to be big simultaneously. It's not that there's not a lot of room for nuance, but I think it allows a modern day reading into this movie to kind of go a bunch of different directions, which I think helps a movie like this have a long lifetime. Because if you make a movie about 9-11, it can only be about 9-11.

If you make a movie like this that has a little bit of kind of again, not ambiguity, but it's painting with a rather broad brush. That broad brush can then be by other people looked at as like, well, I'm going to take a deeper look at it and see maybe what the finer strokes were about. And that's, you know, reading about this movie and doing the research about this movie, there are a lot of different interesting directions you can go down with this movie that aren't maybe readily apparent watching it the first time. But watching it, I think, three times for this episode, it's like there are so many different directions you can take with the modern day reading of this film, let alone what the original reading of the film was, let alone if you were watching this film during the Cold War, you could make certain kinds of statements about maybe the expectations of gender or, you know, expectations of people in the industry or whatnot.

And I love that this movie, again, it exists in such a way that it can be re kind of re litigated by people in the future. And it's still feel like, well, I'm not saying that wasn't the direction the director was going, but he left enough room around the margins for the audience to kind of look at it from any angled. along the timeline of, you know, kind of pop culture. And it still really works. Cause like I said, I think, I think you could show this to a classroom of kids now that are in their early twenties. And I think that this would still play.

Like, I think this would be something where it's like, the characters are understandable enough that the motivations are human and universal enough that everything in this movie works. And then you can bring to it what you want. And I think there is still some room for that as well. Well, I was going to say, I mean, because it's about it's about ambition and desire and how far you'll go. It's about basically becoming, you know, a helper parasite to someone and then trying to take over their lives, their life.

So it's it is very recognizable. But these are the same things that sort of happen. theater is the perfect setting for that kind of thing because then there's also the aging out of actresses. And I think that was one of the motivations I heard in one of the behind-the-scenes stuff I read, that he wanted to write about the fact that once a woman hit 40, she knew her career was on its way out. And so.... And it's a lot about, you know, youth wanting what the star has and the star wanting the youth.

And it's, I don't know, there's just richness in it. But it is very human because it's these bigger characters playing out ambition and desire and fear. And, you know, and so an adoration and what that means to us as a culture. So to me, again, it was a thrill to to play with it again. Yeah.

And you've just said key words which are timeless and immortal. If the human race continues, you know, there's going to be. desire, greed, ambition, envy, backstabbing, you know, just make the long list there in our Alpha Centauri, you know, colony of 500 years. I mean, these are things that we, in our earliest texts, you know, you go back to the biblical scriptures from the Abrahamic tradition and, you know, the Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer and the Iliad and the Odyssey. You've just described the top human attributes, feelings, attempts at interpersonal relations from there. And that's really what gets me going back to, you know, let's talk about the film.

The central conceit here is we have this Margot Channing, who is at the top of her career, but she's at the top. But but there's there's this sense of like she's not going up any further, like the decline, at least within the system, has already slightly begun. And she's starting to scrabble and feel nervous about her place and and her position. And of course, a young ingenue, a word we don't use very, very often, shows up with a sad story, a very World War Two adjacent story. Sad story, right?

I mean, a story that probably hundreds of thousands of young women had to tell in 1950 because of all the deaths in the war. And so that's interesting. You're sitting there in the audience. And you're reading like, OK, Margot Channing, Betty Davis is this superstar of, yeah, the legitimate theater. Susan, are you old enough to remember that phrase, the legitimate theater?

I am. You have to explain it. Because there was this idea that like, yes, you can play in your experimental workshop in Schenectady, but I am in the legitimate theater. And, you know, with a British accent, of course, you do. The closer you can get to London and, you know, playing Shakespeare in the park and the old Vic or something, the more prestigious you were.

And there was this hierarchy. It's funny. This is the... 1949, something called television starts making its appearance. And of course, it's dismissed pretty quickly.

But within a few years, Hollywood is nervous. Because people are staying home to watch TV, and they're not going to movies as much. In fact, it changed movies. We saw more big-budget spectacle movies to try to compete. Anne Baxter ends up being the mother of Moses.

