The actor who thought Bette Davis was imitating her in ‘All About Eve’: “She was heartbroken”
“Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” It’s one of the great lines in cinema history, spoken with a biting drawl by Bette Davis at her most drunk and regal in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s 1950 showbiz drama All About Eve. Davis plays a grande dame of the theatre, a demanding, self-involved diva named Margo Channing, who unwisely takes an aspiring actor under her wing.
It is the defining role of her career, coming long after her peak in movies like Jezebel and Now, Voyager and before she gave in to the grotesquery of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Throughout her career, Davis was often mistaken for her characters. She played tough women who often lured men to their downfall. Off-screen, she projected the kind of independence, directness, and business savvy that made people uncomfortable at a time when women were still relegated to being doting wives and mothers. She regularly challenged her studio over the direction of her career and even went to court with them at one point.
As a result, she was often written about in the press as a redoubtable harpy, a diva of the first order. When she took on the role of Margo, it seemed as though she was playing a heightened version of herself, but there was one actor who felt very differently. During a party sometime after the film was released, Davis was confronted by the great theatre actor Tallulah Bankhead, who was “in a great state of inebriation.” It was two in the morning, and she had a bone to pick.
“She swore that I imitated her and that it was written about her,” Davis recalled. “It was written about no special actress at all.”
Bankhead is rarely mentioned alongside the other great actors of her day, which is a shame because she was one of the great characters of the 1920s and ‘30s. She was a virtuoso as an actor, originating many roles on the stage that Davis went on to play in movies. She was also an unabashed partier, hard drinker, and drug taker, and openly discussed her many affairs with men and women. When she died in 1968, her last words were reportedly ‘codeine’ and ‘bourbon.’
Davis remembered being confronted by Bankhead at the party and being very aware of her reputation. “She said, ‘Ms Davis, you’ve played all the parts I have played, only I played them so much better.’” Davis recalled. “And I said, ‘Miss Bankhead, I couldn’t agree with you more.’” This was the most devastating thing she could have said. “She faded out of that house,” Davis chuckled. “She wasn’t going to get any fight from me at all, and she was heartbroken. She was heartbroken.”
As usual, the actors had been more intertwined than even they knew over the role of Margo. Bankhead had originally been in the running to play the part, and Davis, who had just broken off her long-time contract with Warner Bros, was one of the last potential actors on the list. The story was based on an experience that theatre actor Elisabeth Bergner had had with a young fan, but the part of Margo was reworked when Davis came aboard to make her a little more in keeping with the star’s flair for playing caustic characters.
