Moviegoers applauding ALL ABOUT EVE at its New York premiere Oct. 13, 1950 didn’t know its story of intrigue in the world of Broadway theatre was true.

The only onscreen credit for what later became EVE’s Oscar winning screenplay was for Joseph Mankiewicz, who also won for directing. He went into the record books for winning twin Oscars back-to-back with his two from a year earlier for A LETTER TO THREE WIVES. Unlike EVE, WIVES credited two other source material writers.

Learning where and how EVE’s story originated is, perhaps, an even better story than the one Mankiewicz told so well. EVE began as a short story, but its behind-the-scenes story could and, in fact, did fill a book — Sam Staggs’ ALL ABOUT “ALL ABOUT EVE” in 2000. It all began with THE WISDOM OF EVE, a short story by Mary Orr that ran in Cosmopolitan in May 1946, but didn’t ignite any interest from Hollywood. Three years later, 20th Century-Fox’s story department suddenly sent it to the studio’s producers, including Mankiewicz. While there are many similarities to EVE, Orr’s WISDOM differs in that her ambitious ingénue Eve Harrington — Anne Baxter in the film — doesn’t suffer in the end for her many sins against aging stage star Margo Channing — the movie’s Bette Davis — who’s called Margola Cranston in Orr’s story.

But that’s not nearly the whole story. Orr wrote what she’d been told in the summer of 1944 on a weekend visit with her then almost-husband, director Reggie Denham, at the New Hampshire country home of actress Elisabeth Bergner and her husband/manager Paul Czinner. Bergner was a big theatre star then, best known for THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS in 1943-44, which Denham directed. While preparing dinner, Bergner told Orr all about a “terrible girl” always wearing a red coat who stood outside the stage door nightly to catch a glimpse of Bergner. She later became Bergner’s understudy and then wound up doing — well, much of the bad stuff that Eve Harrington winds up doing.

Orr absorbed every word and later, at Denham’s suggestion, turned it into WISDOM. In January 1949, to earn money while Denham recovered from a serious accident, Orr adapted WISDOM for NBC’s Radio Guild Playhouse, which after being heard in NY was repeated live for L.A. Three days later, she got word Fox wanted to option WISDOM and was offering $5,000, big money then. But in putting the deal together, or so Fox later claimed, Orr’s agent didn’t request screen credit for her — so, therefore, none was given.

Negotiators for Hollywood’s two leading trade unions announced Friday night that they had reached a three-year deal with the leading studios, averting a near disaster for the movie business.  The agreement is tentative at this point, needing to be approved by union members in a vote that is expected to take place this later week.

The International Alliance for Theater and Stage Employees (IATSE) and Alliance for Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) represent nearly 60,000 employees from the core roles involved in film production.  The new agreement provides significant benefits to members, with increases in overall compensation and minimum wage, as well as certain limits to working hours.  These are big wins for IATSE, whose workers were often required to work 6- or 7-day weeks during the height of production, with some work days lasting for 16 hours or longer.

The pace of negotiations picked up after IATSE president Mathew Loeb announced that its members had authorized a strike date of Monday, October 18^th if no agreement could be reached before that time.  This solidarity provided additional clout to the union’s negotiators, and contributed to motivating the studios to agree to the union’s key demands.

See also: Hollywood crews union reaches a deal with studios, averting a strike (Los Angeles Times)

Media analysts are missing the boat when it comes to asking older adults how “comfortable” they are returning to cinemas.

As research questions go, it’s loaded. Asking if they’re “comfortable” with moviegoing encompasses more than being fearful of catching COVID at a cinema. Older adults can be “uncomfortable” for other reasons — like people talking on cellphones during films and the risks one takes today by asking the wrong person to stop doing the wrong thing. So there’s more to being “comfortable” than pandemic fears.

Another factor likely to have kept older audiences from rushing back to cinemas like younger HALLOWEEN KILLS (pictured) fans are is the string of pictures targeted to adults that just didn’t deliver the goods. Consider Rotten Tomatoes’ critics scores for recent adult titles like: REMINISCENCE (37%), CRY MACHO (59%) & THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (74%).

On the other hand, +45 moviegoers didn’t worry about going to see NO TIME TO DIE, which was a healthy 84% on RT. The Delta Variant didn’t keep them from doing what they wanted to do. It also helped that DIE didn’t stream day & date, so they couldn’t watch  it on their couches.

During the last two years, China has cemented its position as the leading market in the global box office.  After a 10+ year building boom, China now has over 75,000 movie theatre screens, double the number that exist in the U.S.  During the pandemic, China also eclipsed the U.S. with the world’s largest box office grosses, though it has recently fallen back into second place as the U.S. box office has shown signs of a general recovery.

In terms of film product, China used to rely on Hollywood movies as its biggest earners, but that too has now changed, with local productions scoring the best box office results.  The war epic THE BATTLE OF LAKE CHANGJIN is now in theatres and breaking records, with a projected gross of over $830M, higher than any Hollywood title released in the last 18 months.  Other local productions have done almost as well, with titles such as HI MOM, DETECTIVE CHINATOWN 3 and THE WANDERING EARTH taking in huge grosses from the Chinese domestic market.

This is in contrast with major Hollywood films, which rely on returns from international markets to achieve profitability.  Hollywood has reason to feel optimistic about success in the short term, with NO TIME TO DIE and DUNE set to release in the weeks ahead in China.  However, the longer term outlook is clouded, with politics playing an increasingly important role.  Major titles including MULAN, SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY and SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS have all run afoul of local authorities and audiences, when directors, stars or plotlines were judged to be offending national pride.

See Also: Box Office: ‘Battle At Lake Changjin’ Plunges 60% On Friday To Top $555M In China (Forbes)