Heavy Weather In Flight:
Lives After Deaths

Phone Call From A Stranger (1952)
Studio: 20th Century Fox • 96 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 1 Feb 1952
Re-release: Fox (Apr 2008)
Starring: Shelley Winters, Gary Merrill, Michael Rennie, Keenan Wynn, Bette Davis
Dir: Jean Negulesco

In a town full of starlets, Bette Davis was always an actress with leading star qualities – even very early in her career. Her most memorable work spans a very few years, just before and just after the beginning of WWII. Had it not been for a sensational return in 1950’s All About Eve – playing an actress past her prime (!) – Davis might have been offered the small role of Marie Hoke in Phone Call From A Stranger as an afterthought by the producers. Instead, Davis lobbied for the role, believing then, and in later years, that it was a juicy plum with opportunities for depth and range not often presented. It’s tempting to report she was right: but, nearly 60 years later, perhaps the jury’s still out.

In the midst of a horrendous rain storm, lawyer David Trask (Gary Merrill) hurries into a cab and heads to the airport. He’s leaving behind a wife and two daughters, unable to face living with knowledge of her indiscretions with another man, nor find a way to forgive her. While waiting for the late night flight at Midland, Iowa airport, he meets fellow travellers: Binky Gay (Shelley Winters), an aspiring actress who slipped away to New York only to find work as a stripper, after a few weeks of glory on stage; Dr Robert Fortness (Michael Rennie), a stiff-lipped, free drinking physician with a secret to reveal to the Los Angeles DA; and Eddie Hoke (Keenan Wynn), an annoying, crass, loud, in-your-face novelty joke salesman, or at least a salesman with an unending supplying of fake eyeballs, ears and knee-slapper guffaws.

“It was a dark and stormy night” doesn’t begin to convey the hell of this flight, undertaken in the midst of a terrible rain. After four hours, the flight touches down in Vega, TX (better known as the original termination of Route 66) on the border with New Mexico. Crew and passengers retire to the bus-stop like clapboard terminal restaurant (quick! name another movie with a screen door and porch at the airport); our clique sticks together and decide to exchange addresses. They make a pact that once a year they’ll meet again to regale each other of the adventure they were having. By morning, the skies are clear and the plane takes-off for its final destination – but fate intervenes and the plane crashes; most perish, and only David Trask among our clique survives (and literally, with just a scratch — but this is the movies!).

Settling into a hotel room in LA, David discovers the slips of paper with the phone numbers of his fellow travellers. One by one he calls the surviving families to share memories of their final hours together. In turn he meets Binky’s husband and mother-in-law, a hard-nosed night club owner and ex-vaudevillian; Claire Fortness and her son Jerry who has just run away from home; and finally Marie Hoke (Bette Davis), who is not quite the glamorous swimmer we believe her to be, but an older invalid, bed-ridden after a terrible accident. What David discovers in each encounter is a little bit of his own life story, helping him gain a new perspective on his own family and marital issues.

Bosley Crowther in the New York Times wrote at the opening: “So slick, indeed, is the whole thing — so smooth and efficiently contrived to fit and run with the precision of a beautifully made machine — that it very soon gives the impression of being wholly mechanical, picked up from a story-teller’s blueprints rather than from the scroll of life.” There is no escaping the too lengthy set-up, and no denying the film drags here and there; and without the redeeming distractions of a memorable score, or fabulous sets and locations, or glamourous gowns, there is more than a whiff of the mechanical. Still, IAR Wylie’s scenario intrigues, and like an episode of Columbo, it’s the working out that’s most of the fun. Thankfully, Nunnally Johnson (writer of The Grapes of Wrath, The Woman At The Window, Black Widow, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) is at the helm as writer and producer and Jean Negulesco (Humoresque, Johnny Belinda, Titanic) directs skillfully and with moments of flair, if unfortunately little inspiration.

This is a Gary Merrill vehicle and he carries the film efficiently. Yet the character’s a man facing a future as a black hole, his family life in ruins, and he’s made the decision, as a lawyer, to run away and start over, while still hoping to provide for his children from afar. He has no apparent plan; he’s running on gut fuel. Except for the final scene – played opposite Bette Davis (his real life wife from 1950 to 1960), Merrill is far too “matter-of-fact”, and certainly too grounded, to raise the emotional stakes for the audience. It has to be said the same applies to Michael Rennie whose character is on the brink of ruin, and who engages Trask during the Vega lay-over to represent him as he intends to turn himself in when they arrive at their final destination. These are powerful demons too tightly controlled, too sub-merged here to be compelling.

