All About Eve a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film has been selected by the American Film Institute for many of their 100 Years lists. When AFI named Bette Davis #2 on its list of the greatest female American screen legends, "All About Eve" was the film selected to highlight Davis' legendary career. The Writers Guild of America has ranked the film's screenplay as the fifth greatest ever written. The film opens with the image of a fictitious award trophy, described by DeWitt as the "highest honor our theater knows: the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement." The statuette is modelled after
All About Eve for Susan Hayward." Mankiewicz presented a film treatment of the combined stories under the title "Best Performance." He changed the main character's name from Margola Cranston to Margo Channing and retained several of Orr's characters — Eve Harrington, Lloyd and Karen Richards, and Miss Casswell — while removing Margo Channing's husband completely and replacing him with a new character, Bill Sampson. The intention was to depict Channing in a new relationship and allow Eve Harrington to threaten both Channing's professional and personal lives. Mankiewicz also added the characters Addison DeWitt, Birdie Coonan, Max Fabian, and Phoebe. Zanuck was enthusiastic and