Later. So there is this idea here of you can't have more than one or two people at the top. Like you can't– in this industry, in this moment here on Broadway, you'd think like, well, can't there be like 12 stars? I mean why do they have to be– but again, another movie that I think was based on all about Eve, Highlander. Yeah.

There can be only one. There can be only one. Right. So it is interesting how these are large industries. They're very, you know, they're gigantic.

Today, a Broadway, a successful Broadway play comes and I mean, they make their money on Broadway, but they make their real money playing in Lubbock. Right. And you keep playing all over the country over and over again, you know, throughout the planet Earth. Right. So this idea of who that I can't succeed. unless you fail is so insidious, but it's so, it's so familiar to all of us.

Right. And it works, it works again and again. And that's why there's so many Hollywood. I mean, I named Nashville and like 20 other television shows where that's basically it. Somebody has to fail in order for me to succeed.

Well, and I do want to point out though, that there is, um, that, While that is universal and for everyone, in this particular case, it's also, and it's very interesting because I just thought of it as you were talking, that the reason that Margot feels in so much trouble and feels so insecure about her age is because the roles that are being written are being written for 20-somethings. And she's now 40-something. So she's a 40-something playing a 20-something. So it's not just that there's, you know, there's only one room for one star. It's that there's only room for one ingenue, right?

And the ingenue gets all the parts if you're going to have, you know, in the day. So It's very interesting because Mankiewicz is writing these great parts for older women, and older being 40 at the time, talking about their fears of losing out to younger women, particularly in roles in which it's all younger women. And that is a story still going on today that has been satirized and talked about, you know, the Saturday Night Live, like, what was that birthday skit? where somebody turned 40 and then they had to go into the You'll Never Work Again crowd or something, and they were all having a picnic or something. I can't remember what it was, but it's still happening, right? It's happening on stage.

It's happening on screen. There's ageism in Hollywood. It's particularly harsh for women. It always has been. I think it's been worse, but it's still going on today.

And it's very interesting that while the movie is about that, there was also, you know, Bette Davis was a replacement, right? She was kind of a last minute replacement, but she has credited this movie with basically resurrecting her career, which was cut on death's door. She was not getting the parts. She was too old for Hollywood. And this role and this movie put her back on the map and gave her career the rest of her.

Career which is wild because again like you know. It's acting is not one of those things you lose it's not like athletics where it's like well my my my body has gotten old now and i can't perform the way that i used to says michael jordan you know but that's also not the case anymore because i watched ichiro i you know, hit, hit baseballs during a home run Derby in the last year. Like it's nobody's business. Like it's, it's such a, it's such an assumption and you know, the industry is still fighting it. You know, there's a film that neither one of you mentioned, I don't know if either of you have seen it, uh, that came out, was that last year, the year before with Demi Moore called the substance.

That's literally just this movie, but instead of Instead of it being an external version of Eve, it's Eve that's birthed from inside of herself. So I mean, again, like I mean, and then it's literally this movie with a lot of like the same themes and a lot of the same kind of ideas of like, you know, fear of being replaced and growing old in the industry. And does the industry have a place for someone that grows old or is no longer, quote, pretty anymore? And what's funny is we're still seeing films like that now with like a modern contemporary spin. And again, but it's a different genre.

That's why I say like, that's the horror movie. That's the actual horror movie version of this. That is the horror movie version of this. It is exactly. That's all I was thinking when you started down.

This is that's, that's your horror all about Eve. Yeah. And also the classic woman against herself. Right. I think a cynic might say that when this started happening to men, special effects and AI entered, and then we had Dial of Destiny and the Irishman, where 70-year-old, 75-year-old men, I don't think actually did it.

I mean, I thought the Irishman was embarrassed. That was just a big mistake to have him play that. half his age, they should have just cast it. But I just find it very interesting that suddenly it's okay to cast 70-year-olds playing 35-year-olds and pretend there's no problem. But it wouldn't have happened in 1940, maybe 1950. Well, it is very interesting because we were talking about that when Dial of Destiny came out.

