All About Eve on AFI's 1998 list of the 100 best American films. Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is one of the biggest stars on Broadway. But having just turned forty she is worried about what her advancing age will mean for her career. After a performance of Margo's latest play, "Aged in Wood," Margo's close friend Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), wife of the play's author Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), brings in a besotted fan, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), to meet Margo. Eve tells the group gathered in Margo's dressing room—Karen, Lloyd, Margo's boyfriend Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), a director who is eight years
All About Eve for the aging diva role, before giving it to Bette Davis. Davis, who had recently ended an 18-year association with Warner Bros. after several poorly received films, immediately accepted the role after realizing it was one of the best she had ever read. Channing had originally been conceived as genteel and knowingly humorous, but with the casting of Davis, Mankiewicz revised the character to be more abrasive. Mankiewicz praised Davis both for her professionalism and for the caliber of her performance. Anne Baxter had spent a decade in supporting roles and had won the 1946 Academy Award for Best Supporting