The first of only two films to receive 14 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
The first time 2 actresses from one film were both Oscar nominated for Best Actress.
The irony was that Joseph L. Mankiewicz knew very little about the theatrical world. And yet he created one of the great classics about that world. Even more ironically when Mankiewicz tackled a world that he knew much more intimately, lampooning the film community in The Barefoot Contessa, it was a resounding flop, both creatively and financially.
The movie's line "All of a sudden she's playing Hamlet's mother." was voted as the #53 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
The movie's line "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" was voted as the #12 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
The movie's line "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night" was voted as the #9 movie quote by the American Film Institute
The movie's line "You won't bore him, honey. You won't even get a chance to talk." was voted as the #25 of "The 100 Greatest Movie Lines" by Premiere in 2007.
The movie's poster was as #24 of "The 25 Best Movie Posters Ever" by Premiere.
The original story "The Wisdom of Eve" appeared in "Cosmopolitan" magazine in 1946, and was produced as a radio drama for NBC - but every studio rejected it as a film project. Eventually Fox bought the rights for $3500 with no credit stipulations. Joseph L. Mankiewicz combined "The Wisdom of Eve" with a story he had been developing about an actress who recalls her life when receiving an award.
The theatre scenes in the film were shot at San Francisco's Curran Theatre at 445 Geary Street a couple of blocks from Union Square.
Though most of the score is original music by Alfred Newman, the music during the car scene with Karen and Margo is an instrumental version of "Liebestraum" ("Love's Dream") by Franz Liszt, the same music the drunken, maudlin Margo had the pianist play over and over again during the party scene. The joke is that when she hears it again in the car (now sober, of course), she condemns it as "cheap sentimentality" and quickly turns it off.
Upon learning that he had cast Bette Davis, one of her former directors, Edmund Goulding, rang up Joseph L. Mankiewicz and warned him that she would grind him down into a fine powder. This proved to be a redundant warning as Davis knew better than to mess with Mankiewicz's finely tuned screenplay. In fact, Mankiewicz found her to be one of the most professional and agreeable actresses he'd ever worked with.
Was voted the 21st Greatest Movie of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Years later, Bette Davis said in an interview "Filming _All About Eve_ was a very happy experience....the only bitch in the cast was Celeste Holm."
The United States Postal Service honored Bette Davis with a commemorative postage stamp in 2008, marking the 100th anniversary of her birth. The stamp features an image of her in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950).