I confess I am late with a reason, but instead of the reasoning, I shall move right to Thelma Ritter - a gal with a quick wit and a great delivery. I am quoting from a site that says it better than I could.... .
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In the funniest of the segments in A Letter to Three Wives, Ritter is given lines by Mankiewicz that you instantly forget she didn’t write. Playing a maid named “Sadie Dugan” in the home of the 
upwardly mobile couple, English teacher Kirk Douglas and radio soap opera writer Ann Sothern, she is more at home in their house than they are. Sadie has known everyone she works for since they were children. Their airs cut no ice with her.
upwardly mobile couple, English teacher Kirk Douglas and radio soap opera writer Ann Sothern, she is more at home in their house than they are. Sadie has known everyone she works for since they were children. Their airs cut no ice with her. .
Eyeing a maid’s frilly hat that the earnest yet ambitious Sothern asked her to wear while serving dinner to their important guests, Sadie announces, “The cap’s out. Makes me look like a lamb chop with pants on.”
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Commenting on Sothern’s ghastly radio show, she smiles and asks appreciatively, “”Do you know what I like about your program? Even when I’m running the vacuum, I can understand it.”
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Best of all are the silent moments of Ritter’s performance, as when she struggles laboriously with the screen separating the living room from the dining area during a dinner party. Almost overwhelmed by the unwieldy and heavy screen, it finally collapses, disrupting any pretense of polite chit chat among the guests as Sadie (Thelma Ritter) announces wanly “Soup’s on.”
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Later in the film, in a segment when Ritter and another masterful character actress, Connie Gilchrist pause while a train goes by outside the kitchen of the shanty Irish home where they are playing cards, you are able to see, (please click here ), two old friends used to fending off reality with a lifetime of wisecracks.
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In All About Eve (1950), Joseph Mankiewicz, (finally giving Ritter name recognition in the credits), fashioned her role as the ex-vaudevillian turned ladie’s maid for Ritter’s gift for wariness tempered by her ability to express gruff affection with a look and a few words.
In All About Eve (1950), Joseph Mankiewicz, (finally giving Ritter name recognition in the credits), fashioned her role as the ex-vaudevillian turned ladie’s maid for Ritter’s gift for wariness tempered by her ability to express gruff affection with a look and a few words. .
When, at the beginning of the film, Thelma responds to the waif-like Eve (Ann Baxter) and her tale of woe with the classic comment “What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end!*” .
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Throughout the film, Birdie, like a wise-cracking sybil, drops several hints that the “kid” as Davis begins calling Eve, may not be quite what she appears to be, while the alleged sophisticates surrounding Ritter fall, one by one, at least for awhile, for Eve’s stratagems. Finally catching on, Margo finally asks Thelma: “Birdie, you don’t like Eve, do you? Birdie: “You looking for an answer or an argument?” Margo:”An answer.” Birdie: “No.” Margo:”Why not?” Birdie: “Now you want an argument.”
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* This is one of Ed and mine favorite lines, and can be used in a varietyof situations when someone tells a story of improbable woe!