Dar tanto por casi siempre tan poco

"Ninguna luz más brillante que la de Eva Harrington ¡Eva...! Déjenme que les hable de Eva. Yo les contaré todo sobre Eva..."

-Queda por saber cómo ha sacado la gasolina del vehículo la mujer del director teatral (Karen Richards)

-No puedo creer que me hagas esa pregunta. Voy a anotarla.

Ayer por la noche vimos All about Eve en versión original. Me he perdido la comprensión de algunos diálogos pero la he disfrutado mucho con estas otras voces.

La actriz en el escenario y la actriz fuera del escenario. La mujer que antepone su vida personal a la profesional y la mujer cuya ambición no tiene medida. La confiada y la mosquita muerta. La vulnerable que tiene sus debilidades y se muestra insegura frente a la que no tiene escrúpulos ni ofrece muestras de debilidad. Las armas de mujer en la madurez y la juventud. La persona de confianza que sospecha desde el primer momento que detrás de la admiración se esconde gato encerrado, la inocente amiga que resulta ser más afín a los intereses de una desconocida, la conspiración de los amigos, el amor en suspenso, los celos ¿fundados o infundados?, la persona y el personaje, el teatro y sus máscaras.

La película está basada en la experiencia vivida por la actriz Elisabeth Bergner cuando interpretaba la obra "The Two Mrs. Carrolls" entre 1943 y 1944, y que contó a la autora Mary Orr. En esa época, Bergner conoció a una joven admiradora a la que dio empleo como asistenta y que, más tarde, intentó destruir su carrera. Orr cambió ligeramente la historia, permitiendo que al final la admiradora le robara el papel protagonista a la actriz.

Diálogo Eve Harrington y Bill Sampson:

- Así que se va a Hollywood.

- ¿Por qué?

- Sólo me lo preguntaba.

- ¿Te preguntabas qué?

- ¿Por qué?

- ¿Por qué, qué?

- ¿Por qué tiene que irse allí?

- No es que deba, es que quiero.

- ¿Es por el dinero?

- El 80% se me irá en impuestos.

- Entonces, ¿por qué? Cuando es el director joven con más éxito del teatro.

- El teatro, ¡el teatro! ¿Dónde pone que el teatro exista sólo en unos feos edificios apiñados en dos kilómetros cuadrados de Nueva York? ¿O de Londres, París o Viena? Escucha, jovencita, y aprende. ¿Quieres saber que es el teatro? Un circo de pulgas. También es ópera y rodeos, carnavales, ballets, danzas tribales, guiñol, un hombre orquesta: todo es teatro. Donde haya magia, fantasía y público, hay teatro. El Pato Donald, Ibsen y el Llanero Solitario. Sarah Bernhardt y Poodles Hanneford, Lunt y Fontanne, Betty Grable. Rex el caballo salvaje, Eleonora Duse: todo es teatro. No los entiendes a todos. No te gustan todos. ¿Por qué iba a ser así? El teatro es para cualquiera, incluida tú, pero no en exclusiva. Así que no lo apruebes ni desapruebes. Quizá no sea tu tipo de teatro, pero, en algún sitio, para alguien lo es.

- Sólo he hecho una sencilla pregunta.

- Y yo me he disparado. Nada personal, jovencita. Es sólo que hay tanta tontería en este camerino de marfil al que llaman teatro que a veces se me atraganta.

- Pero Hollywood… No debe quedarse allí.

- No es más que una película.

- Muy pocos vuelven.

- …

- Leo a George Jean Nathan todas las semanas.

- También a Addison Hewitt.

- Todos los días.

- No hacía falta que me lo dijeras.

Margo Channing: Bill's thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he'll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.

Margo Channing: Funny business, a woman's career - the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing's any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed, and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings, but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.

Antes que ser actriz, hay que ser persona. ¿Qué hay detrás de la actriz Margo? 

Magnífico diálogo. Eve encuentra la horma de su zapato. Hasta aquí ella pensaba que también le estaba utilizando a él. A partir de este momento se dará cuenta de que su carrera está en sus manos. ¿Ha merecido la pena llegar hasta aquí?

Addison DeWitt: What do you take me for?
Eve Harrington: I don't know that I'd take you for anything.Addison DeWitt: Is it possible, even conceivable, that you've confused me with that gang of backward children you play tricks on, that you have the same contempt for me as you have for them?Eve Harrington: I'm sure you mean something by that, Addison, but I don't know what?Addison DeWitt: Look closely, Eve. It's time you did. I am Addison DeWitt. I am nobody's fool, least of all yours.Eve Harrington: I never intended you to be.Addison DeWitt: Yes you did, and you still do.Eve Harrington: I still don't know what you're getting at, but right now I want to take my nap. It's important...Addison DeWitt: It's important right now that we talk, killer to killer.Eve Harrington: Champion to champion.Addison DeWitt: Not with me, you're no champion. You're stepping way up in class.Eve Harrington: Addison, will you please say what you have to say, plainly and distinctly, and then get out, so I can take my nap?Addison DeWitt: 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.Eve Harrington: What do you mean by that?Addison DeWitt: 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.Eve Harrington: What have you got to do with it?Addison DeWitt: Everything, because after tonight, you will belong to me.Eve Harrington: Belong? To you? I can't believe my ears!Addison DeWitt: What a dull cliché.Eve Harrington: Belong to you - why, that sounds medieval, something out of an old melodrama!Addison DeWitt: 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...Eve Harrington: Taken it for granted that you and I...
[laughs]Addison DeWitt: [slaps her] Now, remember, as long as you live, never to laugh at me - at anything or anyone else, but never at me.Eve Harrington: [walks to the door and opens it] Get out!Addison DeWitt: You're too short for that gesture. Besides, it went out with Mrs. Fiske.

