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.