All About Eve will be screened at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts next Monday, March 13th at 7 pm, following a seminar with Odie Henderson, film critic for the Boston Globe, at 6:15 pm.
“It’s hard to watch a Marilyn Monroe performance without feeling utterly enraptured by her. The actress was a total scene-stealer, a quality she embodied to a tee in the 1950 film All About Eve. Her role as the ambitious (if not marginally air-headed) Claudia Caswell was a massive step up for Monroe, who until then had little big screen experience. She’d just had a successful turn in The Asphalt Jungle, one of her first credited roles, so landing a part in a Joseph L. Mankiewicz project meant that her star was finally on the rise in a big way.
Caswell is first introduced in one of the tenser moments of the film, when Bette Davis’ Margo Channing first begins to distrust her sneaky protégé Eve (Anne Baxter). Her presence ushers in a welcome bit of comic relief, and though her first scene takes place opposite Davis, Baxter, and George Sanders — three actors at the absolute top of their game — her well-timed humour and signature ‘Who, me?’ reticence ensures that all eyes are on her. It’s an early glimpse into the effortless charm that Monroe carried in all her performances …” – Lyvie Scott, Slash Film
The Marilyn Report 