All About Eve that formed the basis for the film. Bette Davis played three roles on film that had been originated by Tallulah Bankhead — "Dark Victory", "Jezebel" and "The Little Foxes", much to Bankhead's chagrin. Bankhead and Davis were considered to be somewhat similar in style. Several decades later Davis called Channing "the essence of a Tallulah Bankhead kind of actress" in an interview with Barbara Walters. The production is notable in that Mary Orr, of "The Wisdom of Eve," played the role of Karen Richards. The cast also featured Alan Hewitt as Addison DeWitt (who narrated), Beatrice Pearson as Eve Harrington,
All About Eve critical of the emphasis that Sam Staggs' book "All About All About Eve" places on the film's homosexual elements, nonetheless acknowledged that Eve's lesbianism seemed apparent; specifically, Geist states that "manifestations of Eve's lesbianism are only twice briefly discernible." Geist asserted that Mankiewicz "was highly contemptuous of both male and female homosexuals," although Mankiewicz himself suggested otherwise in an interview in which he argued that society should "drop its vendetta against them." Homosexuality was often linked to communism during the Cold War's Lavender Scare and critics have written about film's subtle, yet central, Cold War narrative. The fair amount of