Summary
Birdie and Karen descend the stairs to the party, where Addison is telling a group that actors just aren’t like other people. He says, “We’re a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theater folk. We are the original displaced personalities.” Bill disagrees with Addison, and Claudia tries to get a butler’s attention for a drink. When Addison makes fun of her, Fabian offers to go and get her one. Bill then tells the group assembled—Karen, Eve, Claudia, and Addison—that “to be a good actor is to want to be that more than anything else in the world.” Bill agrees with Addison that someone who wants to be an actor cannot be ordinary, because they “give so much for so little.” Eve chimes in, “So little?…Well, if there’s nothing else there’s applause.” Eve then speaks breathlessly about the joy of applause, the thrill of knowing that hundreds of people love you, and the sense of belonging that it brings. The others look at her as she realizes she’s been speaking aloud.
As Margo comes into the room, Eve stands, but Margo says brusquely, “Don’t get up. And please stop acting as if I were the Queen Mother!” As Margo’s guests begin to challenge her combativeness, she becomes all the more cantankerous. “You’re maudlin and full of self-pity. You’re magnificent,” Addison says sardonically. Lloyd enters abruptly and asks if people want to go home. At the sight of him, Margo begins insulting Lloyd’s writing, which causes Karen to stand and collect her husband to go home. “Happy little housewife,” Margo says to Karen. When Bill tells her to stop, she yells at him, “This is my house, not a theater. In my house, you’re a guest, not a director.” Karen scolds Margo for acting like a star and treating people poorly. Margo climbs the stairs to go to bed, and tells Bill that he can host his own party. Bill offers to help her go to bed, but Margo mocks his caretaking and suggests that Eve would happily put her to bed. To this, Eve says, “If you’d like,” but Margo says distinctly, “I wouldn’t like,” before climbing the stairs to bed. Bill climbs the stairs after Margo as Addison says, “Too bad, we’re gonna miss the third act. They’re gonna play it offstage.” Eve looks heartbroken by the dramatic scene, and Karen goes over to comfort her. Eve feels badly, but she doesn’t know why Margo is so upset. “The reason is Margo and don’t try to figure it out. Einstein couldn’t,” says Karen. “If she had to pick on someone, I’d just as soon it was me,” says Eve. Karen starts to leave with Fabian and Lloyd, but before she can go, Eve reminds her of her promise to talk to the producers about making her Margo’s understudy.
The scene shifts to a taxi pulling up in front of the Aged in Wood theater and Margo getting out and going inside. She encounters Addison in the lobby, who tells her that Claudia Caswell is ill in the bathroom. Margo insists, “It’s good luck before an audition. She’ll be okay once it starts.” Addison informs Margo that the audition already happened, which confuses Margo because she thought she was reading with Claudia. The audition was at 2:30, but it’s now 4, Addison tells her, and Margo bemoans not wearing a watch. When she asks Addison who read in the audition with Claudia, Addison tells her that it was Eve, her understudy. Margo is shocked to hear that Eve is her understudy, but plays it off as if she already knew in order to save face with Addison. Addison goes on to tell her that Claudia didn’t read well, but that Eve was magnificent: “Brilliant, vivid, something made of music and fire.” Margo mocks his metaphor and asks what Bill and Lloyd thought. Lloyd, Addison tells her, “listened to his play as if it had been written by someone else…” Margo begins to get angry at the implication that Eve read the script better than Margo ever has, but Claudia comes out of the bathroom looking dazed, but feeling better. “Your next move, it seems to me, should be towards television,” Addison tells her, as Margo walks away.
Margo goes into the theater, storming past Fabian and climbing the stairs to the stage. Margo greets them and asks Eve how she’s doing in Mr. Fabian’s office. Bill stops her and tells her that the audition is over, and that Eve read for her. Pretending not to already know that Eve is her understudy, Margo asks, “How ever did you get the idea of letting Eve read with Miss Caswell?” Bill tells her that Eve has been her understudy for the entire week and that they thought she had realized. Margo informs them that she had no idea, and lights a cigarette. Eve approaches Margo and tells her that she would never have thought to have read if Margo had been there, because she would have been too ashamed. Margo shrugs it off and asks Bill and Lloyd how Claudia did. Lloyd tells her that Claudia was not very good, but that Eve was wonderful. Eve chimes in ashamedly, “I was dreadful, Miss Channing. I have no right to be anyone’s understudy, much less yours.” Margo then goes on a tirade about the fact that it must have been nice to have had a 24-year-old character played by a 24-year-old actress, and “to have your lines read just as you wrote them!”
