Summary
In voiceover, Margo says, “That same night we sent for Eve’s things, her few pitiful possessions.” She narrates that Eve moved into the guest room at her apartment and became almost a personal assistant to Margo, as we see Eve answering the phone and taking a message for Margo. The scene shifts and we see a company of actors taking their bows at a play, Margo among them. As the curtain closes, the actors hurry into the wings, and Eve watches Margo take her final bows to rapturous applause. The crowd cheers as the curtain closes one last time. Coming offstage, Margo notices that Eve is crying, and asks, “What, again?” to which Eve tells her, “I could watch you play that last scene a thousand times and cry every time.” As Eve helps remove Margo’s costume, they discuss the fact that Bill should be returning from California soon, and they go into Margo’s dressing room. Eve tells Margo that she made curtains for the windows, and is generally exceedingly helpful to her older friend.
When Eve brings Margo’s dress down to the launderer, Birdie tells Margo that she doesn’t have a labor union. “I’m slave labor,” she says, before warning Margo that the costume girls will mess up the dress most certainly. Taking Birdie’s advice, Margo goes after Eve, but finds her still standing in the wings with the dress, looking at the stage and pretending to bow. When she says Eve’s name, Eve turns around, startled. “We’d better let Mrs. Brown pick up the wardrobe,” Margo says, and Eve walks towards her, holding the dress and nodding in agreement. The scene shifts to the phone ringing on Margo’s bedside table. When she picks it up, an operator offers to connect her to Beverly Hills, but Margo doesn’t know which call the operator is referring to. The operator tells Margo that she arranged a call to Bill at midnight, but Margo did not make any such arrangement. The operator connects Margo to Bill, and she asks him if she’s gone crazy. He tells her that they’ve finished shooting the movie, and he’ll be home soon. She tells him she wants him to come home soon and goes to hang up, but he stops her, asking her to “say it.” Thinking he means “I love you,” she tells him she’s too embarrassed to “say it” over the phone, but soon realizes that it’s Bill’s birthday and he wants her to say “Happy birthday.” She says it, and Bill asks about his party. Margo doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he tells her that Eve wrote to him about a party being thrown in his honor.
Margo looks confused as Bill tells her that Eve writes to him every week, and that he sent her a list of guests for the party. Hanging up, Margo lights a cigarette, wearing a concerned expression on her face. Later, Birdie enters with a breakfast tray and sets it down in front of Margo. Margo asks Birdie about whether or not she likes Eve, and Birdie tells her she doesn’t. When Margo asks, “She thinks only of me doesn’t she?” Birdie responds, “Well, let’s say she thinks only about ya, anyway.” Birdie then goes on to say that Eve mirrors and studies all of Margo’s actions and seeks to replicate them in herself. As Margo becomes impatient, suggesting that there’s nothing wrong with her admiration, Eve pops her head in and models an old suit dress of Margo’s. Eve asks if Margo needs any more errands done, but Margo insists, “It seems I can’t think of a thing you haven’t thought of.” As Eve starts to leave, Margo asks Eve if she was the one to place a call to Bill for his birthday. “Golly, I’d forgot to tell you!” Eve says, worried. Margo seems somewhat skeptical and bemused as Eve apologizes, but insists that she thought that Margo would want to talk to her husband on his birthday. Before she leaves the room, Eve tells Margo that she sent Bill a telegram herself. Margo and Birdie exchange looks and Birdie leaves, as ominous music plays.
We see Margo preparing for Bill’s birthday party, and we hear her in voiceover narrate, “Bill’s welcome home birthday party: a night to go down in history. Even before the party started I could smell disaster in the air.” Birdie comes into the room and helps Margo put on her dress. As the women joke about the party, Margo notes that Bill is late for the party. Birdie tells Margo that Bill has been there for 20 minutes, but hasn’t come to see her. Assuming that this is because he’s talking to Eve, Margo downs a martini, hands the empty glass to Birdie, and goes down to meet him. She scurries down the stairs and into the living room, where she finds Bill telling Eve a story. They stop abruptly and Margo asks Eve to check on the hors-d'oeuvres, and Eve leaves the room. Bill watches Margo and mentions that he ran into Eve on his way to her room, but that he heard she was dressing and didn’t want to interrupt. “That’s never stopped you before,” Margo quips. As they continue talking about Eve, Margo snaps at Bill about how complimentary he is of the young girl.
