You Can’t Always Get
What You Want -A Devil’s Bargain-With Bette Davis’ “All About Eve” In Mind
By Sandy Salmon
[When I first took on
this assignment which was in an unusual case assigned to me by the Editorial
Board and specifically from its chair Sam Lowell (whom in the interest of
transparency I knew in the old days when we were both stringers at American Film Gazette) rather than
directly from site manager Greg Green there was talk around the water cooler
that this piece would really be autobiographical. That is emphatically not the
case.
To give a little
biography in high school in Newark, New Jersey I developed a very strong
interest in art, in being an artist. That interest was nurtured and inflamed by
Mr. Jones-Henry a transplanted Englishman whose roots included some now
forgotten connection with the artist Burne-Jones. He was an alumnus of the
Massachusetts School of Art in Boston and had assured me that I could get into
that school on his recommendation and that the all important question of
scholarship money would also be forthcoming since he had some connections in
the Financial Affairs Office.
As is hopefully clear
from this vantage point I did not pursue that route, although some fifty years
later I, at times, wish I had gone the “starving artist” in the Soho garret
route. What happened to block me from going to art school was a very determined
mother who feared unto the high heavens that I would stay down in the mud, stay
poor for the rest of my life if I became a struggling artist. That factor was
important to her since I was the one child in the family who looked like he (or
she) would get out from under the grinding factory worker history of our
extended family with its periods of unemployment and always, always, wanting habits
for stuff we did not have, would never have. Although I was not as frantic as
her about my future success that tipped the scales away from art school. But as
can also hopefully be seen from this vantage point I did not become a civil
servant which was my mother’s, and not only my mother’s, idea of success.
I eventually came to
this publication though through a connection with art so maybe I am sanctified.
Back in the early 1970s while in college I got involved with an alternative
newspaper, The East Coast Eye, which
carried many articles and such that mainline newspapers wouldn’t or didn’t
touch. I became something like the art reporter for the publication although
unpaid as most of us were. That in turn after I graduated got me a job as a
stringer for American Film Gazette (where
I met Sam) doing all kinds of assignments including reviewing films a subject I
hadn’t previously touched. I eventually became film editor there before my
retirement, or rather before I was lured over to this publication as a half-way
house to retirement once Sam persuaded me to finish my career on what he called
a high note. Still some days, some pencil in hand doodling days during
conferences, I wish I had chosen another road like old Robert Frost said in his
famous poem. S.S]
Confession: I, Jeffery
Jaspers, had never wanted to be a film critic, or any kind of critic at all.
What I wanted, what I dreamed of from an early age, maybe ten or eleven, after
seeing a stage production of The Wizard
Of Oz was to be an actor, a stage actor the only kind. To be on the Great
White Way, on Broadway in New York City far away from my Cannon’s Bend,
Pennsylvania roots. They say that politicians, successful politicians have made
a devil’s bargain to get where they are, to gain power over people and projects
but that profession is not the only one where individuals willingly consort
with the devil, gladly, make their bargain for fame and a little stardom. I was
willing to strike such a bargain to gain the bright lights but I never got that
far, never got to go mano y mano with Satan for my soul against earthy
paradise. Instead I have labored in the field of film criticism as something
like the booby prize since I shared, still shared, what used to be called the
legitimate theater’s, Broadway’s disdain for cinematic and television actors
(to speak nothing of the contempt for huckster actors shilling for some
godawful commercial products). I have never gotten over my failure to smell the
sawdust and dabble with the greasepaint.
There is a story behind
this failure, a failure that I had some what suppressed for many years or so I
thought until I did a recent re-watching, no, re-re-watching of a DVD of the
classic inside Broadway film All About
Eve starring Bette Davis, Anne Bancroft, George Sanders and a host of other
very fine performers. When I was a senior in highs school I grabbed the lead in
the senior year play Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
I was so thrilled to get the Hamlet role that I asked my mother, nee Harriet
DeWitt, to ask her uncle to come to the play and see if I had any serious acting
ability. (Of course I thought I did and that uncle would only confirm such
truths.)
See my granduncle was
none other than the famous Broadway theater critic Addison DeWitt. For those
who don’t remember that name for many years before he died about twenty years
ago he was the critic for the Broadway
Call. More importantly by that time he had been syndicated in most of the
major newspapers in the country so that what Addison DeWitt had to say about a
play carried much weight for anybody coming to Broadway or viewing an
on-the-road production of such plays. If he left during the first act to
relieve himself in the men’s room (really to have a cigarette for he was a
serious chain-smoker in an age when such practices were considered manly and
cool) the play would probably close that night. Although not before he had
raked the dead thing over the coals for the next five days to make sure it
never arose from that death spiral. If he liked a play or an actor, actress
really, then he would smother with praise. As I will mention shortly there were
ways, non- theatrical ways, to get that praise beyond honest work. He really
was a Class A scoundrel.
