I’ve been watching Bette Davis movies for spring and I’m stretching a bit into summer because of some delays but … no one really cares because I think two people (including me) read these posts. Ha! But it’s still fun for me so I keep writing them.
This week I am writing about The Letter.
This one was very suspenseful and fascinating.
I wondered what the truth was and when I did know it, I wondered how everyone in the movie would figure it out.
And the ending…oof. I sort of knew it was coming and am not sure what I think about it, but I am going to not talk about it here. I’ll let some of you watch it and then you can come back and tell me what you thought.
Here is a brief description of the movie from TCM.com:
Based on a short story and play by British author W. Somerset Maugham, The Letter is the story of Leslie Crosbie, who has killed her lover and claims self-defense. But an incriminating letter exists…
I couldn’t write any better what Margarita Landazuri wrote about the opening sequence of this movie: “It is a sultry, sweltering, moonlit night on a Malayan rubber plantation. The camera pans across the native workers sleeping fitfully in their hammocks, through the silent, menacing darkness. Suddenly, a shot rings out. A ghostly tropical bird, startled, flies off its perch. A man stumbles down the steps of the veranda, followed by a woman who pumps several more shots into him and drops the gun. In two wordless minutes, director William Wyler grabs the audience and sets the mood of The Letter (1940), with one of the most stunning opening sequences ever.”
This movie, released in 1940 is a remake of a 1929 movie starring Jeanne Eagels shortly before her death. It is one of the only, if not the only, surviving film she was ever in. There was a silent and a talking version with her in it released that year and it caused quite a stir with some towns in the U.S. banning it and calling it “too adult” for most audiences.
But we are talking about the 1940 version today.
This version was directed by William Wyler who Bette Davis had worked with in Jezebel and had a brief affair with (like who didn’t she have an affair with at this point?!). Davis said there was no other director who she would trust and listen to as much as Wyler.
There were a couple of major challenges to this insistence by Davis, but, overall, their close friendship did prove to be a plus for the movie.
In addition to Davis, the movie also stars:
James Stephenson (an unknown British actor at the time who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance but sadly died a year later from a heart attack), Herbert Marshall, and Victor Sen Yung as Ong Chi Seng.
Sen Yung, Bette, and Stephenson
Sen Yung was amazing and a pivotal part of the movie all the way through. His subtle expressions and slight raise of his voice just when needed as absolutely perfect. I’d like to find out more about him and the roles he was able to, and not to, play in Hollywood back then.
I did read that he played Hop Sing on Bonanza and I’ve never seen Bonanza but I’m guessing it was pretty stereotypical. Not sure though.
Gale Sondergaard plays an Asian woman, which was very odd, but also worked somehow. She was very intimidating and creepy but that was also enhanced with Wyler’s decision to cut the soundtrack in scenes with her, leaving only the sounds of wind or windchimes during her appearances.
Davis was extremely intense during much of the movie and her unflinching telling of the true story was chilling and unnerving. It had me gasping a couple of times but I gasped even more at her audacity at the end of the movie.
After watching all these movies with Bette, I don’t know that she is my favorite actress and sometimes I feel like she is the same person in a lot of movies, without much variety in her acting style, but she certainly commanded the screen with her presence. More so than what Bette says is how she looks in a scene. She has this subtle, and sometimes not subtle, way of cocking one eyebrow and lowering her eyelids at the same time that alerts you to an impending fit, temper tantrum, or epic take down.
This movie, much like Jezebel, showcases Bette’s ability to convey so much through just a few looks. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her and found myself saying, “Oh no you didn’t…” a lot to the screen when she was on.
This one is definitely on of hers I would recommend if you have never seen a Bette Davis movie, or one that was good at least.
Here is the opening sequence I was talking about above:
Here is an explanation on why this movie is considered noir by many film buffs
Up next I am watching Of Human Bondage, one of Bette’s most acclaimed early films.
This week I watched Dangerous (1935) and I will be honest before we get too far — I didn’t like it very much. I feel weird writing that because Bette won an Oscar for this movie and it is regarded as one of her breakout roles besides Human Bondage (1934). I think what I didn’t like about this film was the story. It didn’t seem super well written to me.
There are many film buffs who feel similar, according to what I read online.
Bette seemed a bit too over-the-top for me at times, but then she was playing a woman who wasn’t really mentally stable, especially toward the end of the movie.
The movie is about a former theater star who loses her career due to her alcoholism, but is rehabilitated by an architect/theater buff who falls for her.
I partially didn’t like the movie because, to me, it did what too many movies of the 30s through 50s did and made the woman out to be evil and the man innocent, even if he did the same thing as the woman.
How many movies of that period have you watched where everyone warned people of a man who was a womanizer instead of warning a man about the “floozy woman”?
I’ve watched a fair amount and it gets a bit old.
Bette’s character is a mess, and she does bring ruin to all men she’s around and encounters, yes. She’s also ruined her own acting career with her alcoholism.
You can’t help hoping throughout the movie that she’ll turn her life around, and at least once, it looks like she might.