Ultimately, one of the challenges for women getting older and retaining their star status, retaining their careers and not having the like, oh my God, she's gotten old. That doesn't happen as often with men is because we've watched men get old on screen. Harrison Ford, we saw him every year or two in a movie. So we saw him age in front of our eyes. So when he shows up at 70 in a movie, we're like, yeah, he's old now.

It's not as shocking. But a lot of women don't work after 40. And so you don't see them between on screen every year between 40 and 60 or 70. And then when they show up, everyone's like, oh, my gosh, she looks old. What happened to her?

It's not. Are you referencing Joan Cusack directly, Susan? Because that was the one that happened earlier this year. They were like, have you seen Joan Cusack in a million years? It's like, yeah, because she's not getting cast in anything anymore.

She's not. And she probably was just like, well, I'm done. I'm just going to go and sit away and enjoy that sweet, sweet Toy Story money. but they got her to come back for toy story five. And it's like the first time anyone, like you said, had seen her in a while and people were overreacting to the fact that she had, you know, shockingly time progressed for Joan Cusack as well as it progressed for the rest of us. I don't understand.

But we've watched John Cusack age in front of us. So when he does something, we're like, Oh yeah, of course he looks old and he's a 24 hour smoker. It's fine, but it's going to take a toll. Um, But yes, you're right. Women disappear.

And then when they reappear, so many on 80s TV ladies, not to tout our podcast, but many women that we speak to either don't want to go on camera to do a Zoom interview or have to take time to put on their face. Yeah. Because the expectation for them is they're not allowed to look like they've aged. You know, Stephanie Zimbalist said it Before our interview, she's like, people expect me to look like Laura Holt. And when I don't look like the actress I was in 1985, they don't forgive me.

Which is wild to me. It's, you know, it's not like when I went and met Cassandra Peterson. And she wasn't dressed up like Elvira because my ex-wife and I, we met her and she was just, you know, redhead, long hair, Cassandra Peterson. It's not like that where it's like, oh, I should have booked the day where she was dressed up as Elvira. It's like, no, I don't understand why we can't just understand people age, everybody ages.

And it is weird. There is this, I mean, there's always been a double standard, but now that there's the de-aging double standard, It's like, yeah, you can be Harrison Ford and be de-aged, and you know, now you're supposed to be in your fifties, which is barely even believable. I will say as someone who works in the medium of audio, they really just, they can't get it right because they didn't de-age his voice. He sounds like. Like, he's been gargling on rocks the last 30 years, which he has.

Like, his voice is very distinctly different now. And so, like, to the professor's point, like, it's embarrassing. So it's almost the reverse now. Like, now the men aren't able to give it up and can't just– well, again, you can't be an old man in an action movie because there's limitations there. Which is fine.

Like that was the other thing about, you know, getting, I don't know. Those, those action movie guys are getting older and older and we still believe it because it's all stuntmen doing it. Wait a minute. Stop. Stop.

Everybody stop here. I'm going to bring in Steven Seagal. So you're telling me my good friend, Steven Seagal sitting in a chair, engaging in a cat paw fight. In an action movie, after he's just befriended a 20-year-old girl who instantly falls in love with him and defeating a room full of ninjas while still sitting in a chair, you're saying that's implausible? Susan, I don't know.

What world do you live in? Call me crazy. Yeah. I do love, and I'm just going to move right off of Steven Seagal right now, and say that I do love that Harrison Ford is playing his age in Shrinking and seemingly having a blast doing it. I don't really love Shrinking, but my friend Sharon said, oh, well, you know what I do is I just fast forward through everything but the Harrison Ford scenes.

And so I've started doing it and it's great. And it is... Go ahead, Professor. Go for it. I think the film does– back to our film.

All About Eve can be criticized, and I want to bring my students in here because I– When you're I've told this story before, maybe I think like the first time I was on your podcast, Chris, about how being a university professor is like the reverse of the Oscar Wilde story, the picture of Dorian Gray. And as you know, in the story, this guy stays young and handsome and everything. And this picture in his wall ages and becomes decrepit. When you're a professor, you age and become decrepit and whatever. And everybody else stays 18.

