Mary Orr

Mary Caswell Orr (December 21, 1910 – September 22, 2006) was an American actress and author whose short story "The Wisdom of Eve", published in the May 1946 issue of Cosmopolitan, was the basis of the Academy Award-winning film All About Eve (1950). In private life, Orr used her married name, Mary Orr Denham. Early life Orr was born in Brooklyn, New York. She and her family relocated to Canton, Ohio when she was a girl. She studied at Syracuse University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan. Career According to Orr's obituary in the New York Times, "The Wisdom of Eve" was loosely based upon an unnamed woman who had been the secretary of Viennese actress Elisabeth Bergner. Orr wrote a radio adaptation that aired on NBC in 1949, and that led to the movie being made. While she did not receive screen credit for All About Eve (she had sold the story to Twentieth Century Fox for $5,000), she did receive a Screen Writers Guild award for her original story. An alternative hypothesis to the Ruth Hirsch (later known as Martina Lawrence)-Elizabeth Bergner origin was the rivalry between Tallulah Bankhead and Lizabeth Scott (her understudy) during the production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. Broadway legend had it that Bankhead was being victimized by Scott, who was, supposedly, the real-life Eve Harrington.