I won’t give the end of the movie away, in case you ever want to try it, but I will say, don’t hold out too much hope. The ending is complex. Did she turn her life around, didn’t she? I’m not sure what to think, but I believe there was some character development.
The beginning starts with our male main character, Don Bellows (Franchot Tone), who is an architect, hearing about what a trainwreck Bette Davis’s character (Joyce Heath) is, but having fond memories of seeing her on the stage.
Don is engaged to Gail Armitage when he sees Joyce, drunk in a bar, later in the movie (what a coinky-dink, eh?). He feels bad for her and wants to rescue her, so he offers to let her stay at his house in the country (White Knight Syndrome anyone?).
The big issue is that Joyce, and many others, believe that she is bad luck for any man who comes around her.
This proves to be true for poor Don, who falls for Joyce and works to rehabilitate her, even though she acts like a spoiled brat who hates the world. Eventually Joyce starts to act better, like a stray cat that finally lets its rescuer give it a pet. Don breaks his engagement with Gail and puts up his fortune to back Joyce in a Broadway show because no one else will hire her unless he offers money.
He wants to marry Joyce, but she refuses him.
That’s when we learn that dear Joyce is still married to a man who was loyal to her but who she financially ruined. She asks him for a divorce and . .. Well, you will have to watch and see what happens.
Bette almost didn’t make this movie, which seems to be a theme with her actually. I’ve read a couple times that she had to be talked into starring in certain films. Those films were later a success.
I’ve also read a couple of times now how she started affairs with her leading men. This one was no different, other than it might be what kicked off her years-long rivalry and bitter feelings toward Joan Crawford, or Joan’s feelings toward her.
Joan and Franchot (what a name) were engaged when Bette started an affair with him, although she claimed it was an unrequited crush. Years later, producer Harry Joe Brown said it was anything but that when he found the two “in a compromising position.”
Reports say that Crawford knew all about it but didn’t break the engagement. Instead, she simply increased her visits to the set to make Davis jealous. She eventually did marry Tone and, like most of her marriages, it lasted about four years.
Dangerous was originally titled Hard Luck Woman.
In the movie, Bette plays a wide range of personalities, from a drunk woman to a woman who hopes for a better future with a man she loves.
I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t thrilled with the movie overall. Critics didn’t like the story, but they did like Bette’s performance.
One critic is said by TCM.com to have given her one of the most famous reviews of her career:
E. Arnot Robertson in Picture Post wrote: “I think Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. She gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet.”
So, while I didn’t like the storyline of the film as much as some, I did like Bette’s performance.
I am tacking another movie on to this list — The Petrified Forrest with her and Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. My husband watched this one years ago and says it is very good so I will use it to round out my Spring of Bette Davis, which will stretch a little bit into the summer.
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 Victorywith her, is in this one too.
George Brent and Bette Davis. This is not my photo. Copyright Warner Bros.
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.
A Photoshopped-colorized image of Julie’s forbidden red dress. Not my photo.
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.
Promotional image for Jezebel from Warner Bros.
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.
Bette in her white dress. (Not my photo.)
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.
Henry Fonda and Bette Davis. (Copyright TCM)
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.
Full disclaimer this week: the subject matter of this movie made it too difficult for me to watch all the way through, so I’m telling you what the movie is about, but I skimmed a lot of this movie.
I’ve been watching Bette Davis movies for spring and this week the one I chose was Dark Victory, released in 1939.
Sadly, for personal reasons, I could not make it all the way through this one. I did read what it was about before watching it, and I thought I could handle it, but I could not.
Bette acted well in this one — though I do think she is a tad bit overacting at times in many of her films. That is her style, so it’s okay, but her delivery is often more abrasive than I think it needs to be.
In this film, she had reason to be abrasive.
It is not a spoiler to say that in this movie, Bette’s character is diagnosed with a brain tumor.
It’s in the description of the movie online, such as Google:
“Socialite Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) lives a lavish but emotionally empty life. Riding horses is one of her few joys, and her stable master (Humphrey Bogart) is secretly in love with her. Told she has a brain tumor by her doctor, Frederick Steele (George Brent), Judith becomes distraught. After she decides to have surgery to remove the tumor, Judith realizes she is in love with Dr. Steele, but more troubling medical news may sabotage her new relationship, and her second chance at life.”
This is not a totally accurate description, however. Let me preface all this by saying the next bit will be a spoiler of sorts so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to, you will want to skip this.
Are you ready?
I’m going to tell you something about the movie that the description didn’t. Ready?
You sure?
Okay….
Here goes….
Judith is told by her doctor that she is fine when in reality she has a cancerous brain tumor that will take her life in about 10 months. Dr. Steele wants her to live her life fully, believing she is fine because, I guess, he is in love with her love of life (even though a lot of it was drinking and sleeping around) and with her and doesn’t want to see the light go out of her when she finds out she is dying. He tells her sister she is dying because he feels guilty for lying and then he makes her also lie about it so Judith will have a good life until the end.
I think it is horrible and cruel, honestly, but at the same time, I understand Dr. Steele’s reasoning.
