My 150 Favorite Movies - #21

All About Eve (1950)

Bette Davis may have lost the Academy Award for Best Actress this year (to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday), but she certainly won the war, as everyone still talks about this amazing movie, and her performance in it. As an aging actress no longer able to play the ingenue, the performance may have been a little too close to home for comfort, but it rivets. Playing her opposite number, as the little ingenue who could (and the title character) Anne Baxter more than holds her own. Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Celeste Holm, and especially George Sanders, as acid-tongued critic Addison DeWitt, capably bring up the rear. Featuring an early cameo by a then little-known actress named Marilyn Monroe, All About Eve holds the record (tied by Titanic) for the most Academy Award nominations for any one film. Director and screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz was nominated for and won Oscars in both those categories.