injecting malice with each caress. She would do anything at all for a part in a play. She would even, like a female Iago, turn her mentor’s “virtue into pitch.”
Eventually I met Martina Lawrence face to face, but only at the eleventh hour. And rather than solve the mystery, she deepened it. But that conundrum comes later. For now, the one sure thing is this: If she hadn’t existed, neither Mary Orr nor Joe Mankiewicz could have imagined her quite so well.
Chapter 4
Zanuck, Zanuck, Zanuck
In the spring of 1950 Joe Mankiewicz received his first two Oscars—Best Director and Best Screenplay—for A Letter to Three Wives . By that time 20th Century-Fox, where Mankiewicz was under contract as a writer-director, had optioned Mary Orr’s story. A year earlier this story had been given to Mankiewicz, who read it and apparently knew from the start that here, in a few pages, was the embryo of the picture he wanted to make about the theatre.
On April 29, 1949, Mankiewicz had written a memo to Darryl F. Zanuck, production chief of the studio. The memo recommended that Fox exercise its option on “The Wisdom of Eve.” Mankiewicz also noted in his memo to Zanuck that the story “fits in with an original idea [of mine] and can be combined. Superb starring role for [Fox star] Susan Hayward.”
The deal with Mary Orr and her agent was soon made, but Mankiewicz had little time to think about how he would treat the material, for he had just finished directing House of Strangers with Edward G. Robinson and Susan Hayward. With an opening date of July 1, Mankiewicz still had to supervise post-production work on the film.
Much more demanding was his next assignment, No Way Out , a tense racial drama starring Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell, and Sidney Poitier. During the early summer he and Lesser Samuels collaborated on the screenplay for this movie, which was shot from October 28 through December 20. (The picture was not released, however, until August 1950.)
Between completing the screenplay of No Way Out and the start of production, Mankiewicz in the summer and early fall of 1949 also wrote the treatment of the movie that would become All About Eve . To do so, he left home and sought the relative isolation of the San Ysidro Guest Ranch near Santa Barbara. There he followed his habit of writing at night: “I was alone and I would write from about eight P.M. until two or three in the morning, while listening to the radio. Next day I would play tennis and go for long walks, then start back to work after dark.”
Like many writers of the time, especially male writers, Mankiewicz never learned to type. As the Hollywood Reporter once phrased it, he “penned his scripts in longhand.” From these manuscripts his secretary, Adelaide Wallace, would make typescripts with impeccable margins and faultless spelling.
Mankiewicz said later that he worked on the treatment for three months, and the rough draft of the screenplay for six weeks. The treatment—which is a synopsis or detailed plot outline—was called Best Performance , Mankiewicz’s original title for All About Eve . It ran to eighty-two pages, double-spaced.
It is impossible to reconstruct a complete and precise chronology of Eve ’s evolution from story, to treatment, to script, and finally to completed film. But the copy of Mankiewicz’s treatment that Zanuck used to write his suggested revisions is dated September 26, 1949. This indicates that Mankiewicz worked on his treatment during the summer and early fall of 1949, spending, as he recalled later, three months on it.
He would not, of course, have worked on treatment and script simultaneously. It seems likely, therefore, that with so many projects underway, Mankiewicz waited until he had finished shooting No Way Out in late December of 1949 before he began transforming his Best Performance treatment into the actual script that would later be renamed All About Eve . Zanuck was eager to see it.
Darryl Zanuck’s
Eventually I met Martina Lawrence face to face, but only at the eleventh hour. And rather than solve the mystery, she deepened it. But that conundrum comes later. For now, the one sure thing is this: If she hadn’t existed, neither Mary Orr nor Joe Mankiewicz could have imagined her quite so well.
Chapter 4
Zanuck, Zanuck, Zanuck
In the spring of 1950 Joe Mankiewicz received his first two Oscars—Best Director and Best Screenplay—for A Letter to Three Wives . By that time 20th Century-Fox, where Mankiewicz was under contract as a writer-director, had optioned Mary Orr’s story. A year earlier this story had been given to Mankiewicz, who read it and apparently knew from the start that here, in a few pages, was the embryo of the picture he wanted to make about the theatre.
On April 29, 1949, Mankiewicz had written a memo to Darryl F. Zanuck, production chief of the studio. The memo recommended that Fox exercise its option on “The Wisdom of Eve.” Mankiewicz also noted in his memo to Zanuck that the story “fits in with an original idea [of mine] and can be combined. Superb starring role for [Fox star] Susan Hayward.”
The deal with Mary Orr and her agent was soon made, but Mankiewicz had little time to think about how he would treat the material, for he had just finished directing House of Strangers with Edward G. Robinson and Susan Hayward. With an opening date of July 1, Mankiewicz still had to supervise post-production work on the film.
Much more demanding was his next assignment, No Way Out , a tense racial drama starring Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell, and Sidney Poitier. During the early summer he and Lesser Samuels collaborated on the screenplay for this movie, which was shot from October 28 through December 20. (The picture was not released, however, until August 1950.)
Between completing the screenplay of No Way Out and the start of production, Mankiewicz in the summer and early fall of 1949 also wrote the treatment of the movie that would become All About Eve . To do so, he left home and sought the relative isolation of the San Ysidro Guest Ranch near Santa Barbara. There he followed his habit of writing at night: “I was alone and I would write from about eight P.M. until two or three in the morning, while listening to the radio. Next day I would play tennis and go for long walks, then start back to work after dark.”
Like many writers of the time, especially male writers, Mankiewicz never learned to type. As the Hollywood Reporter once phrased it, he “penned his scripts in longhand.” From these manuscripts his secretary, Adelaide Wallace, would make typescripts with impeccable margins and faultless spelling.
Mankiewicz said later that he worked on the treatment for three months, and the rough draft of the screenplay for six weeks. The treatment—which is a synopsis or detailed plot outline—was called Best Performance , Mankiewicz’s original title for All About Eve . It ran to eighty-two pages, double-spaced.
It is impossible to reconstruct a complete and precise chronology of Eve ’s evolution from story, to treatment, to script, and finally to completed film. But the copy of Mankiewicz’s treatment that Zanuck used to write his suggested revisions is dated September 26, 1949. This indicates that Mankiewicz worked on his treatment during the summer and early fall of 1949, spending, as he recalled later, three months on it.
He would not, of course, have worked on treatment and script simultaneously. It seems likely, therefore, that with so many projects underway, Mankiewicz waited until he had finished shooting No Way Out in late December of 1949 before he began transforming his Best Performance treatment into the actual script that would later be renamed All About Eve . Zanuck was eager to see it.
Darryl Zanuck’s
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