This movie is very melodramatic with a lot of tearjerker moments that I struggled with because when I worked for a newspaper, I had to write several stories about fundraisers for a little boy who was born with a brain tumor.
He was an amazing little boy, wise beyond his years. He died when he was seven years old, and not long after that his mother was diagnosed with the same type of brain tumor and died a few years later. She’d had another son, married another man (the first son’s father was a total dirt bag who just recently was charged with some inappropriate behavior as a judge and I am so happy about that), and was just starting to have her happy ending when she was diagnosed. I wrote a lot of stories about fundraisers for her, after I interviewed her about the death of her son. He had become somewhat of a community celebrity because of all his issues and the fundraisers held for him.
His name was Jordan. Her name was Jodi. They had the same brain tumor that this character has.
This sounds very selfish after all they went through, but I think I still have some PTSD after getting to know them, writing stories about them, and then having them both die. They deserved so much more.
Even writing all this out makes me sick to my stomach and has me crying so that’s the reason I couldn’t stomach this movie beyond skimming through it.
Back to the movie before I make my keyboard a safety hazard from all the wetness.
According to TCM, Bette and her co-star, George Brent, who plays Dr. Steele, were in 11 films together between 1932 and 1942.
They were never romantically linked off screen until after this film. Brent was divorcing his wife and Bette’s first husband was divorcing her and her affairs with Howard Hughes and director William Wyler were ending. The pair remained together for about a year and later in life Bette said of him, “Of the men I didn’t marry, the dearest was George Brent.”
The role was already intensely emotional and with Davis at her emotional breaking point, her performance ended up being one praised by critics when the film was released and for years to come.
Bette was the one who pushed for the rights for the play to be purchased but when they were, she said she didn’t feel she could pull off the role.
Margarita Landazuri writes for TCM that after only a few days of shooting, “Bette begged to be released from the film, claiming she was sick. Producer Hal Wallis replied, ‘Bette, I’ve seen the rushes – stay sick!’”
This movie is called a “three-hanky hit” because of how emotional it was. Viewers knew they were being emotionally manipulated by it but it was so well made, they didn’t mind.
It is a well-made film, Bette carries herself through the role beautifully, and it was fun seeing Humphrey Bogart in a side-role as her a man who has unrequited love for Judith.
Maybe it is because the movie was made so well that it made it impossible for me to watch it all the way through.
If you do decide to watch it, bring your tissues and muster through better than I did.
I should also mention that our former president Ronald Reagan was in this one and he was a roaring drunk, loser. Ha! He didn’t play it very convicingly so I don’t think that was his normal state, even as a young guy, but maybe I’m wrong?
Bette and Ronald Reagan
Next up I’ll be watching Jezebel from 1938.
Here is a description of that movie in case you are interested: “In one of her most renowned roles, Bette Davis portrays Julie Marsden, a spoiled Southern belle who risks losing her suitor with her impetuous behavior. Engaged to successful banker Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda), Julie pushes him away with her arrogant and contrary ways, leading to a scandalous scene at a major social event and his subsequent departure. When Preston eventually returns and Julie attempts to win him back, she discovers that it may be too late.”
Another Man’s Poison was my second Bette Davis movie, and I watched it on a whim sometime back in January. All About Eve was my first Bette Davis movie, in case you are curious.
This movie is dark from the start. We have Bette Davis as Janet Frobisher, and she’s already committed a crime that she would like to keep quiet.
A celebrated mystery writer, Janet married a criminal who was also abusive. We never get to see her husband because at the start of the movie, he’s already dead and she’s killed him. Not a spoiler. It’s the movie set up and will set up the direction of the rest of the movie.
She’s already called Larry, the fiancé of her secretary, who she, incidentally, is having an affair with, and asked him to come to her house that weekend. She’s walked to a phone box very far from her house to make the call and her nose neighbor, Dr. Henderson, the local vet, comments to her about how odd it is she is in town when she owns a mansion with phones in every room.
Janet essentially tells him to get lost and goes back home.
She has plans to dump her husband’s body in the pond on their property, but a man, George Bates (played by her real-life husband Gary Merrill), breaks into her house looking for her husband, saying he’s a robber and a murderer he and her husband were supposed to meet there after the robbery to escape together.
After a bunch of back and forth, Janet confesses she killed her husband but before she can kick Bates out the door, Dr. Henderson (Emlyn Williams) shows up and not wanting him to know she killed her husband, who Henderson has never met, she agrees to let Bates pretend he is her husband.
What results is another hour or so of panic, blackmail, and manipulation that will make your head spin. And then ending…well I can’t talk about it but oof! All I’ll say is karma is a word I do not write out or usually use so I’ll just say — a jerk!
While researching this film I was surprised to find out that it was co-produced by one of my favorite actors — Douglas Fairbanks Jr. I watched a ton of his movies last winter, which you can find here (scroll down the page).
Bette jumped at the opportunity to film this British thriller in the UK because there was a part for her new husband, free passage on the Queen Elizabeth cruise liner, and she could bring her children. It was essentially a free honeymoon.