For Shelley Winters, this film was released just six months after A Place In The Sun which earned her her first Oscar nomination; and she is meltingly charming as an almost unhinged first time flyer, revealing her vulnerabilities at realising life with her husband was more important than a questionable career on stage. But it is the Bette Davis scene where, Perry Mason-like, her invalid character interrogates David Trask on why he is really calling on each of the families; she understands redemption, true love, and true love’s loss. Her clipped dialogue, and shifting emotions as she leaks out her own grief, fighting the reality of being left suddenly alone, is the stuff that only star actors can create. It is the most memorable part of the film, the only part which stays with the viewer (though several other moments might have stayed had they been less mechanical).

There are no extra commentaries or featurettes; but there is a trailer and a “teaser”. As part of Fox’s “Cinema Classics Collection” the DVD is available singly or in a Bette Davis 100th Birthday Celebration box, along with All About Eve, Hush, Hush … Sweet Charlotte and two other films. A very good job of restoration has been made, specific to this release. As an ensemble piece, Phone Call From A Stranger has merits though it has to be said the players do not rise to the potential of the material. This is a setting of unrevealed diamonds in the rough, as it were.

Banking On Character:
Currency of the Times
American Madness (1932)
Studio: Columbia Pictures • 76 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 4 Aug 1932
Re-release: Sony Pictures (Dec 2006)
Series: Premiere Frank Capra Collection (6-DVD)
Starring: Walter Huston, Pat O’Brien, Kay Johnson, Constance Cummings, Gavin Gordon
Dir: Frank Capra

On the audio commentary track, it is stated that “a run on a bank couldn’t happen today because our money is protected”. That was recorded in 2005; how times change — and how things remain the same! In the midst of our own century’s most traumatic financial crisis, where not just 25% of banks but virtually every American bank has failed — American Madness, made in 1932, speaks directly to our own fears of economic collapse driven by rumour and manipulation. Now identified as the first genuinely “Capra-eske” outing (although it was his 17th of 25 films made at Columbia), here you’ll find soft-core villains, stirring debates, passionate pleas leading to last minute saves, and a happy bundle of tied up loose ends as the final credits roll.

Thomas Dickson (Walter Huston) is president of Union National Bank, an institution he founded 25 years earlier and remains successful, even in the midst of depression. All the trappings of success are evident: mighty columns, a massive vault door, marble floors and staircases leading to wood panelled executive offices and countless staff serving the public. But at the Board of Directors’ meeting — for which Dickson is late — there is a desire to replace the president because of loans he’s making based on character instead of collateral. Although a coup is at hand, when Dickson arrives, he argues for faith over money, and character as the true currency of loans. He reminds the board that his judgement has made them all rich and his policies have resulted in not a single defaulted loan. He squashes their yen for a merger with another bank and dismisses them.

Matt Brown (Pat O’Brien) is the man with the combination, opening and sealing the time-lock vault every day. He’d like to marry Helen (Constance Cummings), Dickson’s private secretary, but is waiting for a promotion to Assistant Cashier. His boss, the Chief Cashier Cyril Cluett (Gavin Gordon), is single and has a propensity to gamble. When a well-known gangster comes to Cluett’s office to discuss repayment, Helen, recognizing the crooks, takes note. The only thing that will save Cluett is to find $50,000 fast: the gangsters convince him to leave the time-lock alarm off and find a strong alibi for midnight — tonight! When Mrs Dickson (Kay Johnson) also visits the bank, she is crushed to learn her beloved, who is married more to the bank than to her, has made business plans for their wedding anniversary — tonight! Although understanding, she accepts the flirtations of Cluett and agrees to spend an evening at the theatre with him; and so, Cluett will have his alibi!

In the midst of a dreadful rainstorm, Mrs Dickson and Cluett arrive back at his apartment — as the clock strikes midnight — only to discover Matt waiting for them. He pleads with Mrs Dickson not to throw away her marriage and scolds Cluett for his philandering. Meanwhile, the robbery is taking place and the night watchman, who stumbles upon the event, is killed. During the course of the next day, rumours spread that the bank was robbed and will be forced to default. During a run on the bank, Dickson implores his board, and his customers, to accept his word that everything will be alright. But when Dickson learns Matt, keeper of the vault’s combination, is charged with the crime and that Matt’s alibi involves his own wife, he is broken. Even Dickson’s board refuses to put their own money on the line to help the temporary cash flow problem. Who can save him? What if everyday customers came down to make deposits instead of withdrawals ….

