All About “All About Eve” (51 page)

Byron
: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824) is best known as one of the English Romantic poets. He also wrote plays. His dramas, all tragedies in blank verse, were aimed at the library and not the theatre. “I have had no view to the stage,” Lord Byron announced in the preface to
Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice
. And yet this play was staged in London in 1821. Most of his others received theatrical productions as well:
Werner
,
Sardanapalus
,
Manfred
,
The Two Foscari
, et al. A soupçon of Byronic dramaturgy: The Doge, Marino Faliero, about to be beheaded for treason, delivers a stream of the play’s typically elaborate poetry:

“Thou den of drunkards with the blood of princes!

Gehenna of the water! thou sea Sodom!”

Eleanora Duse
: Italian actress (1858–1924), one of the great tragediennes of world theatre. She toured Russia in 1881, where Chekhov saw her as Cleopatra and was captivated by her art. It has been suggested that he had Duse in mind when he wrote
The Seagull
. In London in 1895 she and Sarah Bernhardt appeared together in Sudermann’s
Magda
. Inevitably, the critics preferred one or the other. George Bernard Shaw preferred Duse. She disdained theatrical artifice, including the use of makeup on the stage, and was noted for her ability to blush or turn pale at will. Duse professed a Garboesque hatred of publicity, which of course ensured press coverage of her every move.

Jeanne Eagels
: American stage and film actress (1894–1929). Eagels was once described as “a striking blonde with haunted eyes that always seemed to be masking some hidden pain.” In 1922, after eleven years on Broadway, she became a star “overnight” in Somerset Maugham’s
Rain
. Addicted to alcohol and any number of drugs, she grew as erratic on stage as Marilyn Monroe would later become on film sets, and for similar reasons. In 1927, during a performance of
Her Cardboard Lover
, Eagels stopped the play abruptly and ordered Leslie Howard, her leading man, to fetch her a drink of water. When Howard made no move to do so, she walked off the stage herself to get the drink while the audience waited impatiently. One of her lovers was Libby Holman, the torch singer who later served as mentor and lover to Montgomery Clift. Eagels died of a heroin overdose just as the Jazz Age ended.

In 1957 Kim Novak starred in
The Jeanne Eagels Story
. An issue of
Screen Stories
that year emblazoned Novak on the cover in the Eagels persona of femme fatale. Wearing a halter made of pearls, Novak stretched her voluptuous body across the magazine like a slinky bejeweled cat.

Minnie Fiske
: American actress (1865–1932) noted for replacing bravura performance with psychologically realistic portraiture. She starred in the plays of Ibsen and also in newer fare such as
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
and
Becky Sharp
. Married to a playwright-journalist, she billed herself as “Mrs. Fiske” and resisted the formation of Actors’ Equity because she considered acting an honor, not a trade. An early animal-rights activist, she once had a man arrested for whipping his horse.

Clyde Fitch
: American playwright (1865–1909) remembered for
Beau Brummel
,
The Girl With the Green Eyes
, and
The City
. When a character in the latter play learns that he has inadvertently married his sister, he brings down the second-act curtain shouting, “You’re a goddamn liar!” The word
goddamn
was so shocking that it caused the drama critic of the
New York
Sun
to faint. Today Fitch’s plays hold little interest. Though they start out by creating conditions out of which a rigorous exploration of character and idea could develop, all degenerate into melodramatic devices and imposed happy endings. The denouement of
The Girl With the Green Eyes
tells enough:

JINNY
(
whispers faintly
)

Dear Jack! You forgive
me
—all my beastly jealousy?

AUSTIN

There’s one thing stronger even than jealousy, my Jinny. And that’s love. That’s
love!
(
He kisses her hands, and the curtain falls
.)

The Hairy Ape
: An expressionistic drama (1922) by Eugene O’Neill. The hirsute title refers to Yank, the protagonist, and also to a literal ape who might be said to steal the show by crushing Yank.