There was a problem with the script but, according to TCM, Bette ignored this because she could choose her director (American Irving Rapper who directed one of her biggest hits, Now, Voyager in 1942). She liked him because “she could dominate him” the TCM article says.
“I’ve always wanted to play in a suspense picture as they’re made in England, with that quiet effectiveness which the British singularly seem to possess,” Bette told the British reporter.
Trouble always seemed to follow Bette and this time was no different. As soon as she arrived in England she threw a lavish party for the British press who rewarded her with tabloid articles about her mink coats, her excess and her husband, “Mr. Davis.”
This movie was not really well-received, with critics rolling their eyes at what they called “the absurdities of the script.”
They were impressed with how Bette pulled off the role even with the issues, though.
“No one has ever accused Bette Davis of failing to rise to a good script; what this film shows is how far she can go to meet a bad one,” critic Frank Hauser wrote in New Statesman and Nation.
The movie wasn’t a success at the time for the couple but visiting England was.
Actor Emlyn Williams bringing the schoolteacher who had been the inspiration for Miss Moffat in The Corn Is Green onto the set of Another Man’s Poison, and introducing her to Davis was an absolute thrill for Davis who starred in The Corn is Green in 1945.
The marriage went the way of the movie, I should add, ending only a year later, which was probably good because it was said to be a rocky and abusive one.
Have you seen this one?
Up next for my Spring of Bette feature is: Dark Victory.
I’m watching Bette Davis movies this spring, but have chosen some of the less popular ones for something different.
This next movie, A Working Man, came on afterIt’s Love I’m Afterand intrigued me in the first several minutes so I decided to stick with it. I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. It was a cute movie and a very early one for Bette. So early, she still had platinum blonde hair and was 25-years old.
I have a temporarily lost remote to thank for finding this one.
This pre-Hayes Code 1933 movie is about John Reeves (George Arliss), the president of the Reeves Shoe Company, who is determined to beat his competitor, Hartland Shoes.
He’s so determined to beat the competition that he ignores a request by a friend to go fishing in Maine.
His nephew Benjamin Burnett is ready for Reeves to retire so he can take over the business already.
When Tom Hartland, CEO of the Hartland Shoe Company, dies, John Reeves is saddened, even though he was his main competitor.
Benjamin begins to hint that John is senile and to teach him a lesson, John heads off for that fishing in Maine, leaving him to run the business for a while and see what it is like.
Ironically, though, a yacht stops running near John’s fishing pier and two young people swim up to ask for booze while they wait. John, who has always been a hard worker, is disgusted by their laziness. One of those young people is Bette Davis as Jenny Hartland.
The other is her brother Tommy Hartland played by Theodore Newton.
As they begin to chat, John learns they are the spoiled children of the recently deceased Tom Hartland. John decides to call himself John Walton and befriends them so he can spy on their company but as the spying begins, John starts to like the two kids and decides he wants to help them better themselves. He also discovers that the shoe making plant for their late father’s business is being mismanaged.
This launches him into a journey to save the business he’s been trying to destroy for years while also trying to keep his own business going and his identity hidden.
Bette is so young in this one, as I mentioned above.
The screenplay for the movie was based on a story The Adopted Father by Edgar Franklin and written by Charles Kenyon and Maude T. Howell.
Arliss was a well-known silent movie star before going into talking films and reprised his role in this movie from his 1924 silent movie Twenty Dollars a Week, which was based on the same story. Hollywood does like to rehash an old story because the 1936 20th Century Fox film Everybody’s Old Man was based on the same source.
The movie was Arliss and Bette’s second time appearing together in a movie. They were in The Man Who Played God the year before.
But their relationship goes deeper than just being in a previous movie together, according to TCM.com.
“[The Working Man] was the second and last film Davis made with Arliss, whom she always considered one of her mentors and the person who was responsible for saving her nascent film career,” an article on the site states. “She first met Arliss in the late 1920s, when he was a guest lecturer at the drama school she attended in New York. He counseled her not to adopt the exaggerated “cultured” English diction that many actors were then using. Instead, he suggested that she speak standard American English, but make an effort to get rid of her New England accent. Davis followed his advice. In late 1930, Davis was signed to a contract by Universal and went to Hollywood, but she was cast in pallid secondary roles and made little impression. Nine months later, Universal dropped her. According to Davis, she and her mother were packing up to return to New York, when she received a phone call summoning her to a meeting with Arliss, then one of Warners’ top stars. After meeting with Arliss, she was cast in The Man Who Played God, and signed to a Warner Bros. contract.”
We talk about the oversaturation of the entertainment market these days, but back then, movies were made fast and furious. Bette made, or at least released, seven movies in 1933.
The Working Man was her 15th movie, and she only started working in movies two years before. The New York Times gave Bette a good review saying, “Bette Davis, whose diction is music to the ears, does good work in the role of Jenny.” Bette had good memories of working with Arliss.
