FADE IN:

INT. DINING HALL - SARAH SIDDONS SOCIETY - NIGHT

It is not a large room and jammed with tables, mostly for

four but some for six and eight. A long table of honor, for

about thirty people, has been placed upon a dais.

Diner is over. Demi-tasses, cigars and brandy. The overall

effect is one of worn elegance and dogged gentility. It is

June.

The CAMERA, as it has been throughout the CREDIT TITLES, is

on the SARAH SIDDONS AWARD. It is a gold statuette, about a

foot high, of Sarah Siddons as The Tragic Muse. Exquisitely

framed in a nest of flowers, it rests on a miniature altar

in the center of the table of honor.

Over this we hear the crisp, cultured, precise VOICE of

ADDISON deWITT:

ADDISON'S VOICE

The Sarah Siddons Award for

Distinguished Achievement is perhaps

unknown to you. It has been spared

the sensational and commercial

publicity that attends such

questionable "honors" as the Pulitzer

Prize and those awards presented

annually by the film society...

The CAMERA has EASED BACK to include some of the table of

honor and a distinguished gentleman with snow-white hair who

is speaking. We do not hear what he says.

ADDISON'S VOICE

The distinguished looking gentleman

is an extremely old actor. Being an

actor - he will go on speaking for

some time. It is not important that

you hear what he says.

The CAMERA EASES BACK some more, and CONTINUES until it

iscloses a fairly COMPREHENSIVE SHOT of the room

ADDISON'S VOICE

However it is important that you

know where you are, and why you are

here. This is the dining room of the

Sarah Siddons Society. The occasion

is its annual banquet and presentation

of the highest honor our Theater

knows - the Sarah Siddons Award for

Distinguished Achievement.

A GROUP OF WAITERS are clustered near the screen masking the

entrances of the kitchen. The screens are papered with old

theatrical programs. The waiters are all aged and venerable.

They look respectfully toward the speaker.

ADDISON'S VOICE

These hollowed walls, indeed many of

these faces, have looked upon

Modjeska, Ada Rehan and Minnie Fiske;

Mansfield's voice filled the room,

Booth breathed this air. It is

unlikely that the windows have been

opened since his death.

CLOSE - THE AWARD on its altar, it shines proudly above five

or six smaller altars which surround it and which are now

empty.

ADDISON'S VOICE

The minor awards, as you can see,

have already been presented. Minor

awards are for such as the writer

and director - since their function

is merely to construct a tower so

that the world can applaud a light

which flashes on top of it and no

brighter light has ever dazzled the

eye than Eve Harrington. Eve... but

more of Eve, later. All about Eve,

in fact.

THE CAMERA MOVES TO: CLOSE - ADDISON deWITT, not young, not

unattractive, a fastidious dresser, sharp of eye and merciless

of tongue. An omnipresent cigarette holder projects from his

mouth like the sward of D'Artagnan.

He sits back in his chair, musingly, his fingers making little

cannonballs out of bread crumbs. His narration covers the

MOVE of the CAMERA to him:

ADDISON'S VOICE

To those of you who do not read,

attend the Theater, listen to

uncensored radio programs or know

anything of the world in which we

live - it is perhaps necessary to

introduce myself. My name is Addison

deWitt. My native habitat is the

Theater - in it I toil not, neither

do I spin. I am a critic and

commentator. I am essential to the

Theater - as ants are to a picnic,

as the boll weevil to a cotton

field...

He looks to his left. KAREN RICHARDS is lovely and thirtyish

in an unprofessional way. She is scraping bread crumbs,

spilled sugar, etc., into a pile with a spoon. Addison takes

one of her bread crumbs. She smiles absently. Addison rolls

the bread crumb into a cannonball.

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