Anne Baxter and Bette Davis put on quite a show in ALL ABOUT EVE (yes, that’s Marilyn Monroe in the center)
ALL ABOUT EVE (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
Cabaret Cinema, Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, May 20, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org/cabaretcinema
Nominated for fourteen Academy Awards and winner of six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, All About Eve is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest movies, a searing depiction of naked ambition set on the Great White Way. Based on Mary Orr’s 1946 short story “The Wisdom of Eve,” writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s flawless drama stars Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, who is not exactly the mousey wallflower she at first appears to be. She quickly worms her way into an inner circle of Broadway vets populated by superstar Margo Channing (Bette Davis), her younger lover, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), playwright and director Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), and Richards’s wife, Karen (Celeste Holm), who takes Eve under her wing. Joining in on all the fun is powerful theater critic Addison DeWitt (Oscar winner George Sanders), who marvels at all the manipulation and backstage drama, much of which he wickedly orchestrates himself. “There never was, and there never will be, another like you,” DeWitt tells Eve in one of the film’s most poignant moments. All About Eve is filled with classic quotes, including the iconic “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” boldly proclaimed by Davis. In a movie about acting and the theater, Mankiewicz never shows anyone onstage; instead, he focuses on the characters and the intrigue with a sly flair that is deliciously entertaining. All About Eve is screening on May 20 at the Rubin Museum as part of the Proverbial Pictureshow series, being held in conjunction with the Tibet carpet exhibit “Patterns of Life,” and will be introduced by writer Anne Christopherson. Admission to the museum is free on Friday nights, so be sure to check out the other current exhibits as well, which include “Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection,” “Body Language,” “Quentin Roosevelt’s China,” and “The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Painting.”