Because I've now been teaching, I think, almost 38 years of 18-year-olds. They're still 18. They'll change. The amazing magic of Hollywood, I guess. But the film really, I think, we used to use the word adult for movies, of course, has had variable application, right?

Like, unfortunately, adult movie for a while was like, a porn movie, but I'm going to do a movie that has like adult themes, like treats issues, ideas in the adult sensible way. And I wanted to give out a plug to my students because part of getting older is the natural inclination of every generation that gets older is to say these kids today, you know, in my day, you know, we had to, you know, Crawl across spoken glass of 10, 10 hours to go to school or whatever, whatever we want to say. But one thing I've noticed in my Generation Z and coming up at Generation Alpha students is that they really try hard. to be kind and nonjudgmental about the things that we talk about as being natural, you know, the sort of that they they do not like it when somebody says what you what you were just I know you weren't saying it because you're saying it.

But like when somebody would say like, wow, she's really gotten old. My students would be very unhappy with anybody saying that or saying anything about somebody's physical appearance. Or mental state or something like that. The kind of things which were just in part of our culture growing up where you would, yeah, behind somebody's back say, boy, he's really gotten older. She's acting crazy.

There's something wrong with her. You're being hysterical. That's the other one. Yeah. A lot of those things, they have– paid attention to and processed as being not acceptable anymore.

And I think that that's very interesting. And this is why this film, which I have not shown to a class in probably or assigned to a class in probably 30 years. But I sort of wonder how they would read it. We do have the issue now where. You know, Hollywood, Hollywood is no longer necessarily seen as. the place for the beauty standard because of CGI, AI, and Ozempic and other things.

Like it's, it's almost like Hollywood is, people are distancing themselves from Hollywood, which is, which is amazing to me, right? Because I grew up like, Oh, Elizabeth Taylor. And you're like, sure. The, the, the stars who are all these, you know, radiantly beautiful. And now, uh, It's almost the opposite of the Internet where like stars are not considered to be the standard of what's attractive.

And I find that just fascinating that those sort of reversals. Well, it's interesting. And just to say, I was not saying that about the actresses. I think all actresses are beautiful. I was but I was quoting a lot of what the discourse was. for when these actresses show up in movies.

It is the discourse that is invariably happening online and in reviews and stuff like that. But I also agree with you that the next generation that's coming up, this new generation that's coming up, is very kind. They have watched and absorbed the lessons of kindness, even in a cruel world, which is really encouraging. And it's interesting because they do not understand sometimes, they're very sincere. And so I would be curious what they think of this movie.

I think it still works because I think those themes of jealousy, those are still human themes. But Broadway doesn't mean what it used to mean. Movies don't mean what they used to mean. I was going to say, none of the industries that this film would even be about or are sideways about are like this anymore. No one in the cooking industry finds it acceptable to treat someone like garbage, like writ large.

Make your bones. I'm going to treat you like garbage. That's not really a thing anymore. To be fair. that's actually happening. It's still happening.

Of course it's still happening. There might be a generation of kids that are like, I don't want to speak that way and I don't want to do that. But yet there's clearly a culture of all of that that is happening. And in fact, it's turning into this, like there's also the reality world culture, which is about backstabbing. Like what is survivor?

What is the, traitor or whatever the one is that's now where it's everyone's trying to murder each other. I don't even know what it is, but that's what I'm saying. We're still elevating these kinds of stories. And I think we're doing it in like a safe way. I, that's the way, I mean, the way I try to put it in Susan, I know.

Cause I spent, I spent some time with you and your lovely family over the holidays a year ago over Easter. And we, I spent a long, a lot of that time talking about board games with one of your sons. Uh, I feel like board games and or reality TV shows are a safe space to do these kinds of things in. Cause that's the intention. And yes, it's like, we can all revel in it and how terrible that person is.