Bill Sampson: Have you no human consideration?

Margo Channing: Show me a human, and I might have!

Addison DeWitt: While you wait you can read my column. It'll make minutes fly like hours.

Bill Sampson: We have to go to City Hall for the marriage license and blood test.Margo Channing: I'd marry you if it turned out you had no blood at all.

Addison DeWitt: 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.

Margo Channing: Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

[Bill is saying goodbye to Birdie as he departs for Hollywood]Bill Sampson: What should I tell Tyrone Power for you?Birdie: Just give him my phone number; I'll tell him myself.

Lloyd Richards: I shall never understand the weird process by which a body with a voice suddenly fancies itself as a mind. Just when exactly does an actress decide they're HER words she's speaking and HER thoughts she's expressing?Margo Channing: Usually at the point where she has to rewrite and rethink them, to keep the audience from leaving the theatre!

Lloyd Richards: There comes a time that a piano realizes that it has not written a concerto.Margo Channing: And you, I take it, are the Paderewski who plays his concerto on me, the piano?

Margo Channing: I'm a junkyard.

Margo Channing: So many people know me. I wish I did. I wish someone would tell me about me.Karen Richards: You're Margo, just Margo.Margo Channing: And what is that, besides something spelled out in light bulbs, I mean - besides something called a temperament, which consists mostly of swooping about on a broomstick and screaming at the top of my voice? Infants behave the way I do, you know. They carry on and misbehave - they'd get drunk if they knew how - when they can't have what they want, when they feel unwanted or insecure or unloved.

Karen Richards: Where were we going that night, Lloyd and I? Funny, the things you remember and the things you don't.

Addison DeWitt: You could sleep now, couldn't you?Eve Harrington: Why not?Addison DeWitt: The mark of a true killer: Sleep tight, rest easy, and come out fighting.

Eve Harrington: I won't play tonight. I couldn't, not possibly. I couldn't go on.Addison DeWitt: Couldn't go on? You'll give the performance of your life.

Bill Sampson: You have every reason for happiness.Margo Channing: Except happiness!

Bill Sampson: You know, there isn't a playwright in the world who could make me believe this would happen between two adult people. Goodbye, Margo.Margo Channing: Bill? Where are you going? To find Eve?Bill Sampson: That suddenly makes the whole thing believable.

Margo Channing: Birdie, you don't like Eve, do you?Birdie: You looking for an answer or an argument?Margo Channing: An answer.Birdie: No.Margo Channing: Why not?Birdie: Now you want an argument.

Margo Channing: Lloyd, honey, be a playwright with guts. Write me one about a nice normal woman who just shoots her husband.

Eve Harrington: I'll never forget this night as long as I live, and I'll never forget you for making it possible.

Margo Channing: As it happens, there are particular aspects of my life to which I would like to maintain sole and exclusive rights and privileges.Bill Sampson: For instance what?Margo Channing: For instance: you!

Lloyd Richards: You knew when you came in that the audition was over, that Eve was your understudy, playing that childish little game of cat and mouse.Margo Channing: Not mouse, never mouse. If anything *rat*!

Addison DeWitt: [voiceover] 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.

Margo Channing: She thinks only of me, doesn't she?Birdie: Well, let's say she thinks only about you, anyway.Margo Channing: How do you mean that?Birdie: I'll tell you how: like... like she's studying you, like you was a play or a book or a set of blueprints - how you walk, talk, eat, think, sleep...Margo Channing: I'm sure that's very flattering, Birdie. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it.

Bill Sampson: We started talking - she wanted to know about Hollywood. She seemed so interested.Margo Channing: She's a girl of so many interests.Bill Sampson: Pretty rare quality these days.Margo Channing: A girl of so many rare qualities.Bill Sampson: So she seems.Margo Channing: So you've pointed out so often! So many qualities so often - her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, and affection, and so young! So young and so fair!

