If Eve is the original temptress, the essence of feminine beauty and duplicity, we
don’t need to look far for the serpent, the adder in the garden of the world. Addison
DeWitt’s name has connotations both of the inherent evil in us all, and the delight of
the sophisticated, cynical wordplay that distinguishes All About Eve. His world-
weary, elegant voice opens the film, and in the epilogue he closes the door, leaving
Eve shut in the apartment with Phoebe and the Sarah Siddons award.
An analysis of the scenes in which he appears uncovers a pattern of typical poses.
He does not move; he tends to stay in one place while other characters move in and
out of shot and of the room; he is shown at doorways, but rarely arriving at them—he
makes a series of appearances. In his introduction, he tells us his ‘native habitat is
the theatre—in it I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am
essential to the theatre—as ants are to a picnic, as the boll weevil to a cotton field...’
Addison DeWitt is, essentially, a voyeur, an observer of the lives of others. His
detached view allows him insight denied other characters who are ‘players’ in life.
Like his namesake, he is cold-blooded, and perhaps, poisonous. He exhibits strong
emotion only once, when his vision of himself is threatened—‘It is possible—even
conceivable—that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you've
been playing tricks on—that you have the same contempt for me that you have for
them?...I am Addison DeWitt. I'm nobody's fool.’
DeWitt’s occupation delineates his role in the film. Where there is art, there must be
criticism, but his own language acknowledges the parasitic nature of his existence.
He is, however, far from passive; as he gazes at the ‘gang of backward children’ he
reduces them to objects for his own manipulation. Perhaps it is this lack of
connection and empathy with others that he shares with Eve. At the film’s end, he is
still suave, imperturbable, smooth, still a ‘poisonous’ observer of others’ lives.
• How does Mankiewicz want us to respond to Addison DeWitt?
• Is he, as he claims, so like Eve?
• What does he mean by ‘killer to killer’. Are they ‘killers’?
• Why is he so angry when she treats him the way she treats others, by lying?
• What is his relationship with Eve?
• What does the film suggest about his future?
VATE INSIDE STORIES 2014—ALL ABOUT EVE
KEY QUOTES: ADDISON DeWITT
"... the highest honor our theater knows - the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement" • "Minor awards are for such as the writer and director since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it." • "...no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington." • "My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater." • (About Karen Richards) "Nothing in her background or breeding should have brought her any closer to the stage than Row E, Center. However, during her senior year at Radcliffe, Lloyd Richards lectured on the drama." • "There are in general two types of theatrical producers. One has a great many wealthier friends who will risk a tax deductible loss. This type is interested in art. The other is one to whom each production means potential ruin or fortune. This type is out to make a buck." • "Margo Channing is a Star of the Theater...Margo is a great Star. A true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else." • "Time has been good to Eve. Life goes where she goes. She's the profiled, covered, revealed, reported. What she eats and what she wears and whom she knows and where she was, and when and where she's going...You all know all about Eve." • "Dear Margo. You were an unforgettable Peter Pan. You must play it again soon." • "Every now and then some elder statesman of the theater or cinema assures the public that actors and actresses are just plain folks. Ignoring the fact that their greatest attraction to the public is their complete lack of resemblance to normal human beings." • [Margo reading Addison's column:] "I am once more available for dancing in the streets and shouting from the housetops. I thought that one went out with Wollcott. Miss Harrington had much to tell and these columns shall report her faithfully about the lamentable practice in our theater of permitting...mature actresses to continue playing roles requiring a youth and vigor which they retain but a dim memory...about the understandable reluctance on the part of our entrenched first ladies of the stage to encourage, shall we say, younger actresses about Miss Harrington's own long and supported struggle for opportunity." • "I have lived in the theater as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world; no other life" • "...once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another...there are others, three or four. Eve Harrington will be among them." • "We all have abnormality in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk; We are the original displaced personalities." • "As always with women who try to find out things, she told more than she learned." • "That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability" • "You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also a contempt for humanity, an inability to love and be loved, insatiable ambition - and talent. We deserve each other" • "...you realize and you agree how completely you belong to me?" • (To Miss Casswell) “Do you see that man? That's Max Fabian, the producer. Now go and do yourself some good.” • “ You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point.” • (To Miss Casswell) “I can see your career rising in the east like the sun.” • (To Margo) “You're maudlin and full of self-pity” [about Eve] “It wasn't a reading. It was a performance. Brilliant, vivid, something made of music and fire.” • “In time, she'll be what you are.” • (To Eve) "I think the time has come for you to shed some of your humility. It is just as false not to blow your horn at all as it is to blow it too loudly." • “We all come into this world with our little egos, equipped with individual horns. Now if we don't blow them, who else will?” • “It, [one pretty good performance by an understudy], needn't be [forgotten by tomorrow]” • “I believe I will [take charge].” • “And tomorrow morning, you will have won your beachhead on the shores of immortality.” • “ You could sleep now, couldn't you?... The mark of a true killer.” • “Sleep tight, rest easy, and come out fighting” • “There never was and there never will be another like you” • “Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on? That you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?” “Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison De Witt. I am nobody's fool. Least of all – yours” • “It's important right now that we talk - killer to killer…with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.” • “I've come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd or anyone else for that matter because I will not permit it…after tonight, you will belong to me.” • “I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this, I assumed you'd take it for granted that you and I...” • “Now remember as long as you live, never to laugh at me. At anything or anyone else, but never at me.” • “ San Francisco has no Shubert Theater. You've never been to San Francisco! That was a stupid lie, easy to expose, not worthy of you.”