This spring, I have been watching Bette Davis movies, and this past weekend, I watched Jezebel from 1938.

Wow.  What a wild ride.

The tagline for this one could be — well, that escalated fast.

Especially as the movie gets toward the end.

It just races forward like a freight train out of control, but in a good way.

Bette stars in this one with a very serious Henry Fonda (I think he’s serious in every movie he is in).

George Brent, who was also in Dark Victory with her, is in this one too.

Our story takes place outside of New Orleans in 1852.

Bette portrays a woman named Julie who comes from a wealthy family and is engaged to a banker named Preston. Preston is often busy, and this irks Julie, who is very headstrong and self-centered.

When she is getting fitted for a long white ballgown she is supposed to wear to a special ball, she sees a red dress and decides she’s going to stand out and wear that one.

Everyone in the shop and in her family is horrified.

You just don’t wear red in “polite Southern society” at this or any ball.

Forget that, Julie says, even when Preston sees the dress and tells her there is no way she is wearing it. She is wearing it, she tells him, and that is that. The dress is gorgeous, even in black and white, by the way. I wanted to see it color and looked online, but couldn’t actually find an official photo of it anywhere. There are some colorizations of it, but those were done by others, that I can see.

All of Bette’s clothes in this movie are stunning.

Back to the movie, though….Preston is furious but takes her to the ball anyhow. At the ball, people part like the Red Sea, not because they are impressed. They are scandalized by the dress and act like Julie is a — well, you know.

Preston returns Julie and her family home later that evening and says to Julie’s mother he wishes her a goodnight. To Julie, he says, “Goodbye, Julie.”

This is after they had known each other as children and always expected to marry. Oof!

Julie doesn’t believe it’s really happening, but things get real when Preston moves to the North to run a bank and leaves her behind.

I won’t ruin the rest of it for you. I will tell you that there is a reason the movie is called Jezebel and it is because Julie is called it by someone she knows.

For those who are not familiar with the name Jezebel, it refers to the wife of King Ahab of Israel, who was not a very nice woman at all. She would be called “immoral” by many.

I don’t tell you some of the details of the movie or the ending, but I will caution you that you need to fasten your seatbelt after this point in the movie if you do decide to watch it. There is going to be betrayal, talk of slavery failing the south on an economic level, slaves singing as part of the nightly entertainment, a yellow fever breakout, a dual, and so much more.

Your head is going to start spinning before it is all said and done.

Overall, I enjoyed the rush of this movie. I couldn’t look away. It was a bit like Gone with the Wind but shorter. I was somewhat horrified at how women were expected to act and dress a certain way during that time, but,  of course, knowing the history, I know it was true.

While I am on the subject of Gone with the Wind, Bette Davis tried out for the role of Scarlet, but didn’t get it.

That worked out well for her in the end. This movie was her first big-budget film, and she won an Oscar for it in 1939. Bette’s co-star, Fay Bainter, who played her aunt Belle, also won an Oscar for best supporting actress.

Vivien Leigh won hers in 1940 for playing Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind.

Henry Fonda was very good as the brooding Preston, who was also facing his changing ideas of what the South really was.

I haven’t seen him in a ton of movies, but the ones I have seen him in, he was a lot older, so it was fun to see him so young.

The acting from all of the cast was really very strong, and pulled me right into the time period. The black actors were great but I have a bad feeling they didn’t get the credit they should have at the time.

Warner Bros. had started planning Jezebel as a way for Davis to break out in a big movie as far back as 1935. They were going to buy playwright Owen Davis Sr.’s failed play back then, but passed on it.

But then the book Gone With The Wind took off.

Warner Bros didn’t get the rights to that, so they went back to get the rights to Jezebel.

They hired one of Hollywood’s top directors of that time, William Wyler.

Bette and William started an affair and when he later married another actress, Bette was said to be devastated and in later years called him the love of her life. They paired up again in a professional capacity in The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941).

So far, I would say this one, next to It’s Love I’m After, is my favorite movie of Bette’s I’ve watched so far.

Up next, I am watching Dangerous.

My watch list for this feature:

It’s Love I’m After 

The  Working Man 

Another Man’s Poison 

Dark Victory

Jezebel

Dangerous (May 9)

The Letter (May 14)

Of Human Bondage (May 21)

Now, Voyager (May 28)

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Sources: https://www.tcm.com/articles/136752/the-essentials-jezebel

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