Poodles Hanneford
: Equestrian clown and acrobat (1891–1967), scion of a family spanning at least 150 years of circus history in Ireland and later in the United States. Buster Keaton spoke of Poodles as “the only trained acrobat I ever saw who could take a fall and make it look funny.” Poodles made two-reel comedies in Hollywood. Then Fatty Arbuckle, ruined by scandal, hired him to appear under his direction. Part of Poodles’s act can also be seen in the Shirley Temple movie
Our Little Girl
(1935). He was most famous for stepping off the back of a horse as if he were an animated cartoon character, giving the impression of being momentarily suspended in midair.

Helen Hayes
: The First Lady of the American Theatre (1900–1993) needs no introduction. But her film performances make you wonder if she was really that great onstage. Bette Davis couldn’t stand her. In 1984 they did a TV movie,
Murder With Mirrors
, at a time when Bette was already quite ill. Hayes said later, “She was imperious and very tough to get along with. I think we were all frightened by Bette.”

The Hundred Neediest Cases
: A holiday charity drive started long ago by The
New York Times
, seeking contributions each year from Thanksgiving through the end of December.

Liliom
: Eve Harrington claims that she and Eddie gave three performances of this play in a little theatre production. Written in 1909 by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár, it was turned into the musical
Carousel
in 1944 by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Lunt and Fontanne
: Alfred Lunt (1892–1977) and Lynn Fontanne (1887–1983) were the First Couple of the American Stage during the early part of the twentieth century. They married in 1922. Two years later they had an enormous hit in Molnár’s
The Guardsman
. From that point on they excelled in high comedy, and everyone called them the Lunts. Their good friend Noël Coward quipped that they were really the same person. Dedicated to the stage, the Lunts resisted Hollywood except for one unhappy venture, when they filmed
The Guardsman
in 1931. Upon their farewell in 1958, a Broadway theatre—the Lunt-Fontanne on West Forty-sixth Street—was named in their honor.

Richard Mansfield
: American actor (1857–1907). On the eve of
A Parisian Romance
in 1882, Mansfield told some friends, “Tomorrow night I shall be famous. Come and see the play.” On opening night the audience recalled him a dozen times for curtain calls. He had made his beachhead on the shores of immortality. A series of hits—
Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
,
Richard III
,
Cyrano de Bergerac
,
Beau Brummel
(especially written for him by Clyde Fitch)—established Mansfield as a leading American player. His 1894
Arms and the Man
was the first Shaw production in the United States. Yankee audiences cheered his anti-royalist line in
Beau Brummel
. Out for a stroll, Beau meets a friend accompanied by the obese Prince of Wales, after Beau and the prince have quarreled. The protagonist inquires: “Who’s your fat friend, Sherry?”

Arthur Miller
: Born in 1915, Miller was considered one of America’s three best living playwrights when his name popped up in
All About Eve
. The others were Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. Miller had been widely praised in 1947 for
All My Sons
, and in 1949 he had won the Pulitzer Prize for
Death of a Salesman
.

In December 1950, a month after the Hollywood premiere of
Eve
, Marilyn Monroe was walking toward the Fox commissary with Cameron Mitchell. Meeting two gentlemen, they stopped to chat. Mitchell introduced Marilyn to Elia Kazan and Arthur Miller. A correspondence sprang up between Monroe and Miller; they reportedly met from time to time during the early fifties. But Miller was already married, and Marilyn was hungry for stardom. By the time Monroe fled Hollywood for New York in 1955, the only roadblock to their romance was Miller’s wife. A trip to Reno removed that obstacle. The Monroe-Miller nuptials, held in the summer of 1956, drew as much worldwide attention as the spectacular marriage of Grace Kelly to Prince Rainier of Monaco in April of that year.

Helena Mojeska
: “The Polish Bernhardt” (1840–1909) maintained one of the largest repertoires in the Western world, from Shakespeare to Scribe, Racine’s
Iphigénie
to the American melodrama
East Lynne
. She became an American citizen, but is buried in Krakow.

George Jean Nathan
: American theatre critic (1882–1958) whose reviews from the 1920s to the 1950s elicited laughter and outrage, depending upon whether one was in the audience or on the stage. Perhaps he’s mentioned in
All About Eve
to draw attention away from Addison DeWitt’s resemblances to him. For example, both critics have vitriolic tongues, both are fastidious dressers with a liking for fur collars, both employ cigarette holders, and both enjoy the company of attractive young females who don’t mind listening for long stretches of time. Nathan was often accused of hating every play he saw. In his autobiography,
Stars in My Hair
, director Reginald Denham, Mary Orr’s husband and collaborator, had this to say about the man: “The rudest person to Mary and me among the Broadway critics was George Jean Nathan. He wrote that Orr and Denham were horticultural playwrights. Their first play was called
Wallflower
; the second [i.e.,
Dark Hammock
] should have been called ‘Stinkweed.’”

