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.
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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 have been watching and writing about The Thin Man movies, and up this time is Shadow of the Thin Man, which is the fourth movie in a six-movie series.
You can find my impressions/reviews/recaps/whatever you want to call it here.
If you have read my other posts or are familiar with these movies, then you know that the main characters are Nick and Nora Charles.
Nick is a private investigator, but is mainly helping to manage all of Nora’s money since she is an heiress.
Nora, however, would like Nick to do a little more and keep himself busy instead of drinking alcohol and gambling.
Myrna Loy made a comment in her autobiography that movies four through six weren’t as good as the first three because the original writers, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, had decided they didn’t want to be a part of the franchise any longer. I respectfully disagree with her, at least for Shadow of the Thin Man. The mystery is convoluted, as always, (and I am really not sure about the guilty party making sense) but I felt the banter between Nick and Nora was as well-written as the previous movies. This one was a lot better than Another Thin Man, which was confusing and all over the place to me, and written by the married writers.
Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett tried to tank the series after the second movie by adding a baby because they really didn’t want to write a third. They clearly failed at sinking the series. By this movie, Goodrich and Hackett had literally had it.
“They press you awfully hard there…” Goodrich said. “When they started talking about another Thin Man, we started throwing up and crying into our typewriters. We had the nervous breakdown together, [so] we said, ‘let’s get out of here [and] we quit.’”
Novelist Dashiell Hammett, the original creator of the characters, also bowed out of the movies and refused to be part of it.
In this edition, we are introduced to Nick Jr., who is now around 5-years-old. He adds even more chaos and comedy to the mix, especially with his interactions with Nick Sr.
In one scene, he tells his dad he needs to drink more milk instead of alcohol at dinner. This makes Nick Sr. choke down half a glass of milk with some hilarious expressions, before the doorbell rings and he is let off the hook.
It is in this movie that I have to admit I do feel like Nick’s drinking is less funny and more sad. I get that Nick drinking too much is a running joke throughout the movie series, but he’s a dad now and showing his kid that he drinks no matter the mood he is in. There is always an excuse to drink with Nick Charles Sr.
But let’s not get too logical or realistic here. This is a comedy-mystery and we are meant to have some fun watching it, which I did.
In the beginning of the film, we see Nick and Nick Jr. at the park and they are supposed to be reading a child’s book, but Nick Sr. is trying to read the horses who are going to be at the races later in the day. He’s added gambling to his irresponsible repertoire I guess.
Soon Nick is on his way to the track, but not before he’s pulled over for speeding, which is quickly forgiven when the officer recognizes Nick name. Not only does the office not give Nick a ticket, but he’s given a police escort to the track. Things seem to be out of hand, though, when tons of police cars surround the car and escort Nick and Nora into the track. The couple is confused when officers gather around the car and start fawning over him and telling him how impressed they were with the last case he solved.
It turns out that they aren’t actually there for Nick, though. There’s been a murder at the track. Nick doesn’t care, though, and seems determined not to get involved.
He doesn’t want to get involved even when Major Jason I. Sculley, the special deputy for the state legislature, and investigative reporter Paul Clarke visit and ask for his help in the case.
Of course, he eventually does get involved and the mystery picks up. I enjoyed the little interludes in this one, more than the mystery. There are some hilarious scenes with Nora and Nick at a wrestling match where Nora is where a hat that men keep commenting on because they think it is silly.
Then there is the relatable scene where Nick is on a merry-go-round with Nick Jr., trying to grab a ring but getting motion sick and dizzy in the process.
Another Thin Man (1939) was filmed shortly after Powell’s finance Jean Harlow died suddenly. This movie also brought heartache for cast members, especially Powell who lost his ex-wife Carole Lombard in a plane crash in and then his first wife and mother of his only son, Eileen Wilson also died. Myrna Loy went through a divorce and then a quick marriage, which was a strike at her character’s “good girl image.”
But then the real blow to the entire cast and country was when Pearl Harbor was attacked two weeks after the movie released.
In 1943 the franchise also lost its director, W.S. Vandyke, after he passed away.
Loy recalled feeling the void, both of a director and friend, saying that “[Van Dyke] seems to be neglected now. He was one of Hollywood’s best, most versatile directors.
Donna Reed appeared in this film in only her second major screen role.
The firth movie in the series, The Thin Man Goes Home, didn’t come out until 1944, partially due to the war and VanDyke’s death.
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.
The cinematography in The Third Man (1949 ) is outstanding. The play of light with shadows, figures stepping in and out of light and dark both visually and metaphorically, makes this a movie you can’t look away from. If you do, you might miss a subtle exchange of looks, a quick smirk, someone moving in the shadows. You have to be on high alert while also relaxing into the story. You’re on the edge of your seat but also have plenty of moments to sit back and admire the superb acting of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton.
The movie is set in post-World War II Vienna, Austria at a time when four political powers America, Russia, England, and France were overseeing a corrupt post-war environment.