“Whatever was happening on his set, at four p.m. sharp, everything stopped for a half hour while we had tea,” she said. “I think he had it in his contract. Mr. Arliss helped pour, and everyone, to the lowliest grip, participated. I especially enjoyed knowing instinctively that Mr. Jack L. Warner was sitting in his office having a fit during this expensive homage to a civilized way of life.”
Even after Arliss went back to England in 1935, Bette continued to look at him as her mentor.
Margarita Landazuri wrote in her article on TCM that when Bette was in a contract dispute with Warner, Arliss told her to give in and not to try to sue Jack Warner again. She’d already lost her first attempt.
“Bette, you must go home and do anything they ask for one year,” he told her. “You must accept the fact that you have lost. It’s difficult to handle defeat, but you can take it.” Realizing that her career would be over if she continued to fight, Davis followed his advice. She swallowed her pride and returned to Warner Bros., where she soon became the studio’s top female star. “He certainly was my first professional father,” Davis said of Arliss, and the sentiment was reciprocated. In her home, she kept a framed photograph of Arliss. The inscription read, “with adopted fatherly affection.”
Up next in my Spring of Bette Davis, I’ll be writing about Another Man’s Poison.
An arrogant, self-absorbed, womanizing stage actor and the actress who keeps putting up with him are the main characters in It’s Love I’m After, a 1937 romantic comedy starring Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, and Olivia De Havilland.
I stumbled on this one by accident while looking for Bette Davis movies to add to my Spring of Bette Davis feature and ended up absolutely loving it.
I didn’t even know it was a comedy when I started it, but when the pair started insulting each other in loud whispers during a scene from Romeo and Juliet, I knew this movie was going to be very entertaining.
And it was very entertaining, very funny, and a very nice surprise.
Leslie Howard plays the part of Basil Underwood, a famous stage actor who women fall all over.
Bette plays his co-star and on-again-off-again girlfriend, Joyce Arden, who joins Leslie’s drama with her own drama. In the beginning, we see the two sniping at each other right after their performance, going back to the hotel and continuing their arguing through the door separating their rooms.
It is at the hotel where we meet Basil’s valet Digges played by Eric Blore. Their interaction reminded me so much of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves books by P.G. Wodehouse. I absolutely loved their bantering, bickering, and joking.
They have this whole routine where Digges either gives or takes away points from Basil based on his behavior, and Basil’s behavior is often not good because he is frequently running off with married women or breaking hearts, all while in a relationship with Joyce.
Leslie Howard and Eric Blore
Joyce and Basil have decided they are going to get married early on in the movie, but there is one problem. After their performance at the beginning of the movie, a young woman named Marcia West (De Havilland) comes to visit Basil and tells him she is in love with him. This is very exciting for him because, you know, he loves women and the attention of women. Marcia leaves without telling him her name, and Basil is left with a well-stroked ego.
Once he and Joyce have decided to marry, and Joyce has closed herself in her room to get ready to leave for the wedding at a justice of the peace, Marcia’s fiancé, Henry Grant Jr. (Patrick Knowles) shows up and tells Basil he’s angry at him because Marica is in love with him.
Leslie Howard and Bette Davis
There is this whole hilarious scene where Basil says the situation reminds him of a play he was once in and he and Digges act it out for Henry, who is bewildered and annoyed.
The play they act out is about a woman who is in love with a man, but the man wants to shake the woman, so he acts like a cad to get rid of her.
Henry is delighted and says that is what he wants Basil to do — come to Marcia’s family’s house that weekend and be an absolute jerk so she will be fall out of love with him.
What follows is an absolutely hilarious second act that had me in stitches. Olivia was absolutely perfect as a celebrity-obsessed woman, and Leslie was perfect as the arrogant, self-absorbed star.
The cast was just so perfect together.
There is one line that isn’t really a spoiler, so I just have to share it — at one point Olivia says that she was obsessed with Clark Gable for a month and Leslie says, “Who’s Clark Gable?”
I felt like such a nerd when I said, to myself because my daughter was not listening, “Do you know why that’s so funny? It’s so funny because Leslie, Olivia, and Clark were all in Gone with the Wind together and in that movie Olivia’s character was in love with Leslie’s character and Clark was in a relationship with Vivien Leigh.” Then I snorted a laugh.
Gone With the Wind was released two years after this movie. I thought it would have been funny if It’s Love I’m After had been made after Gone with The Wind.
Leslie Howard wanted the movie made to give himself a break after appearing in mostly heavy dramatic roles like The Petrified Forest (1936) and Romeo and Juliet (1936), according to TCM. The screenplay was based on the story Gentlemen After Midnight by Maurice Hanlin.
Producer Hal Willis wasn’t sure about Leslie’s ability to pull of comedy, but did accept the suggestion for the film. Casey Robinson wrote the screenplay, and Archie Mayo directed.
Leslie originally wanted a comedic actress from the stage, like Gertrude Lawrence or Ina Claire to play opposite him but after a few failed attempts, the picture began production without a leading lady.
Finally, Wallis decided that Bette Davis could use a change of pace after intensely dramatic roles in Marked Woman, Kid Galahad and That Certain Woman (all 1937).
