All About Eve

MARGO: [graciously] And this is my good friend and companion, Miss Birdie Coonan.<br /> BIRDIE: Oh, brother.<br /> MARGO: Miss Coonan...<br /> LLOYD: [to Birdie] Oh brother what?<br /> BIRDIE: When she gets like this... all of a sudden she's playin' Hamlet's mother...<br /> MARGO: I'm quite sure you must have things to do in the bathroom, Birdie dear.<br /> BIRDIE: If I haven't, I'll find something 'til you get normal.<br /> MARGO: Dear Birdie. Won't you sit down, Miss Worthington?<br /> KAREN: Harrington.<br /> MARGO: Oh, I'm so sorry... Harrington. Won't you sit down?<br /> EVE: Thank you.</blockquote>

All About Eve, CC BY-SA 4.0

MARGO: There are some human experiences, Birdie, that do not take place in a vaudeville house - and that even a fifth-rate vaudevillian should understand and respect! [to Eve] I want to apologize for Birdie's-<br /> BIRDIE: You don't have to apologize for me! [to Eve] I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, kid. It's just my way of talkin'...<br /> EVE: You didn't hurt my feelings, Miss Coonan...<br /> BIRDIE: Call me Birdie. [to Margo] And as for bein' fifth-rate - I closed the first half for eleven years an' you know it!</blockquote>

All About Eve, CC BY-SA 4.0

BIRDIE: You all put together?<br /> MARGO: My back's open. Did the extra help get here?<br /> BIRDIE: There's some loose characters dressed like maids and butlers. Who'd you call - the William Morris Agency?<br /> MARGO: You're not being funny, I could get actors for less. What about the food?<br /> BIRDIE: The caterer had to go back for the hors d'oeuvres [she zips up Margo’s dress and sweeps her shoulders with a flourish] MARGO: That French ventriloquist taught you a lot, didn't he?<br /> BIRDIE: There was nothing he didn't know. There's a message from the bartender. Does Miss Channing know that she ordered domestic gin by mistake?<br /> MARGO: The only thing I ordered by mistake is the guests. [Birdie laughs] They're domestic, too, and they don't care what they drink as long as it burns...</blockquote>

All About Eve, CC BY-SA 4.0

BIRDIE: I haven't got a union. I'm slave labor.<br /> MARGO: Well?<br /> BIRDIE: But the wardrobe women have got one. And next to a tenor, a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business-<br /> MARGO: Oh-oh.<br /> BIRDIE: She's got two things to do - carry clothes an' press 'em wrong - an' don' let anybody try'ta muscle in...</blockquote>

All About Eve, CC BY-SA 4.0

Zanuck is impatient. He wants me, he needs me.

All About Eve, CC BY-SA 4.0

The theatah, the theatAh - what book of rules says the theater exists only within some ugly buildings crowded into one square mile of New York City? Or London, Paris, or Vienna? Listen, junior. And learn. Want to know what the theater is? A flea circus. Also opera. Also rodeos, carnivals, ballets, Indian tribal dances, Punch and Judy, a one-man band - all theater. Wherever there's magic and make-believe and an audience - there's theater. Donald Duck, Ibsen, and the Lone Ranger. Sarah Bernhardt and Poodles Hanneford, Lunt and Fontanne, Betty Grable, Rex the Wild Horse, Eleanora Duse - they're all theater. You don't understand them, you don't like them all - why should you? The theater's for everybody - you included, but not exclusively - so don't approve or disapprove. It may not be your theater, but it's theater for somebody, somewhere...It's just that there's so much bourgeois in this ivory green room they call the theater. Sometimes it gets up around my chin.

All About Eve, CC BY-SA 4.0