Our American Cousin
: A comedy by Tom Taylor, first produced in 1858. It is remembered for one reason: Abraham Lincoln was watching it the night he was assassinated (April 14, 1865).

OWI
: Eve, having done her homework, knows that Lloyd served in the OWI. During World War II, the Office of War Information was America’s chief propaganda agency. The job of the OWI was to explain the war to the American people and their allies, to instill a will to win, and to be the government’s liaison with radio, movies, and the press.

Ignace Jan Paderewski
: Polish pianist, composer, and patriot (1860–1941). As a young man he drew the sort of hysterical following that would later attend the likes of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson. Liberace, another pianist of Polish extraction, once displayed on television a miniature piano given to him by Paderewski. He caressed the little piano, fondled it, creating such a treacly scene that millions of fathers forbade their young sons ever to touch the piano again.

Peck’s Bad Boy
: When Lloyd accuses Margo of playing “Peck’s Bad Boy,” the allusion is to an 1884 play of that name by Charles Pidgin. Young Hennery Peck, a juvenile lead, is the bane of his neighborhood, creating mayhem and making life a roaring hell for everyone around him. In 1891 George M. Cohan, age thirteen, played the pugnacious Peck in a road company.

Ada Rehan
: American actress (1860–1916), born in Ireland. Using her real name, Ada Crehan, she made her debut in 1873 in a melodramatic potboiler written by her brother-in-law. Soon thereafter, a printer’s error on a theatre program listed her as Ada Rehan, so she changed her name. She retired from the stage in 1905, when her brand of nineteenth-century acting was being replaced by a new naturalism.

Robert E. Sherwood
: American playwright (1896–1955), author of serious-minded plays including
Idiot’s Delight
and
There Shall Be No Night
. Perhaps his most famous is
The Petrified Forest
, produced on Broadway in 1935 and filmed the following year by Warner Bros. Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis starred in the movie.

Stanislavski
: Konstantin Stanislavski was the stage name of Konstantin Sergeyevich Alexeyev (1865–1938). Co-founder and director of the famous Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski is also known for his theories of acting. In America the Stanislavski system evolved into a technique known as “method acting,” and was taught at the Actors’ Studio in New York. Marlon Brando, Maureen Stapleton, Marilyn Monroe, and many other actors studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors’ Studio.

Svengali
: A Hungarian musician in George du Maurier’s novel
Trilby
. He controls Trilby’s stage singing through his hypnotic power. A Svengali, therefore, is one who can exercise a sinister, mesmeric influence over another.

Thespis
: A Greek poet and actor in the sixth century
B.C
., sometimes called the originator of tragic drama. When he stepped out of the chorus and spoke lines, an acting tradition was born. Long after his death, the word
thespian
became a synonym for “actor.”

Paula Wessely
: Addison mentions this name in the same breath as Jeanne Eagels and Helen Hayes, when he’s telling Margo about Eve’s audition. Although Wessely is not a legend of the caliber of Eagels and Hayes, she became famous in the German-speaking countries in the 1920s. Born in Vienna in 1907, she was first a stage star, then enormously successful in films. In 1934, she co-starred with Rosa Stradner, Mankiewicz’s second wife, in
So Endete eine Liebe
(“Thus Ended a Love”). According to Cinzia Romani’s book,
Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich
, “the Nazi regime put to use Wessely’s physical type—unglamorous, almost plain, the average middle-class German woman, someone whom audiences could easily identify with—by casting her in one of the most blatant of all German propaganda films,
Heimkehr
(‘Homecoming’), 1941.” Here are a couple of lines from the script: “Think of how it will be, just think! When everything around us will be German, and when we enter a store, we won’t hear Yiddish or Polish being spoken, but only German!” According to an Austrian Web site, she was still alive as of 1998.