Bette wasn’t so sure, though. She’d turned out a lot of films in a short time and actually wanted a break. This would be her third film with Leslie, and she liked working with him but didn’t like that he was going to receive top billing above her. The two had had a strained relationship during the filming of Of Human Bondage when Leslie was cold and dismissive and said to resent the fact an American had been cast in a very British story. He’d also run hot and cold during the filming of The Petrified Forest, sometimes ignoring her, and also, she said, coming on to her “rather crudely.”
In It’s Love I’m After he turned his attention to Olivia, reportedly driving her nuts with his persistence in trying to woo her.
Olivia De Havilland and Leslie Howard
If it sounds like his character wasn’t too far off from the real Leslie, then you’d be right. He was known to be a womanizer, despite being married, and had many affairs.
Bette finally agreed to accept the role, but did ask for a cinematographer she liked to be hired to help her look good on screen.
Audiences proved that the producer had no reason to be worried about Leslie not doing well in a comedy, with over $1 million being brought in during its initial release.
Leslie followed this movie up by directing himself in George Bernard Shaw’s classic movie, Pygmalion (1938)
Up next for Spring of Bette, I will be writing about another one of her less-familiar movies, A Working Man, where she was in full blonde mode.
Here is the complete list of movies I will be watching during this feature:
This spring, I am watching and writing about Bette Davis movies, and I thought I’d kick it off with a post about Bette herself.
I don’t know why it has taken me so long to watch Bette Davis movies, considering her connection to the area I live in.
Bette Davis’s daughter, B.D. (Barbara Davis) Sherry Hyman used to own and live on a farm about 30 minutes from where I live now. Sadly, Bette did not have a good relationship with her daughter after the daughter wrote two scathing books about Bette.
If you are of a certain age, you may remember the books and the fallout from them in the 1980s.
I personally didn’t pay attention to celebrity drama when I was a child, so I didn’t know about it until recently.
I’ll get to that a little further in the post, but for now, let’s start at the beginning of Bette’s life.
Hadley Hall Meares wrote this for Vanity Affair in 2020, “Opinions? Bette Davis had a few. Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in 1908, the legendary movie star was a tireless perfectionist and workaholic with little patience for those who did not share her vision. Consequently, her 1962 autobiography The Lonely Life and its 1987 follow-up, This ‘N That, are not short of opinions—many hard-edged, but a few remarkably tender. As her autobiographies prove, there was so much more to Davis’s wild life even than what we saw in 2017’s Feud, which charted her fabled dispute with co-star Joan Crawford.”
Bette was born to Ruth (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis. When she was seven years old, her father divorced her mother, and her mother raised Bette and her younger daughter Barbara on her own.
Bette began acting in school productions at the Cushing Academy in Massachusetts in her teens. She then did a summer in a small theater in Rochester, New York, before moving to New York City, where she attended the John Murray Anderson/Robert Milton School of Theatre and Dance. In 1929, she made her stage debut at Greenwich Village’s Provincetown Playhouse in The Earth Between.
Her first Broadway appearance was at the age of 21 in the comedy Broken Dishes. Her first movie appearance was a very small role in 1931’s Bad Sister with Hollywood’s Universal Pictures. In 1932, though she landed a deal with Warner Brothers and her career took off, with her breakout film being The Man Who Played God. After that she filmed 14 films over the next three years! They sure turned them out back then!
Bette was blonde when she first started out, by the way. Her hair was naturally a honey blonde but studio executives made it very blonde in the early 30s, which she didn’t like. Gradually, her hair darkened, or she darkened it to become the familiar brunette we saw later in her career.
In 1934, Bette was loaned to RKO Pictures for Of Human Bondage, a drama based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham and co-starring British actor Leslie Howard. This movie brought Davis her first Oscar nomination.
Bette’s performance in the movie as “the vulgar, cold-hearted waitress Mildred” would kick off many roles in her career as strong-willed, sometimes unlikable women. Many people interpreted who Bette was in real life based on the roles she played.
Over a career that spanned 60 years Bette made a long list of well-acclaimed films, including All About Eve, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, and Dark Victory.
She won her first Academy Award in 1935 for playing a troubled actress in Dangerous. Her second was for Jezebel in 1938. She was nominated eight more times but never won another one.
Bette was high praised by many of her peers with exception to one — her nemesis and co-star from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Joan Crawford — who said these following things about her:
“I’m the quiet one and Bette’s explosive. I have discipline, she doesn’t.”
“She has a cult, and what the hell is a cult except a gang of rebels without a cause. I have fans. There’s a big difference.”
“Sure, she stole some of my big scenes, but the funny thing is, when I see the movie again, she stole them because she looked like a parody of herself, and I still looked like something of a star.”
The pair had a hate/hate relationship for years with Bette saying this about Joan when she died: “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”
Bette certainly acted confident, bold, and mouthy most of the time, but even she had doubts at times.
According to the site Golden Derby, Bette was once so worried about her career she took an ad out in Variety magazine: “Mother of three 10, 11 and 15-Divorcee. American. Thirty years’ experience as an actress in motion pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumor would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. Has had Broadway. References upon request.”