But at the same time, it's like, I don't know if when you play chess, do you not take the other person's pieces? Like it's doing it in that safe space is like, for me in my brain, it's the connection I make of watching a horror movie. Like to get into a car and drive down the road is a lot more horrifying than anything Clive Barker could show you on screen, regardless of how gory and grotesque it gets, because that can't actually harm you going 40 miles an hour slamming into your driver's side door, like the car accident I was in a month and a half ago. It's just, I don't know, life puts things in perspective, and I always feel like when I think about cinema and the way things have to be and the things need to be for a lot of what's going on now, it's like, yes, things don't have to be this way anymore.

But like you said, Susan, it's not holding itself to the same standard it's talking about, which is hard. Which is hard with any system, obviously. But this film is talking. this film talks about something that isn't supposed to be happening anymore but is still going on. But at the same time, the people that are involved in the system, I think, like we've already alluded to, would hope that this isn't going on anymore, would like to preach that it's not going on anymore. But– It can't go away.

And in its entirety, human beings are involved, so it can't go away. I think this movie also pioneered– and again, this movie came out just as the medium of television was arriving, like the earliest days. And of course, nobody knew what was going to happen. I think there were predictions like, why would anybody give up their radio and going up to movies– For this this new thing that comes along and it's a tiny little box. It's only a few inches across and it's black and white.

And why would anybody not want to go see a big screen movie instead of this? But. I wonder whether this movie also from the I maybe I thought about it when I was watching it in the 2000s was that it was introducing the idea of there being. And look, every Shakespeare play and every ancient Greek tragedy introduced the idea of there being multiple layers of what's going on. There's what's going on in front and there's like something going on in the backstage and over in the room over there, there's another secret conversation at the court of Henry IV or whatever.

But it does feel modern in the sense that like what we've talked about, I see such kindness in my students and And yet I turn on to Reddit, which skews very young whenever you do like surveys of like who is on Instagram, who's on TikTok, who's on on Reddit. It skews younger and I see immense cruelty. and just despicable stabbing, you know, like just people being mean for the sake of being mean. And this is a discussion that I have with my students is how do I balance those things? And of course, what we know from research is it's actually a relatively small number of people who are taking up the mean space, right? In no way is Instagram a statistically accurate representation of America.

And how somebody feels you're the loudest, the angriest, the most insecure, the most, you know, people who want to get somebody or maybe they're angry about their personal life. So they just feel like attacking strangers. And and we've been doing research for, I guess, 60 years now on parasocial interaction and how. Maybe you and I are a little bit old enough to remember this, Susan, about how the Susan Lucci, the soap opera star, you know, she couldn't go to the supermarket because she'd be attacked because she broke up a marriage, you know, on a TV show. So there's always been that.

And I think that this movie really with everything that's going on with Margot and we haven't talked about George Sanders as this. I believe really despicable, controlling, you know, trying to suck the life out of everybody around him. Mephistocles, you know, villain here who's trying to manipulate people to make himself look good and to have power within his world. Yeah, these themes repeat because they don't go away. There's always going to be a subset of the human race and now who are just mean.

And now they have unlimited freedom because they just adopt a pseudonym. And they go on and say, you know, yeah, that latest episode of 80s ladies. I can't believe that that Lambert, you know, I'm not actually saying I don't think anybody attacked you on Instagram lately, but I'm just saying that that's That seems to the two trends happen at the same time, increased meanness and increased kindness. That is such an interesting increased meanness and increased kindness. I think you're I think you're right.

Like it is it's trying to stamp out the other because, yeah, I don't know. But I also want to talk about when you talk about the other cast members, George Sanders, Edison DeWitt is the critic. And it is so great that the villain of the piece that like there's lots of villains in the piece, but he is, like you said, this fair, he is, you kind of get the sense. I'm going to argue that Anne Baxter might be a little bit mentally unwell. As Eve Harrington, like that Anne Baxter's character, Eve, is mentally unwell.

But you get the sense that Addison DeWitt is mentally manipulating people on purpose and with great thought and is evil like i don't get the sense that eve is evil i get the sense that she is obsessed she's obsessed but she's and she's also she's lying she's manipulative but she's clearly like you know doing everything to get what she wants. Whereas Addison DeWitt is just manipulating people and he doesn't even want anything. He doesn't seem to want anything except to mess with people in this movie. He wants her. He wants her to do his bidding.