Bill and Lloyd realize that Addison told Margo about Eve’s audition, as Eve backs away, embarrassed. Lloyd becomes angry at Margo for talking to Addison and for lying about not knowing that the audition was over. “I’m lied to, attacked behind my back, accused of reading your silly dialogue as if it was the holy gospel!” Margo yells. Bill lies down on a bed onstage as Margo insults Lloyd’s writing and Lloyd scolds Margo for treating him so poorly. “You should stick to Beaumont and Fletcher; they’ve been dead for 300 years!” Lloyd says, leaving the theater, to which Margo responds, “All playwrights should be dead for 300 years!” Margo then quits the play, offering her role up for Eve. Fabian fires back that she cannot break her contract without involving a lawyer. Lloyd accuses Margo of becoming arrogant and thinking herself more powerful than she actually is. She is, after all, an actress, not a writer or a director, and as such she has very little power. He storms out of the theater after comparing her to a piano who wants to be mistaken for a concerto.
Margo approaches Bill on the bed, and asks where Eve went. Looking around, Bill realizes that Eve is gone. Margo paces around, stewing about the fact that Lloyd disrespected her mind and called her only a body and a voice. Sensing Bill’s complacency, Margo scolds him, “I will not be tolerated and I will not be plotted against!” Bill gets upset in this moment, holding Margo and telling her that he didn’t know Eve was Margo’s understudy until that afternoon. When she doesn’t believe him, he lies her down on the bed and warns Margo that her “paranoiac tantrums” are hurting everyone. He compliments her and tells her she is “a great actress at the peak of her career. You have every reason for happiness.” Shaking her, he tells her to stop. Margo is still for a moment on the bed, eventually sitting up and saying, “It’s obvious you’re not a woman.” Bill tries to convince her to make peace and let him buy her a drink, but she tells him “the terms are too high.” When Bill asks her if she’d feel better if he proposed marriage, Margo tells him, “I wouldn’t want you to marry me just to prove something.” Bill asks Margo straightforwardly what is behind her anger, and she tells him she doesn’t know, that it’s just a feeling. When it becomes clear that Margo won’t feel better no matter how much Bill tries to comfort her, Bill tells her that he has to end things, saying, “You know, there isn’t a playwright in the world who could make me believe this could happen between two adult people…Goodbye Margo.” As Bill leaves, Margo asks if he’s going to find Eve, and he skulks away. Left alone, Margo begins to sob on the empty stage.
We see Karen painting at home. Lloyd enters, fuming about his fight with Margo, and Margo’s diva behavior. He approaches Karen and tells her, “Let me tell you about Eve. She’s got everything. A born actress. Sensitive, understanding, young, exciting, vibrant…” Karen then reminds Lloyd that they’re driving to the country the next day with Bill and Margo. Lloyd runs up a spiral staircase in their apartment, as we hear Karen say in voiceover, “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 teakettle. But 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…But how? the answer was buzzing around me like a fly…” We watch Karen walk around her apartment as an idea for getting even with Margo through a practical joke comes to her mind: “It would all seem perfectly legitimate, and only two people would know…” Karen picks up the phone and calls Eve.
We see a car driving down the road to the country. It is winter time, and Karen narrates that “it was a cold weekend, outside and in.” Bill isn’t with them, so the trip is just Karen, Margo, and Lloyd. Karen narrates that it was a tense weekend, but they were able to get through it, and they drove Margo to the train on Monday morning. We see the three of them in the car, Margo scowling in the middle seat, as they drive to the train station to send Margo back to the city. As Lloyd drives down the road, the car skids on some ice, but Lloyd manages to maintain control. Suddenly, Lloyd realizes that the car isn’t working, that they’ve run out of gas. He is confused and indignant, and Margo asks how long until her train. They have ten minutes and the station is 3 or 4 miles away. Lloyd gets out of the car, looking out for someone to help them. Left alone in the car with Karen, Margo turns on the radio, which plays somber music. “I detest cheap sentiment,” Margo says, switching it immediately off. While they wait, Margo pulls out a cigarette and apologizes for her unpleasant behavior over the past few weeks. She expresses deep contrition about her horrible temper, and compares herself to a baby that throws a tantrum whenever it feels “unwanted or insecure or unloved.”
Analysis
In this section of the film, we hear Eve articulate her love of the theater with greater clarity. While we have known that she so loves the theater and admires the imaginative work that goes into it, in the scene at Bill's birthday party, she lets down her guard and reveals the depth of her longing to be a part of it. When Bill suggests that in order to survive in the theater one must be almost zealously devoted and ambitious, but that actors give so much and get so little, Eve suggests that the rewards of a stage career are completely worth it. She explains that applause is worth any sacrifice, because to be an actor is to be loved by hundreds of different people every night. The prospect of this reward makes Eve almostmisty-eyedd, as she explains that the theater gives the actor a sense of belonging that is unlike any other. In this we see Eve’s passion and her single-mindedness, her pure desire for that sense of belonging, and her commitment to achieving her ambitions. The people around her see it too, and as she finishes her monologue, it is as though she has to remember that there are other people around, so consumed by her own imaginings has she become.