Bette was married four times. She married Harmon Nelson in 1932 and they divorced in 1938. She married Arthur Farnsworth in 1940 and that marriage lasted three years before Farnsworth tragically died in a freak accident.
Her next marriage was to William Grant Sherry, and was for five years. Her last was to Gary Merrill, which lasted the longest but was also said to be violent, bitter, and full of domestic violence.
She had Barbara “B.D.”, with Sherry and adopted two children, Michael and Margot, with Merrill. Margot was discovered to be brain damaged at 3 and Bette put her in a special home, but still supported her financially, and often brought her home for long periods for visits with family.
With Bette’s permission, B.D. married Jeremy Hyman when B.D. was only 16 and Jeremy was 29. The marriage lasted for more than 50 years but many say it was the husband who turned B.D. against her mother. Jeremy died in 2017.
What I feel bad about is that Barbara, B.D., she calls herself a pastor but still publicly shredded Bette in two different books. Maybe Bette was a narcissist and crazy, but the best thing might have been not to write a book about it all, and instead given all that hatred and bitterness to God. That’s just my opinion, of course.
Bette and B.D. during better days.
Before writing the books, Barbara commended her mother for how she raised her when she was younger and in a 60-Minute interview said she’d adopted some of those principals for raising her own son. After the first book came out, she tried to explain in interviews that her relationship with her mother was difficult and that was what the books were about, but she also went on talk shows and just verbally eviscerated her mother’s reputation.
I watched one where she even pulled her oldest son into the action, and he described things he said Bette had done to him when he was visiting her.
B.D. received a lot of condemnation about the timing of the release of the first book because Bette had had a mastectomy and suffered a stroke not long before. Shortly after that she broke her hip. Bette’s assistant later wrote a book where she said she and Bette’s lawyers tried to keep the news of the book from her because she was still trying to heal from surgery.
Bette with B.D.
When she did find out, she was shocked, devastated, and felt deeply betrayed by the book.
“Nothing,” Bette’s assistant, Kathyrn Sermak told Vanity Fair in 2017 when her book Miss D and Me came out, “nothing compared to the betrayal of B.D.’s book. That broke her heart.”
Sermak said cinematic portrayals of Bette are inaccurate.
“I will always be grateful to Ryan Murphy for introducing [Davis and Crawford] to a new generation,” Sermak told Vanity Fair about the movie about Bette’s relationship with Joan Crawford. But that Davis is “not the woman I was on 10 years of film sets with. Miss Davis never behaved on film sets like that. She never yelled, she never screamed—at least not around me.”
Bette felt so deeply betrayed by B.D.’s book that she disinherited her from her will. I also can’t imagine why Barbara felt she needed to write another one after writing one already. More money I supposed.
Bette divided her estate between her adopted son Michael Merrill and Sermak, with stipulations that her son take care of her adopted daughter Margo.
Bette also wrote a message to B.D. in her autobiography, written two years before she died, and in part of it she stated:
“As you ended your letter in My Mother’s Keeper – it’s up to you now, Ruth Elizabeth – I am ending my letter to you the same way: It’s up to you now, Hyman.
Ruth Elizabeth
P.S. I hope someday I will understand the title My Mother’s Keeper. If it refers to money, if my memory serves me right, I’ve been your keeper all these many years. I am continuing to do so, as my name has made your book about me a success.”
B.D. once said she wrote the book to get her mother’s attention so they would talk things out. Trust me, there are better ways to do that, and it didn’t work. The two never spoke again.
Before their relationship took a nosedive, Bette frequently visited B.D. and her sons in our tiny, rural area. There are old newspaper articles quoting people from the community I went to high school in who met her when she either visited their store or their motel. She rarely stayed with B.D. because of the friction between them.
“She looked and acted in real life like she did in the movies,” the owner of a local market told a local newspaper. “She was very straightforward, and there was no doubt that when she said something, it was what she meant.”
The local motel where Bette stayed when she visited her daughter. The motel is no longer there.
He remembered Bette being driven around the area in a chauffeured limousine and that she once came into the sporting goods store he used to own to buy a .22-caliber rifle. He said he heard a woman say her mother would be paying for the gun and when he looked up, Bette Davis was standing there.
The owner of a local hotel called Bette “pushy and possessive.” He said she and her daughter, son-in-law, and grandson came in for dinner one night and the grandson sat on his dad’s cowboy hat. The owner’s dad scolded the child, and Bette told the owner off.
“Bette told him to shut up.”
So, maybe the real Bette was a little bit like her on-screen characters after all.
There are a ton of great movies of Bette’s to watch, but for this particular series, I have chosen the following movies:
It’s Love I’m After (April 15th)
A Working Man (April 17th)
Another Man’s Poison (April 23th)
Dark Victory (April 30rd)
Jezebel (May 1)
Dangerous (May 7)
The Letter (May 12)
Of Human Bondage (May 21)
Now, Voyager (May 28)
These are subject to change depending on what life events pop up between now and the end of May.