He was born for TikTok. Yeah. He was born for TikTok. But I love that he's the critic and that, you know, he's a theater critic. So he's the worst guy.

He reminds me a lot of Hannibal from the TV show Hannibal, where his his reasoning for doing things is you just like to wind up the toys and see what they do. You just like to like just stir the pot. You're an agitator. And it's like that it that that for me, because again, like an agitator is also on the other side of the coin, a a charismatic person. And that's the thing.

He's also deeply charismatic. So he's using that charisma for evil. There are plenty of charismatic people who use it for good that could be using it just as easily for evil. And it's like, why are you... It's such a bummer you're using it for evil.

Why are you using it for evil? That's what I always think about with people. I'm like, you could be using your charisma for good, not evil. And you see that all the time in fiction. Because it's just as easy to be evil as it is good, especially when you have again, the manipulative power of either the press or, I mean, in Anne Baxter's case, she is being manipulative, but I also think she's also, the problem is you would say she's delusional, but she's not delusional.

That's the problem. You're like, she's immensely talented. So she's not delusional. It's just maybe she's deluded, I think is a better way of putting it. Like, I don't know.

Like you said, Susan, she's one of the villains of the piece, but I do think George Sanders is the villain villain of the piece. He's definitely the constant agitator in a world that doesn't really need any more agitation, given that there's a hierarchical structure baked into everything. Well, and in theory, he has no other role to play. You argue, like, he has no talent, right? Like, that's the joke of critics, which is, again, not true.

I know a lot of critics, theater critics, that are beautiful writers and are like historians for theater and But in in it is a it's a good foil to have. It's it's like using a critic as your villain is like using a Nazi as your villain. Like it's just everybody sort of understands. Right. Where that war.

We've got the Russians. Got it. Yeah. The other. What I do love about this.

How many movies? I was thinking of a couple or two or three M. Night Shyamalan movies where he purposely makes like a movie critic character. Well, I was going to say Roland Emmerich in that 1999 Godzilla movie makes the mayor, Mayor Siskel or no Mayor Ebert. And then his like other guy, his the like the the character that's played.

I forget who plays him in that second Ghostbusters movie, but that like kind of. mayor mayoral like helper character is named Siskel then. And they are cast to look like them. And it's they're super inept, too, because I guess they didn't like Independence Day. So Roland Emmerich's like, put him in my movie and let's be really catty about it. Like a question for you, Susan, on George Sanders.

He is a drama critic who loves to create drama, but he can't create drama. Right. Right. I mean, yes, the reading was that there are people who are creatives and Margot Channing has proven her worth. I mean, at the end of the day, Margot Channing has entertained and given their money's worth to tens of thousands of people who sat there in a theater in the dark and been enchanted.

And just to make a reference to another film about this is the other great comic screenwriter of the time, Preston Sturgis. And in one of his films, Sullivan's Travels, that's sort of the takeaway is that giving people two hours of enjoyment. forgetting their lives in a theater, whether it's in a Broadway theater or Schenectady theater or Lubbock theater or a movie theater, that's a wonderful thing. And like, you know, we have to remember that like at the end of the day, that is a public service, right? For me to watch, you know, when I did, I remember sitting there watching Toy Story 1, and I was going like, wow, that is the most fun hour and 47 minutes or whatever I've had with non-humans, you know.

It was wonderful. And Isn't that a little theme there about like some people have the power to create something which gives that level of entertainment? And there's an envy. Right. And Baxter's character, Eve, envies the position of Marco Chan.

And she wants to be Marco Chan, maybe a different kind of Marco Channing. George Sanders, he envies that position. creativity, because no matter how great a film critic you are, you're not going to walk into a room and everybody stand up for, for an ovation. And you're not going to get seven curtain curtain calls as a theater critic. Correct. So I think that is always the joke is that, you know, it's like, you know, teachers, you know, who can't, if you can't do, you teach.