Eve’s unwavering ambition also becomes clear a few minutes later when she reminds Karen about her desire to be Margo's understudy. After Margo retires to her room, having picked on nearly everyone at the party, and thrown barbs at her perceived nemesis, Eve, Eve is heartbroken at the thought that she has done something to offend Margo. She confides in an understanding Karen that she doesn’t know what she has done to hurt Margo’s feelings, but Karen assures her that Margo is an unpredictable person and Eve ought not to take it personally. Indeed, Margo resents Eve because she believes that Eve is trying to take her place, to marginalize her in some way. Eve’s inability to see this rivalry is what makes her ambition so off-kilter, and having just fretted to Karen about offending Margo, Eve quickly reminds Karen that she would like to become Margo’s understudy, a decision that will undoubtedly ruffle Margo’s feathers. As Eve asks for this favor, the camera zooms in on her, then Karen, then a painting of an actress on the wall. The close-up serves to underscore the tension of the moment. Even though Margo clearly feels threatened by Eve and her insinuations into her life, Margo feigns naiveté, and remains resolute in her pursuit of onstage glory. The painting of the actress on the wall represents the glory that Margo has and which Eve so covets: the status of an icon, receiving endless applause.
The dream of an actress, the film suggests, is to feel completely singular in one’s passion and one’s commitment, to be irreplaceable and iconic. Complicating this, however, is the fact that an actor is in fact replaceable. Margo’s distaste for Eve has to do not simply with the fact that Eve is younger than her or more beautiful or more passionate, but also that all these qualities could lead to her taking Margo’s place and rendering her obsolete. The fear of obsolescence is what motivates Margo to become so ruthless in her opposition to Eve. Margo’s horror at hearing that Eve read for Claudia’s audition in her place is the fear that her absence or lateness does not actually throw anything off course. Eve’s role as Margo’s understudy explicitly highlights Margo’s replaceability. This dynamic makes it clear that if Margo isn’t there, Eve is happy to stand in and play her part, perhaps even better than Margo does it. As Margo herself yells at Lloyd after insulting his play, “You may exchange this star anytime you want for a new and fresh and exciting one, fully equipped with fire and music!”
It is no coincidence that Margo’s giant fight with Lloyd, Fabian, and Bill takes place on the stage on which she is so beloved. She is herself a piece of theater, unpredictable, spontaneous, and wild, and to watch her fight with the men who are running her career is to watch a special kind of theater in itself. When she enters the theater, Margo rushes down a row of seats in a fur coat towards the stage and immediately takes control of it. With an affected sweetness, she asks questions until she gets Lloyd, Bill, Fabian, and Eve all to admit their betrayal of her. Having accused them of deceiving her, Margo takes her position center stage and rattles off threats and accusations, a gleeful glint in her eye. In her search for justice and fairness and her fear of being edged out of her own game, Margo becomes an angel of destruction, insulting her collaborators from the spot she feels is rightfully hers—a Broadway stage. Margo chooses to turn her own life into a play in this moment, to exploit the drama of her own life to create her own definition of glory. Lloyd’s charge that he “shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind,” falls on deaf ears. Margo’s body and voice ring out from the stage with clarity and strength.
Indeed, Margo is not only struggling against replaceability in the theater, but also her relative lack of autonomy in the process of making a play. As an actress, Margo has many opinions and ideas, which she articulates with force, but she actually has very little say over the play itself. Her replaceability, therefore, is not only about her age and beauty, but also about her complete lack of authority and authorship in creating the play itself. When she does decide to act out and speak her mind, Lloyd—a playwright, the author and most powerful participant in the process—reminds her of her relative lack of influence. He yells from the audience, “Just when exactly does an actress decide they're her words she's saying and her thoughts she's expressing? It’s about time the piano realized it has not written the concerto.” Here, Lloyd calls attention to Margo’s relative lack of power, just another reason that she is replaceable. She is, as a piano is to a composer, the instrument through which the art happens, but she is not the artist, he tells her. Margo doesn’t buy it, however, as she tells Bill, “A playwright doesn’t make the performance and the performance doesn’t just happen!” Her strength lies in her refusal to believe in her own obsolescence and her fighting spirit.