This post includes affiliate links, which I will make a small commission on if you purchase from that link. You will not be charged more, but I will receive a very small amount of the purchase price.
This Winter I’ve been watching James Cagney movies.
I’ve switched the movie I was going to write about last week with the one I was going to write this week because I was going to watch the DVD of Angels With Dirty Faces I picked up, but I’ve been waiting for a night to watch it with The Husband, and that hasn’t come.
In the end, I decided to wait to watch that movie with him because he would like to see it as well, and it will be fun to watch together.
Angels with Dirty Faces stars Cagney with Humphrey Bogart, and Bogie is one of my husband’s favorite actors.
The Bride Came C.O.D. with Cagney and Bette Davis was a perfect substitute for this week, though.
It was a delightfully fun movie, and I needed it this week, so I’m glad I made the trade.
I will be watching this movie again with him soon, though, because it was just too much fun and should be watched with others.
This is a slapstick comedy where Cagney and Davis were both trying their acting talents at something a little different.
First, the premise: Davis is playing Joan Winfield, an heiress who makes impulsive decisions, and her latest impulsive decision is marrying Alan Brice (Jack Carson), a famous singer and band leader. The marriage announcement comes at just the right time for gossip and entertainment broadcaster named Hinkle who needs a big story.
He talks Brice into marrying Joan right away because it will make a great story for his broadcast.
The only issue is that Joan is on the phone with her father when Alan announces his engagement to Joan to the audience at the club and she is trying to work up the courage to tell her father she’s engaged.
Their call is cut short and she never tells him, but Hinkle arranges for her and Alan to go to a small airport to be flown by a private plane to Las Vegas where they can be married.
Steve Collins, a notorious womanizer who pretends he is married with children so he doesn’t get roped into marriage by women who like to date married men, owns the airport and the main plane. He’s never paid for the plane though and the finance company now wants it back. Steve’s handy man, Pee Wee (George Tobias) tells him that Hinkle has arranged for their plane to take a famous couple to Las Vegas and Steve wonders if they will even have a plane to take them in.
Collins tries to think of a way to get the money and has no ideas until Joan’s father, oil tycoon Lucius K. Winfield (Eugene Pallette) calls the airport to try to reach his daughter and Collins strikes up a plan with Winfield to make sure his daughter doesn’t make it to Las Vegas to marry Alan Brice.
If Collins pulls off the delay, meeting Winfield with his daughter in tow in Texas instead, Winfield will pay Collins the money he needs to pay off the plane and keep the airport in business.
The first task at hand is to get rid of Hinkle and Alan which PeeWee helps Collins with. With them out of the way, Collins jumps in the plane and takes off with Joan, his plan to fly her to Texas. Unfortunately, Joan isn’t too happy with this arrangement and tries to escape, causing the plane to crash in the desert.
Here we will be introduced to Pop Tolliver (Harry Davenport), who I just loved.
I loved a lot about this movie.
It was very witty and fun, with some great lines.
Bette Davis was supposed to be 23 in the film which I found a little unbelievable but then again, Bette always looked older to me than she was.
She was actually 33 when this movie was made.
According to Frank Miller from TCM (yes, my go-to-source), Cagney made the movie on the heels of Strawberry Blonde because he wanted to break out of gangster roles.
Ann Sheridan, Ginger Rogers, and Rosalind Russell were considered for Davis’s role but when she expressed interest in trying out, Hal Willis, the producer of the movie, went to bat for her.
“In addition, she was eager to re-team with Cagney, who like her had a history of battles with the Warner Bros. management,” Miller wrote. “They had not worked together since 1934, when they teamed for the minor comedy Jimmy the Gent. Some biographers have suggested that the studio was punishing her with the film because of her notorious temperament, while others have suggested she may have wanted to emulate Katharine Hepburn, who had been equally successful in serious and comic roles. Also possible is that she was drawn to the film’s obvious similarities to It Happened One Night (1934), another tale of a runaway heiress saved from a bad marriage by the love of a simple working guy.”
There was a lot of trouble with the movie, including the writing and the fact Cagney wasn’t a fan of the sweltering heat at the shooting location of Death Valley.
Davis also wasn’t happy because while a stunt double was supposed to take the fall into a cactus for her, she had a fall of her own and ended up with 45 cactus quills having to be removed from her behind.
Neither actor was very fond of the movie years down the road and even critics bashed it with one saying, “Okay, Jimmie and Bette. You’ve had your fling. Now go back to work.”
As for me, I found the film a lot of fun and ended up snickering at the silliness and the exchanges between our main characters.
And as I said above, Harry Davenport really added some charm to the film for me.
Have you ever seen this one?
I found it for rent on Amazon Prime but it is also available on HBO Max, Hulu, YouTube, and AppleTV.
Next week I’ll wrap up my Winter of Cagney with Angels With Dirty Faces and two weeks after that I’ll start a bi-weekly movie watch of Bette Davis films.
If you want to catch up on the other Cagney films I’ve watched this winter you can do so here:
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