Toronto born Walter Huston is marvelous in this role: upbeat, confident, trusting, determined and, above all, fearless. Although only 48 at the time, he evokes a believably spry 60. Though he’d worked for Universal, Paramount and Warner Bros (and only two years earlier starred in DW Griffiths’ studio’s last production, Abraham Lincoln), Columbia Pictures — which at the time was viewed as a “poverty row” studio — managed to snag him for a role that became a Capra archetype of defender of the everyman who faces his darkest hour and ultimately is redeemed by those he has helped. Lanky, energetic and direct, Huston inhabits every frame in the same way James Stewart, Cary Cooper and Gregory Peck would in similar circumstances (and often with Capra at the helm).

Kay Johnson, though 20 years younger than Huston, manages to look fifty-ish and plays the role of unappreciated, but always full of love wife, with aplomb — though with a whiff of non-descriptness, it must be said. Her career was relatively short; she’d later have roles in Of Human Bondage and the Edmund Goulding film, White Banners. Pat O’Brien well fills the shoes of a hard-working, loyal employee — and whose back story includes being an ex-con in whom only Dickson had faith. His career as supporting actor in ensemble pieces was rich, opposite such stars as James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces, and tending to become more Irish over the years including his most famous role as Coach Knute Rockne. Like many contract players of the studio era, from the mid-50s he graduated to television work, finally appearing in his 80s as Uncle Joe in Happy Days. If there is less to say about Constance Cummings and Gavin Gordon (and his decidedly odd make-up), it says more about Walter Huston who dominates the picture (in a nice way).

As for Frank Capra, American Madness marked his first “iconic” work but hardly his first success. He already had Platinum Blonde with Jean Harlow and Loretta Young behind him, usually associated with Columbia. He’d completed about a dozen silents for the studio, often as director, writer and sometimes producer as well, turning out a string of successful films laying the ground work for big budget features with big budget stars such as It Happened One Night, Mr Deeds Goes To Town, You Can’t Take It With You and Mr Smith Goes To Washington — all, happily, contained in this collection. (It’s a pity this set does not extend to include Lost Horizon.) Capra was nominated for four Oscars as Best Director for films in this set; he won for three of them. So, the 1930s was Capra’s decade, yes? Remarkably, Meet John Doe, Arsenic and Old Lace, It’s a Wonderful Life, A Hole In The Head and Pocketful of Miracles lay ahead. (Side note: the MoMA — Museum of Modern Art — lists Capra, one of the most quintessentially American directors ever, giving voice to American values, as “Italian”. Sheeeesh!)

“The Premiere Frank Capra Collection” from Sony contains commentaries, a handsome, lovingly produced 60 pg printed tribute, and Ron Howard’s 2 hr documentary — plus other extras devoted to specific films, like American Madness, with 20 min of Frank Capra Jr reminiscing about his father and this production. The print is very good, with only occasional short scenes not taken from ideal sources, while the sound is stronger than many films from its era. Without reservation, this is class packaging and restoration. It’s a special treat, too, since American Madness has largely been overlooked by his later films including It’s A Wonderful Life which owes much to this “screen test”.

Seeking Mom and Ex-Lovers?
Don’t Go Home Again
Dead End (1937)
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn • 92 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 27 Aug 1937
Re-release: MGM (Mar 2005)
Starring: Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart, Claire Trevor, Wendy Barrie, Billy Halop
Dir: William Wyler

Dead End, although nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, won nothing. It’s a fine picture, and stands up remarkably well for its time; yet this was hardly an example of “Oscar getting it wrong”: Claire Trevor, as Best Supporting Actress nominee, has little more than a walk-on; Marjorie Main, not nominated, in a role of similar size, completely outclasses her. This is not a film about the small parts, really: it’s memorable as a break-through role for Humphrey Bogart, third in billing, as the gangster “Baby Face” Martin.