The couple fights, with Bill scolding Margo for her obsession with age, and Margo insisting that she has a right to be jealous and concerned about his interest in Eve. Bill tells Margo he is unwilling to apologize to her, because he himself is so angry about being accused of infidelity. Bill goes on to tell Margo that he doesn’t like her extreme anger, and that he thinks it’s ridiculous that she’s turning it on “an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid.” In the middle of their fight, Eve interrupts them to let Margo know that the hors-d'oeuvres have arrived. Margo asks for a dry martini, which Bill goes to make. On his way, he asks what Eve would like to drink. “A milkshake?” asks Margo, menacingly. Eve asks for a dry martini as well, and we hear the laughter of guests in the hall arriving at the party. Karen, Lloyd, and Mr. Fabian, the producer enter. “I like that girl,” Lloyd says of Eve. Margo escorts them into the living room, as Fabian too extols the virtues of Eve. He talks about how Eve has transformed Margo’s household and improved her life.
Margo is not amused and says simply, “Everything on its proper shelf, eh, Max? All done up in little ribbons. I could die right now and nobody’d be confused.” Another guest enters and calls to Fabian. As Bill hands Karen a drink, Lloyd notes, “The general atmosphere is very Macbethish.” Margo feigns ignorance, but Karen tells her, “We’ve seen you like this before. Is it over or is it just beginning?” as Margo downs her martini in one gulp. She storms out of the room, after warning her friends, “It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Grabbing another martini, she runs into Addison DeWitt with a beautiful young woman on his arm. He introduces her as an actress, Miss Claudia Caswell, a recent graduate of an arts school. As Eve descends the staircase, Addison greets her warmly; Margo didn’t know that they knew each other. Margo encourages Addison to have a long talk with Eve, but Eve insists that he will likely find her boring. “You won’t even get a chance to talk,” says Miss Caswell. Addison pulls Claudia aside, pointing her in the direction of Mr. Fabian, the producer, who Claudia thinks looks like an “unhappy rabbit.”
After sending Claudia off to talk to Fabian, Addison hands Margo Claudia’s coat and escorts Eve off to talk. “Amen!” Margo says, downing another martini. The scene shifts and we see Birdie bringing a cup of coffee over to Margo, who sits on the bench beside a pianist. When Birdie offers Margo the coffee, Margo waves her away and continues sipping on a martini. As the pianist starts to play a jaunty tune, Margo insists that he play the Liebestraum (“Love Dream”) by Liszt, a mournful song, even though he just played it. Bill walks up to Margo and says, “Many of your guests are wondering when they may be permitted to view the body,” suggesting that the party feels like a funeral. Margo says, “If my guests do not like it here, I suggest they accompany you to the nursery, where I’m sure you will all feel more at home.” When Fabian walks over, complaining of heartburn, Margo blames his ailment on the presence of Claudia, and gets up to get some bicarbonate for Fabian. She invites Fabian to follow her to the pantry to get the bicarbonate.
In the pantry, she opens a cupboard and gets the bicarbonate out. Fabian tells her that he’s promised Claudia an audition in a few weeks for a part they are recasting. Margo offers to read with her at the audition, to which Fabian agrees. She then asks Fabian to give Eve a job in his office, but he is surprised and tells her he doesn’t want to take Eve away from Margo. “To keep her here with nothing to do, I’d be standing in her way,” Margo replies. Fabian eventually agrees, and Lloyd comes in and says that Karen wants to go. When Fabian goes to tell Claudia that she’ll be auditioning with Margo, Lloyd tells Margo that there’s a movie star in the living room now. “Shucks, and I sent my autograph book to the cleaners!” she says, sarcastically. Margo then asks Lloyd about his new play, in which the female lead is 20 years old, before going on about her age, how she’s just turned 40. Lloyd calls Margo out on the fact that even though she’s talking about his new play, she’s actually obliquely referring to her fight earlier with Bill. “Bill’s 32. He looks 32…I hate men!” Margo says.
Up in Margo’s room, Karen sits at the vanity primping, when Eve enters with the fur coat of a new guest. Realizing how expensive the coat is, Karen asks Eve to hold it up, and Eve tells her that the coat belongs to a Hollywood movie star who just arrived. When Karen asks Eve how things are going, Eve glows as she tells her how good Margo has been to her. “Lloyd says Margo compensates for underplaying on stage by overplaying reality,” says Karen. Karen compliments Eve on how much she’s helped Margo, then says her goodbyes, but Eve stops her to ask for another favor. She wants to be Margo’s new understudy, since Margo’s understudy left the part to have a baby. Eve insists that she knows the part perfectly, so “there’d be no need to break in a new girl.” Karen thinks it’s a wonderful idea, and thinks that Margo would “cheer.” When Karen agrees to talk to Fabian about it, Eve kisses her cheek gratefully and leaves the room just as Birdie enters to collect the fur coat that she just brought upstairs.