Cotton plays Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives without any money as the guest of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Welles). The problem is, when Martins arrives, he finds out Lime has been killed, hit by a car.
Martins wants to know how his friend died and why, and learns there was a “third man” who was present during the accident. This leads him down a path that gets him mixed up with Lime’s girlfriend and British intelligence and knocks him right into the middle of complicated moral and ethical issues.
A British noir film, The Third Man was directed by Carol Reed and produced by Reed, David Selznick, and Alexander Korda. The cinematographer was Robert Krasker, who won an Academy Award for Best Black-and-White Cinematography for his work on it.
It was written by Graham Greene for the screen, and later a novella was released.
According to information online, Korda was someone who repeatedly told Welles he would fund his projects, but at the last minute, would pull out.
“My whole time with Alex was things like that,” Welles once said. “I kept doing projects for him which I did not abandon, but which he did.”
When it came to casting for the film, everyone knew Welles fit the part (with Greene essentially describing Welles when he described Lime) so Korda asked him. Welles agreed but then, as revenge for Korda’s past behavior, proceeded to tour Europe to film scenes for Othello (1952).
Korda wanted the contract signed and Welles locked in, so he sent his brother, Vincent, after Welles. Over the next week, Vincent had to chase Welles to Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Capri because Wels would make sure they picked up and move to a new location each time Vincent was almost to them.
“I knew I was going to do it,” Welles later said, “but I was going to make it just as unpleasant as possible.” I loved this part of the story shared by TCM.com:
“On the way back to London via a privately chartered plane, Welles played one final, brilliant prank on Alexander Korda. Vincent asked him to hold a basket of fruit that he had gathered for his brother during the pursuit. This was post-war Europe, so fresh fruit was an exceedingly rare item. “It was going to be offered as a great present,” Welles said. “He’d gone and picked each piece of fruit. It was too good to be true! I knew Alex wouldn’t touch any of it if it had been bitten into.” So, when Vincent was asleep, Welles carefully took a bite out of each piece.”
Yes, Welles was literally chased down for this role, and it paid off because the character he played became known as one of the most iconic villains in cinema history.
I can’t say enough about the brilliant imagery in this film. Maybe it is my photography background/experience and my absolutely obsession with black and white photography that had me gawking in amazement and visually enamored with so many of this movie’s scenes.
Here is a still from a scene in the cemetery.
Anna is standing in the middle of the shot, the focal point of the photo, and on either side of her are rows of naked trees, forcing the viewer’s eyes to follow the trees down to Anna and only then wander slowly to Holly, watching her walk away. There is a barren feeling to the scene — the nakedness of the trees, the pale white of the sky showing it’s an overcast day, Anna with her head down, clearly in thought as she’s walking away, Holly watching her with a hint of sadness in his gaze.
Then there is this still from one of the most famous scenes in the movie.
Orson Welles in Carol Reed’s THE THIRD MAN (1949). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures / Studiocanal
There’s a chase through the sewers going on, Welles’ character is on the run and what is so incredible about this entire scene is how the tunnel forms a tunnel for our eyes, once again bringing our focus right to the man running in the middle of the scene, toward the light, toward freedom that he may or may not ever reach.
It was hard for me to take my eyes off this film, not only because of the story but because of the visual smorgasboard.
There are quite a few reviews of the movie online, with many of them agreeing that The Third Man is one of, if not the, greatest noir film ever made.
Tom Spoors from Loud and Clear Reviews writes: “Almost every frame of The Third Man is a visual marvel, employing all kinds of cinematic techniques. There’s plenty of dutch angles, sure, but what I found even more interesting is the way that Reed uses shadows. He puts his main character in a situation and a location that is brand new to him, and builds this world to be one constantly cloaked in mystery. Reed places silhouettes around every corner, plasters every wall with them, creating a city that almost doesn’t feel real. It’s an atmosphere that I don’t think has ever been captured again to this extent, and perhaps the biggest reason why the moviehas gone on to be one of the most critically acclaimed noirs of all time. Simply put, no other film in its genre looks or feels quite like it.”
Philip French of The Guardian wrote about the movie: “From the moment the first audiences saw the opening image of Anton Karas’s zither filling the screen with the nerve-jangling Harry Lime Theme (before, indeed, they had heard the word “zither”), they knew that with the second collaboration between director Carol Reed and author Graham Greene they were in for something special. At its end they recognised (British spelling) they’d seen a near-perfect work, what we now call a noir classic.”
It’s become a tradition for me to share and then disagree with the late film critic Roger Ebert’s reviews on here but this time I can’t.
“Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies. I saw it first on a rainy day in a tiny, smoke-filled cinema on the Left Bank in Paris. It told a story of existential loss and betrayal. It was weary and knowing, and its glorious style was an act of defiance against the corrupt world it pictured. Seeing it, I realized how many Hollywood movies were like the pulp Westerns that Holly Martins wrote: naive formulas supplying happy endings for passive consumption.”