Bill Sampson: This is my cue to take you in my arms and reassure you. But I'm not going to - I'm too mad.Margo Channing: Guilty!Bill Sampson: Mad! Darling, there are certain characteristics for which you are famous, on stage and off. I love you for some of them, in spite of others. I haven't let those become too important. They're part of your equipment for getting along in what is laughingly called our environment. You have to keep your teeth sharp - all right - but I will not have you sharpen them on me, or on Eve!Margo Channing: What about her teeth? What about her fangs?Bill Sampson: She hasn't cut them yet, and you know it! So when you start judging an idealistic, dreamy-eyed kid by the barroom Benzedrine standards of this megalomaniac society, I won't have it! Eve Harrington has never, by word, look, thought, or suggestion indicated anything to me but her adoration for you and her happiness at our being in love. And to intimate anything else doesn't spell jealousy to me - it spells a paranoiac insecurity that you should be ashamed of!Margo Channing: Cut! Print it! What happens in the next reel? Do I get dragged off screaming to the snake pits?

Margo Channing: Margo Channing is ageless - spoken like a press agent.Lloyd Richards: I know what I'm talking about. After all, they're my plays.Margo Channing: Spoken like an author. Lloyd, I'm not twenty-ish, I'm not thirty-ish. Three months ago I was forty years old. Forty. Four O. That slipped out. I hadn't quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I've taken all my clothes off.

Karen Richards: A part in a play. You'd do all that just for a part in a play?Eve Harrington: I'd do much more for a part that good.

Addison DeWitt: And what's your name?Phoebe: Phoebe.Addison DeWitt: Phoebe?Phoebe: I call myself Phoebe.Addison DeWitt: And why not? Tell me, Phoebe, do you want someday to have an award like that of your own?Phoebe: More than anything else in the world.Addison DeWitt: Then you must ask Miss Harrington how to get one. Miss Harrington knows all about it.

Bill Sampson: Looks like I'm going to have a very fancy party...Margo Channing: I thought you were going to be late.Bill Sampson: When I'm guest of honor?Margo Channing: I had no idea you were even here.Bill Sampson: I ran into Eve on my way upstairs; she told me you were dressing.Margo Channing: That never stopped you before.Bill Sampson: Well, we started talking, she wanted to know all about Hollywood, she seemed so interested...Margo Channing: She's a girl of so many interests.Bill Sampson: It's a pretty rare quality these days.Margo Channing: She's a girl of so many rare qualities.Bill Sampson: So she seems.Margo Channing: So you've pointed out, so often. So many qualities, so often. Her loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, affection - and so young. So young and so fair...

Margo Channing: Bill's welcome home birthday party might go down in history. Even before the party started, I could smell disaster in the air. I knew it, I sensed it, even as I finished dressing for the blasted party.

Birdie: I haven't got a union. I'm slave labor.Margo Channing: Well?Birdie: But the wardrobe women have got one, and next to a tenor, a wardrobe woman is the touchiest thing in show business.

Addison DeWitt: Eres una persona inverosímil Eva, y yo también. Eso tenemos en común. Junto con el desprecio por la humanidad, incapacidad para amar y ser amados, e insaciable ambición y talento...

El éxito es sólo de las personas despiadadas que saben escalar las montañas de muertos que van dejando atrás.

Margo Channing:-Hay ciertos aspectos particulares de mi vida sobre los que quiero mantener únicos y exclusivos derechos y privilegios.

Bill Sampson:-Por ejemplo ¿qué?

Margo Channing:-Por ejemplo TÚ.

Lloyd Richards: -Nunca podré entender el mágico proceso por el que un cuerpo que tiene voz llega a creer que tiene también cerebro, el momento exacto en que una actriz cree que son suyas las palabras que dice y los pensamientos que expresa.

Margo Channing: -Ocurre cuando la actriz tiene que modificar esas palabras y esos pensamientos para que el público no se vaya del teatro...

Lloyd Richards: -¡Ya es hora de que el piano se dé cuenta de que no ha escrito él el concierto!

Margo Channing: Curiosa ésta vida nuestra... Las cosas que dejas caer en la escalera para subir más deprisa, olvidando que se necesitan cuando estás arriba...

Margo Channing: Todos me conocen a mí, todo el mundo, yo en cambio no he conseguido conocerme todavía. Soy "Margo"... eso "Margo"... ¿Y eso qué es? Aparte de una palabra en un letrero luminoso, aparte de algo llamado temperamento; que consiste en desmelenarse como una furia y gritar hasta el límite de su voz. Los niños también se comportan igual que yo, se tiran por el suelo y patalean, se emborracharían si pudieran cuando no consiguen lo que quieren, cuando se sienten faltos de apoyo, o de cariño…

Margo Channing: Abróchense los cinturones, esta noche habrá turbulencias...

Eve Harrington: Imaginen saber que cada noche cientos de personas diferentes te quieren. Te sonríen, les brillan los ojos. Ver que has gustado. Que te ensalzan y aclaman. Solo eso no se paga con nada.

- El 90% del teatro es trabajo. Trabajo duro: sudor, aplicación y destreza. Para ser un buen actor, o lo que sea, en el teatro debes quererlo más que a ninguna otra cosa. Exige concentrar el deseo, la ambición y el sacrificio como ninguna otra profesión. Y el hombre o la mujer que acepta esos términos no puede ser ordinario. Dar tanto por casi siempre tan poco.