Eve Smoking (Symbol)
Throughout the film, Eve never smokes. While the sophisticated theater people around her are always lighting up and ordering another martini, Eve never partakes. It seems to be part of her preternatural innocence that she never indulges in a cigarette. By the end of the film, however, when she has won her award and returned to her home, eschewing the after party in favor of time alone, Eve lights up her first cigarette. Lonely and cynical about her career, having had to fight so hard and betray so many people in order to achieve it, Eve begins to become a little more like Margo Channing, hardened and earthy. The cigarette is a symbol of Eve's transformation from an impressionable young woman into a knowing starlet. By the end, she realizes that fame doesn't bring happiness with it, and that her success has only brought her more dissatisfaction. The cigarette symbolizes the fact that Eve has grown up and become jaded in a very short amount of time.
The Starlet's Clothes (Motif)
When Eve is working as Margo's assistant, she takes Margo's costume to be washed. Margo follows behind her to tell her not to bother and when she does, she finds Eve standing in the wings, clutching Margo's costume to her body and pretending to bow in front of an audience. Later, when Phoebe takes Eve's award into her bedroom, she dons Eve's jacket and holds the award, pretending to be standing in front of a room full of adoring fans cheering for her. This motif of the younger aspiring actress holding or putting on the clothing of her idol represents the simultaneous desire—shared by these two women—to be both close to her idol and to take her idol's place. Eve is adoring of Margo and Phoebe is adoring of Eve, but underneath this admiration is the desire to don the clothes of the more successful woman, to become her, and to push her out of the competition. This motif symbolizes the fierce competition between actresses.
The Theater (Allegory)
The meaning and profundity of the theater is constantly being redefined throughout the film. One minute it is being held up as a sacred art and the next it is being satirized as empty and unimportant. Early on in the film, Bill tries to redefine theater, and characterizes it as an all-encompassing art, one that has virtually no boundaries. Theater is life itself, he suggests. All performance, whether it is circus, tribal customs, or an intellectual play, constitutes the theater. "Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience—there's Theater," he says. In this way, theater in All About Eve becomes an allegory for life in all its forms. As in the theater, people behave badly and perform exquisitely in life. As Bill suggests, "The Theater's for everybody—you included, but not exclusively—so don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your Theater, but it's Theater of somebody, somewhere."
Contrastingly, by the end of the film Margo decides that the Theater explicitly isn't the same as life when she decides to leave acting and become Bill's wife full-time. To her mind, one cannot simply live out one's life onstage. It is better to confront reality and make a life for oneself, rather than getting caught up in the rat race of show business. Thus we see that theater is alternately an allegory for life in all its complexity, or an allegory for an empty and incomplete life, one that is all words and image but no substance.
The Sarah Siddons Award (symbol)
For Eve, the Sarah Siddons Award functions is a symbol of belonging and adoration. As the highest honor that a stage actress can receive, it represents a ticket to the club that Eve has wanted so desperately wanted to join for the entire movie. When she wins it, however, it becomes clear that while she has the support of her audiences and the critics, she has no community to speak of, as she has alienated all of her so-called "friends." Following the ceremony, Eve even leaves the award in the car, as it has come to represent a token of her ruthless climb to the top, and the alienation that has resulted. Thus, the award has multiple symbolic meanings. When it is presented to Eve at the ceremony, it represents her acceptance in the theater world. Discarded and forgotten in the back of the car, it represents all that Eve has lost, and the fact that no amount of fame and glory is worth it if one has to resort to nefarious means to get it.
Fur Coats (Symbol)
It is not a significant symbol, but at Bill's birthday party, upstairs where the coats are kept, Karen notices the expensive fur coat of a Hollywood actress who has just arrived. Karen notes its expensiveness compared to hers and tells Eve that the fineness of the Hollywood coat makes her own one seem of a poor quality. Additionally, she says, "Women with furs like that where it never gets cold…" alluding to the fact that the actress is from Los Angeles, where a fur coat isn't even needed. Thus, the fur coat symbolizes the extreme wealth of Hollywood in comparison to the more modest wealth of theater world New Yorkers.