Analysis
While the film does not immediately seem like a particularly suspenseful one, as the plot picks up there are some small moments that startle. Indeed, the beginning of the film sets up a story rich with intrigue: how will Eve go from desperate fan to star actor in the space of a few months? What will she do to get there? The conspiratorial tone of the narration situates the viewer in a world in which not everything is as it seems, and a conclusion in which Eve Harrington wins an acting award. Thus, the viewer spends the beginning of the film waiting for Eve to become successful. When she begins working for Margo Channing, everything seems totally normal and fine, with nothing out of the ordinary taking place. When Margo follows Eve out into the wings of the stage, however, and finds her pretending to bow in Margo’s dress, Eve is startled. In this moment, the camera rapidly zooms in on Eve as she registers Margo’s intrusion, a look of horror stretching across her face. While the moment is a rather harmless one—Margo simply finds Eve in a private moment—Eve’s ashamed response and Mankiewicz’s photographic treatment of the moment creates a sense of tension, and foreshadows that perhaps the moment is not as harmless as it seems. As Margo stands perfectly still, the camera situates itself over her left shoulder and we watch Eve politely walk towards her with the dress. This scene signals the shifting power dynamics between the two women.
The intrigue only increases as Margo begins to realize just how involved in her affairs Eve has gotten herself. When the operator calls Margo’s room at 3 AM and connects her to Bill, it takes her awhile before she realizes why she might want to call Bill in the first place—it’s his birthday. As she talks to Bill more, she realizes that Eve must have scheduled the call, and learns that Eve and Bill have been planning a birthday party for him, all without her knowing. Margo’s trust in Eve begins to waver a bit as she makes these realizations. The observant and skeptical perspective of Birdie, Margo’s other secretary, does little to help Margo’s unease. After Eve reveals that she sent Bill a telegram for his birthday, Birdie and Margo exchange a knowing look as foreboding music plays. What seemed like an innocent friendship is becoming more and more complicated, as Eve steps more and more into Margo’s personal life, eschewing boundaries for an intrusive—if good-natured—opportunism.
The tension of these strange intrusions come to an abrupt head before Bill’s party, when Margo bursts with her jealousy and dislike for Eve. When she comes to the realization that Bill has been home for 20 minutes without saying hello because he was in the living room talking to Eve, Margo becomes furious. She scolds her husband for holding her assistant in such high esteem, erupting in angry speeches about her claims to him. He remains cool and collected, insisting that he just thinks Eve is a nice girl who wants to live up to her ideals. When Eve treads on Margo’s relationship, however, Margo becomes furious, letting loose her wrath without a second thought. If Eve is younger and more attractive than Margo, Margo is certainly more dynamic and powerful, and Bette Davis’s iconic portrayal of the aging actress who refuses to cede her place gives the character of Margo Channing a dynamic flair.
As the tension rises, Margo reveals more and more about her character, which is even more prickly and moody than it had seemed at the start. When Lloyd notes that Margo’s general vibe seems “Macbethish” at the party, she downs a martini and storms off in search of another. Karen frets about Margo’s temper and angry benders, a fearsome scenario that she seems to know well. Indeed, Margo assures her friends that “it’s going to be a bumpy night.” A naturally theatrical woman, Margo is intent on getting the upper hand at the party, and cannot bear the thought of being upstaged by the bright-eyed protege she’s taken into her home. Margo Channing’s weapon of choice is a bullish wit, a sharp and biting word for the people around her, and an unpredictable temperament. She does not suffer fools, certainly, and wastes no time in speaking her mind. Eve might be attracting more attention than her at her own party, but Margo will not go down without a fight.
Margo’s dwindling influence has to do mainly with age and the shelf life of women over a certain age in the entertainment business. In her 40s, Margo is no longer the fresh young talent that she once was, and her brash wit and self-respect are mistaken by the people around her for irrational anger and a disproportionate jealousy. Because the viewer is aligned with Margo in many ways—we watch her more than any other character, and we see Eve’s intrusions into her personal life through Margo’s eyes—we are brought into her plight and asked to sympathize with her. In our alignment with her, we see how difficult her situation is, that it is not easy for her to appear at a party (indeed, more broadly, to work in an industry) in which feminine youth, helpfulness, and attractiveness are prized over grit and strength. In response to her sense of her own dwindling influence, and her conviction that Eve is not so innocent as she seems, Margo drinks her weight in martinis and insists on only sad German music for the remainder of the party. When Bill complains about the tone of the evening, she scolds him (and everyone) for their interest in the young Eve, directing them all towards the nursery. If she cannot enjoy the birthday party, no one will.
