Addison DeWitt

Margo Channing is a star of the theater. She made her first stage appearance at the age of four in Midsummer Night's Dream. She played a fairy and entered, quite unexpectedly, stark naked. She has been a star ever since. Margo is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else.

That I should want you at all, suddenly strikes me as the height of improbability. But that, in itself, is probably the reason. You're an improbable person, Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, our contempt for humanity and inability to love, and be loved, insatiable ambition, and talent. We deserve each other.

To those of you who do not read, attend the theater, listen to unsponsored radio programs, or know anything of the world in which you live, it is perhaps necessary to introduce myself. My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theater. In it, I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theater.

There never was, and there never will be, another like you.

Very well - plainly and distinctly - though I consider it unnecessary because you know as well as I do what I'm going to say: Lloyd may leave Karen, but he will not leave Karen for you.

More plainly and more distinctly: I have not come to New Haven to see the play, discuss your dreams, or pull the ivy from the walls of Yale. I have come here to tell you that you will not marry Lloyd, or anyone else for that matter, because I will not permit it.

So does the history of the world for the past twenty years. I don't enjoy putting it as bluntly as this. Frankly, I'd hoped that somehow you would have known, that you would have taken it for granted that you and I…

Too bad, we're gonna miss the third act. They're gonna play it offstage.

The minor awards, as you can see, have already been presented. Minor awards are for such as the writer and director, since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top of it. And no brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington.

We all have abnormalities in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk. We are the original displaced personalities.

Margo, I have lived in the theatre as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world, no other life. And once in a great while, I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another, Paula Wessely, Hayes. There are others, three or four. Eve Harrington will be among them.

The Sarah Siddons Award is perhaps unknown to you. It has been spared the sensational publicity of such questionable honors as the Pulitzer Prize and those awards presented annually by that film society. The distinguished-looking gentleman is an extremely old actor. Being an actor, he will go on speaking for some time. It is not important that you hear what he says.

Eve. Eve, the golden girl. The cover girl. The girl next door, the girl on the moon. Time has been good to Eve. Life goes where she goes. She's been profiled, covered, revealed, reported, what she eats and what she wears and whom she knows and where she was and when and where she's going. Eve. You all know all about Eve.

There are, in general, two types of theatrical producers. One has a great many wealthy friends who will risk a tax-deductible loss. This type is interested in art. The other is one to whom each production means potential ruin or fortune. This type is out to make a buck.

No brighter light has ever dazzled the eye than Eve Harrington. Eve. But more of Eve later. All about Eve, in fact.

Elder statesmen of the theatre or cinema assure the public that actors and actresses are just plain folks, ignoring the fact that their greatest attraction to the public is their complete lack of resemblance to normal human beings.

Those who remained cheered loudly, lustily, and long for Eve.

I think the time has come for you to shed some of your humility. It is just as false not to blow your horn at all as it is to blow it too loudly.