And if you can't teach you critic, you write criticism. Um, If you can't critic, you're in the comment section, you know, being me, right? But I do want to point out, because before we move on, is that everyone in this movie is deeply flawed because they're in an industry that is all about adoration and how popular you are. And when you stop being popular, you then lose. So they all have this deep, insecurity and make huge mistakes.

Like Betty Davis is clearly a, like she has worked hard to, she's worked hard for 20 years to be a star. There's not a lot of sign that she's done manipulative things at the level that Eve has, but she, she is insecure about her age, her looks and, She throws tantrums and she is late and she's a diva. And she's all those things that are sort of the bad side of being a great Broadway star. And she's dismissive. She's dismissive of people until she lets them be seen by her or really sees Eve.

She's dismissive of her. So.... It's very interesting. I'm curious what your kids would think about that character because she throws a lot of tantrums and needs a lot of reassurance. It's not far off from a lot of actors or actresses.

And then, of course, Eve Harrington is somewhere between deluded and psychopath, but clearly is so... desperate to be a star, to be adored, she will do anything. She will, you know, she will lose her morals in order to be a star. That's sort of my wrap up for this film. And, you know, honestly, there's a billion themes here. And if we want to make this part one, I would love to do that.

But this is a film also about, as you're saying, Susan, this is a film about self-destruction. And desperation, which, again, are, you know, themes that I'm sure are Neanderthal cousins felt at some point. It isn't some like, oh, it's only in Hollywood or it's only on Broadway that people feel that people who get more and more insecure about their situation, people who from a distance feel. seem like they're on top of the world, but they're scrambling. They're on the mountain, but the mountain is giving away in pebbles and they're starting to roll down the mountain. And so they make it worse.

Right. We've all known people like that who who face a difficulty but keep making it worse by their behavior because of their desperation to keep something or to attain something. And what what an amazing lesson that watching this film is in business school, I think, among other places, political science class. Susan, I'm going to let you have the last word on this film. Oh, agreed.

I completely agree with everything you're saying. And I want to just finish that Karen Richards, the character played by Celeste Holm. Also is flawed. She does a terrible thing to her best friend, and it's terrible. And anybody in theater is like, how dare you do that?

Like, it is across the board what she does. Anyway, this has been so delightful to revisit this film. Thank you, David, for bringing such insight into it and Chris for bringing such new eyes to it and insight. And it's, it's been just delightful. I'll do all Mankiewicz films.

There's so many, there really are. We didn't have a whole lot of notes. Susan. So when you're not here joining the professor and I to talk about Mankiewicz films, possibly where can people find you and the things that you work on? They can find me at 80s TV ladies, eight zero S.

T-V-L-A-D-I-E-S. And as for me, you can find me at weirdingwaymedia.com where this show and all the other shows I work. On can be found, including, yeah, this one and. Shabby Detective, Kolchak Tapes. There's a whole lot of other things I work on, but for the most part, it's more about the things I don't work on.

Like Susan mentioned, 80s TV ladies, the projection booth, film entries, midnight viewing. A lot of stuff is over there at weirdingwaymedia.com. So go there, like, rate, and review this show on iTunes, then Spotify. In that order, patreon.com slash culturecast is where you can go to Hear Susan and Richard and Mike and I talk about Force 10 from Navarone with no ads, if that's a thing you want to hear. And if it isn't, OK, but that's where you can hear Never Tell Me the Odds, our Harrison Ford podcast without ads.

So, yeah, Susan, thank you so much for joining us and for picking a good film. This is a great film. You know, it's just you always tend to hit the high notes, Susan. So keep hitting them. Yeah, I will try.

I'm sure I'll hit one that you won't like. But you haven't yet. So, uh, you know, you know, maybe you just keep flipping the coin. Um, Sunset Boulevard. For sure.

Yeah. Have you seen it, Chris? Okay. Well then, yeah, of course you have a whole catalog to complete Chris. Okay.

Well, there you go, folks. You heard it here first and, uh, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll catch you on the next episode. Okay. Thank you.