The Legend of Sarah Siddons:
All About Eve and the Sarah Siddons Society
Joshua Reynolds's painting Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse played a crucial role in the creation of the film All about Eve. While puzzling over the mise en scene, the director Joseph Mankiewicz happened upon the portrait and instantly decided that it would provide the keynote of his production. He opened the story in the ballroom of the fictitious Sarah Siddons Society, in which a replica of Reynolds's painting hangs. The occasion is the presentation of the Sarah Siddons award statuette, modeled on Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse. In the climactic party scene, the painting again takes center stage, prominently displayed between the framing figures of Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe. It also presides over the culminating scene, in which the chastened Anne Baxter skulks past a towering reproduction of Reynolds's portrait. Seven years after the release of the film, Bette Davis posed as Sarah Siddons in a re-creation of the painting staged as part of the Pageant of the Masters.
The powerful presence of Sarah Siddons in All about Eve convinced a group of theater-lovers in Chicago to found a real Sarah Siddons Society granting an actual award, also modeled on the Reynolds painting. Beginning with Helen Hayes in 1952, the Society has awarded a statuette to the outstanding actress of each year. In 1971 Lauren Bacall received the Sarah Siddons award for her performance in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve, in which she played the role that Bette Davis had first immortalized. The following year, Bette Davis presented the Society with a statuette used in All about Eve, and in return the Society bestowed on her a special 20th Anniversary Award for her performance in the film. The Society has now been going for nearly half a century, honoring the greatest actresses of our day in the name of Sarah Siddons, who made acting a legitimate profession for women.
Sarah Siddons launched a classic Hollywood film, and that film has ensured the survival of her legend to the present day. It is only appropriate that Los Angeles should enter the new millenium with a tribute to the patron saint of all actresses and the first truly modern "star."
The Sarah Siddons Society Awardees