If you haven’t seen the movie, you really need to and find out if this scene below is a flashback or … what’s really going on….
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I’ve been watching and writing about what are known as The Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy.
I’ve already written about the first two movies, and you can find those recaps/reviews/thoughts here and here.
Today I am writing about the third movie in the series, Another Thin Man.
If you have not seen the first two movies, there is a spoiler in this one, just to warn you.
You’ve been warned. Are you ready?
You sure? Time to look away if you don’t want to know….
….
….
…..
Okay. You’ll have to know now if you haven’t already left.
In this movie, we have an addition to our mystery-solving team — Nick Jr.
That’s right. Nick and Nora Charles have had a baby since the last movie and what a cute baby he is.
He isn’t a central part of the somewhat confusing plot of this movie, but he is an adorable addition. You would actually suspect there would be a baby in this one if you saw the end of the last movie when Nora was knitting baby booties.
Somewhat convoluted plots seem to be the norm for The Thin Man movies, but let’s be honest, we aren’t just here for the mystery — we are here for the Nick and Nora banter and one-liners.
We are here for scenes like one where Nick finds Nora at a night club with men all around her, gently makes his way to her, and says, “Now, Mommy, you know you can’t be out until the doctor says it’s okay for you to leave quarantine.”
That clears the room fast, and the couple is left to compare notes with each other on their investigation.
Let’s go back a bit and give an overview of the movie.
Nick (William Powell) and Nora (Myrna Loy) accept an invitation to visit a family friend who also helps with Nora’s money (she’s an heiress if you remember from the previous movies), Col. Burr MacFay (C. Aubrey Smith – who I have been seeing in a lot of old movies I’ve been watching lately). MacFay is convinced his neighbor, Phil Church, who he worked with before, and is a known criminal, is trying to kill him.
No one else in the family is sure about this but MacFay calls Nick and Nora in the middle of the night practically begging them to help him find out.
While they are there, the dog of MacFay’s daughter is murdered brutally (that was dark) and a knife is thrown at Nick when he tries to talk to Phil Church (Sheldon Leonard).
It was also quite odd that when they were driving in to the estate, Nick saw a stabbed, “dead” body along the road, but when he stopped to investigate the body was gone and the chauffer ran off into the woods.
Skipping ahead, without spoiling too much, I can tell you that MacFay is murdered and right afterward Church disappears.
This leaves Nick and Nora to help the police investigate if Church actually murdered him or if someone else did.
Everyone else involved with the first two movies returned for this one, even the creator of Nick and Nora, noir crime writer Dashiell Hammet, who helped with the screenplay again this time, but was kicked off the last movie for drinking too much.
The two married, Oscar-winning writers who tried to kill the series by writing a baby in — Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich — even came back, but this was their last movie in the series, which Myrna Loy said negatively affected the last three movies.
“Do you know I never saw them at Metro?” she wrote in her autobiography. “It’s terrible, really, but unless they sent for the writers to get us out of a hole, we seldom saw them on the set….I didn’t meet the Hacketts until I moved to New York in the fifties. We became friends, I’m happy to say, and Albert facetiously explained one day why they didn’t write the last three Thin Man pictures: ‘Finally I just threw up on my typewriter. I couldn’t do it again; I couldn’t write another one.’ Perhaps we all should have concurred; those last three never really touched the previous ones.”
Director Woody VanDyke returned as well.
The movie almost wasn’t made, however, due to a health scare with its leading man, William Powell, as well as the sudden, unexpected death of his fiancé, Jean Harlow, right before filming.
William Powell and Jean Harlow
Powell was treated for cancer in 1938. Jean passed away in 1937. It was a more tired and depressed Powell who returned for the movie, even though his cancer treatments were successful. According to TCM.com, the cast and crew did their best to lift his spirits.
“Powell was given a standing ovation by the cast and crew on his first day on the set of Another Thin Man,” an article by Lang Thompson shares. “According to author Charles Francisco in the biography, Gentleman: The William Powell Story, “Powell, looking remarkably fit and tanned, seemed embarrassed by the attention. He held up his hands and the familiar grin began to play at the corners of his mouth as he tried to think of something funny to say. The applause stopped, and Bill found that he couldn’t speak. Myrna Loy rushed over to him and gave him a kiss and a big hug.”
To help with Powell’s recovery, VanDyke, usually known as a no-nonsense guy, cut shooting hours down to six hours a day and let Powell rest whenever he needed.
Powell’s illness kept him from being able to take the role of Maxim de Winter in Hitchock’s Rebecca. The role went to Laurence Olivier instead. Personally, I believe Olivier was a better fit.
Another Thin Man ended up being one of the highest-grossing films of 1939.
Up next in our series will be Shadow of the Thin Man from 1941. We will see if Myrna was right about the last three not being as good as the first three, with Hackett and Goodrich not on board.
You can read my impressions of the other movies I have watched here.
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