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
Bette Davis admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and three times divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 film, television, and theater roles to her credit during her six-decade-long career. In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Ruth Elizabeth Davis,