So one Friday night he
came up from New York (he dearly loved my mother, or maybe better, his sister
and through her my mother) to see the production. Although he sat through the
production I could see that he was fidgety, that he kept taking his cigarette
case out and looked at it longingly. I think in retrospect I was only saved by
the “no smoking” rule on school property. That and maybe an extra size devotion
to my mother one of the few people he was kind to without regard to interest.
Now that I have mentioned that tell-tale cigarette signal I don’t have to
explain that he put two thumbs down on my acting career that night. Said I
should be an English major since my mother (who secretly did not want me on the
stage and had asked him once she knew he had panned me to plug that English
major idea) had asked him to help along that path. Strangely he would be the
person who got me my job at the American
Film Gazette through some connections he had developed over the years
although his contempt for film actors (and later television actors) was even
greater than mine in those days.
The strange part of his
part in my career is that when Broadway had gone through one of its down cycles
(due to those films and television and later the cost of production and lack of
deep pockets investors who were going elsewhere) he had actually been forced to
get a second job at the Gazette where
he bombed. Had on a whim I think or maybe as I found out more about the way he
operated later, that non-theatrical way to get his attention something more he
had touted the film To Tell No Lie
when every other critic had deep six panned it. Had, and here is my
non-theatrical speculation at play, touted Lola Moran as the greatest actress
since Sarah Bernhardt. She was never heard again after that disaster and Uncle
Addison probably moved onto the next best thing.
That school play night
though he not only gave me my acting career walking papers but tried to put
things in perspective- that was his word. Gave me a very long talk about having
to make a devil’s bargain to get those stars beside your name on your dressing
room door. He sensed I didn’t have it in me. I wasn’t hungry enough like he had
been. He told me straight up that he had made his own devil’s pact and that was
only so that he would be the number one theater critic. Had gladly done it.
Then he proceeded to give me what I later realized, much later, was a
cautionary tale. That was the night he told me about how he had ridden Eve
Harrington’s talent to solidify his positon in the Great White Way. I had heard
of Eve Harrington vaguely when I was researching and reading plays in high
school and had remembered that she had lit up Broadway with her performance as
Cora in I Remember The Night according
to the liner notes after each play and the chronology of who performed various
parts over time in the productions.
Uncle Addison had a
gleam in his eye when he mentioned her name that first time and made me think
maybe he loved her, something like that. I was probably wrong, and it doesn’t
change the story but here goes. Margo, yes, Margo no last name needed in the
old days, in the 1940s, when her star flamed white hot on the Great White Way,
but now Margo Channing for readers who are rightly clueless about who I am
talking about, was truly the queen bee of Broadway with a series of hits
beginning with her breakthrough role as the young ingénue in You Reap What You Sow. Like every other
profession worth fighting over for number one status the contenders came early
and often. Most fell down, went back to the small town or out of town theater
circuit but some and Eve, Eve no last name needed in the old days when her star
flamed white hot on the Great White Way, but now Eve Harrington for readers who
are rightly clueless about who I am talking about did not, did give Margo one
hell of a battle.
Such rises and falls do
not occur all at once or by happenstance as Uncle Addison would be the first to
tell you. Tell you that a very well-placed critic or producer can pave your way
with his favors for your favors (then women mostly for men but today who knows
with all the possible sexual preferences abound in the land). What Uncle
Addison failed to tell me, would fail to tell anybody especially those
impressible ingenues blinded by the bright lights is that some actors will
harness their own energies to step more quickly up the food chain. That may
have been Margo although my uncle never mentioned her roots since he had not
made her a star as he did with Eve but it defined Eve to a tee. From the minute
she entered Margo’s life, as a dresser at first and go-fer too, every move she
made was to both undermine Margo’s theater reputation-and her personal life
including throwing herself at Margo’s well-known director writer fiancé. This
was a no holes- barred metaphorical fistfight to the death with plenty of barbs
and trickery and while Margo held her own for a while the new blood Eve rose to
the top based on talent and talons.
That is the public story
but Uncle Addison gave me the back story now that both Margo and Eve have passed.
Eve, on her way up, had planned to take a well-known Broadway writer away from
his wife but he cut Eve short. Eve had created, as many have for lesser
reasons, a whole sob story previous life which was all fairy tale. After
failing to lure Margo’s fiancé away from her she went after that married writer
who was smitten by her. Uncle had found out the real shady story behind Eve’s
façade and used that to keep her back from the writer and all for himself.
(When I asked if Eve had gone to bed with him Uncle demurred but that meant to
me that he had). Here is where things got weird though. Since fame is fleeing I
asked Addison what happened to Eve whom like I said before I had never really
heard of. He told a very chilling tale about how a young wannabe actor in her
turn befriended Eve and would go on to undermine Eve and rise to the top
herself. Since she is still alive Uncle would not give her name but from his
look I knew too that he had something to do with her rise-and her bedding by
him too.
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