Celebrate 'All About Eve' - With Celeste Holm Herself!

Two legends meet on Saturday, May 21, when Stageworks/Hudson honors legendary actress Celeste Holm in a gala event, "All About Celeste," that will thrill Hollywood insiders and fans of outrageous drag alike. The only surviving star of "All About Eve," one of the greatest films ever made, Ms. Holm is making a rare public appearance to headline a weekend benefiting Stageworks, the premier professional theater of the Hudson Valley.

One of the highlights of the event will be a special screening of clips from the Oscar-winning 1950 film, with commentary by the incomparable Hedda Lettuce. Hedda has been delighting audiences across the nation and in New York City, where her running commentaries on camp classics have made her a fixture of Chelsea Cinemas.

Ms. Holm will add her own personal reminiscences of the making of the film, considered a landmark presentation of life on the stage. The screening serves as the highlight of an evening filled with showbiz lore, nostalgia and love for a great actress. Capping off the benefit will be a Hollywood auction.

From the time that writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz showed his script to his prospective cast and crew, everyone knew that they were involved in something special. "All About Eve" is the story of the conniving young Eve Harrington, who works her way into the life of stage legend Margot Channing, played by Bette Davis in a career-defining role. Along the way to supplanting Margot as a Broadway star, Eve attempts to steal Margot's director boyfriend and seduces her playwright, Lloyd Richards.

An innocent bystander who inadvertently starts Eve on her road up the greasy pole to leading lady is playwright's wife Karen Richards, a Radcliffe graduate who should never, according to acid-tongue critic Addison DeWitt (played by George Sanders in an Oscar-winning role) have been closer to the theater than "Row E, Center Aisle."

Karen fancies her a woman wise to the cutthroat world of the theater, but she allows herself to be taken in by Eve's apparent innocence and candor. Ms. Holm plays this character with warmth, wit, brittle sophistication and enough vulnerability to make the audience root for her. The film won Best Picture and a raft of other Oscars. Its script is universally acknowledged as the most bitingly witty ever to come out of Hollywood. The dream cast included Marilyn Monroe in a breakout performance.

Her part in "All About Eve" may have been her most beloved role, but Ms. Holm has had a remarkably distinguished career, belonging in the pantheon of great American actors. The New York native appeared as Ophelia in "Hamlet" opposite Leslie Howard. She introduced Gene Kelly to audiences, and she originated (and owns!) the role of Ado Annie in the Broadway musical "Oklahoma!" She won an Oscar as a left-wing magazine editor in the groundbreaking expose of anti-Semitism "Gentleman's Agreement." Ms. Holm lives in Manhattan with her husband, singer Frank Basile, who will be performing at the Stageworks gala.

"Fasten your seat belts," it's going to be a once-in-a-lifetime evening when true Hollywood royalty comes to Hudson, NY! As Karen Richards put it, "In the theater, a season is a lifetime and a lifetime is a season." If you want to rub elbows with Celeste Holm, you'd better act fast. Only a limited number of tickets are available. For reservations go to the website. For information contact Stageworks at 518-828-7843 or write to [email protected].

About Stageworks/Hudson
The award winning Stageworks/Hudson is dedicated to bringing adventurous theater productions and programs of high artistic quality to the greater Hudson Valley. Central to its mission is Futures, an integrative program designed to move Stageworks to the forefront of new play development. Stageworks is both the experiment and the resource to infuse the whole life of the theater with a creative process that produces new ways of expressing, interpreting and sharing the human experience. Stageworks maintains a series of principal programs to encourage and engage traditional theatergoers and new audiences. The company is the recipient of the Proctors Regional Arts Award and the Crystal Apple Award from the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce in acknowledgment of its contribution to the cultural and economic quality of life in its Hudson Valley community. "Metroland Magazine" has distinguished Stageworks, naming it the region's best professional theater for multiple years. Stageworks, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) corporation has been producing theater since 1996.