It’s the mid-30s, the east side of New York, and cheek-by-jowl, the very well-healed have discovered harbourfront property is desirable; but New York’s harbourside is currently dominated by aging tenement slums. Due to construction, the ritzy are forced to use the “back entrance” for a time which empties into the squalor of the neighbours, and a dead end overlooking Queensboro Bridge; in doing so, two classes interact, and clash, temporarily. Dave Connell (Joel McCrea) is a budding architect who grew up in these very slums and, poisoned by them, landed in reform school; though he made good — six years in college! — the economy is rough and he’s reduced to taking odd jobs waiting for his big break. He’s sweet on Kay Burton (Wendy Barrie), who lives in the fancy digs with a wealthy lover she loves for his money alone; her heart is with Dave, but her desire to avoid poverty is too strong and Dave, alas, is broke.

Drina Gordon (Sylvia Sidney) is the nice girl subsisting in the tenements, devoting her life to raising her teenage kid brother now that their parents are dead; Tommy Gordon (Billy Halop) is a nice kid, but also the local boys’ gang leader, and on the brink of turning from pranks to crime. Dave likes Drina but is blinded by Kay; Drina thinks she has no chance, and she herself is slipping deeper into poverty striking (literally) against the wealthy barons of industry for a measly $3.50/wk more that would save her, and Tommy, from this terrible life. At one moment, with defiant pride, she shows a bruise on her forehead given to her in a strike line by the police protecting the wealthy business class. And here she is, living next door to the robber barons, whilst her Prince Charming is smitten by a woman ensnared by that very wealth!

Enter “Baby Face” Martin (Humphrey Bogart) and his side-kick Hunk (Allen Jenkins): Martin has returned to his old neighbourhood to find his mother and his girlfriend, both left behind more than ten years earlier when Marty, as he was then known, graduated from punk, to teen gang boss, to reform school, to notorious criminal and murderer making headlines across the country. Though it was two decades later that James Agee famously made the autobiographical observation “You can never go home again”, Marty experiences that during a stark encounter with his mother (Marjorie Main) who utters the painful “you’re no son of mine!” on the stairwell of the tenement she exists in, slapping his face for good measure. Hours later, he tracks down Francey (Claire Trevor), the only woman he’s carried a torch for over the years, only to find she’s a prostitute, suffering from TB (or worse), and happy to take a few dollars from him, even as he hands the money over contemptuously and with a warning, “The money’s hot; be careful where you spend it”.

With these irons in the storyline fire, much more than sparks will erupt during the chance encounter between Dave and Marty, who both lived these streets, as buddies, and took two paths out, neither finding real success nor love. It’s good vs evil (if perhaps damaged goods vs evil), and wealth vs poverty; and the power of the state vs the working man, in one dirty snowball about to impact the lives of so many in one short night at the edge of the river of this particular dead end. Or is there hope, for some, for a better tomorrow?

Lillian Hellman wrote the screenplay based upon a successful Broadway play by Sidney Kingsley; Kingsley won a Pulitzer for his very first play, Men in White, produced just a year before Dead End, and employing the morality of abortion as its theme. If there is flaw in the movie Dead End, it is its stageiness — although that also contributes to the claustrophobia in which all of the characters carry out their lives. Gregg Toland’s cinematography emphasizes that theme, in shadowy cramped quarters inside the tenements, ominous back alleys and the palpable filth of the river and the wharf. Toland, of course, a few years later, shot Citizen Kane.

Sylvia Sidney fully inhabits the character of “good sister-mother figure-worker against the oppressors-lover in waiting” without ever quite raising the barre. Arguably, this was the last important film in what was a short Hollywood career, and a very busy two years in front of the camera: opposite Spencer Tracey in Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936); starring in one of Alfred Hitchock’s last UK films, Sabotage (1936); opposite Henry Fonda in Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937); and finally (no pun intended) Dead End. Likewise, Joel McCrea’s career was at a cross-roads — his enduring fame would not be for this film, but for musicals and westerns in his very near future (his next, released on New Year’s Eve, was Wells Fargo). Here he’s a good leading man, and a hero by chance; but neither he, nor Sidney, nor Wendy Barrie as his prospective wealthy lover Kay, particularly light up the screen.

Humphrey Bogart does. Here is a fully formed gangster, vicious, but realistic, sporting a vulnerable, tender side (admitedly a slim side) to inform his disappointments upon rejection by his mother, and destruction of the image of his left-behind lover. His screen time is relatively brief, with just enough time to put in the details of his life, brood a little, and come face-to-face with Good in the form of Dave and his pistol. There is no redeeming grain in Marty’s soul, as emphasized by the plot to kidnap a wealthy teenager in the apartments looking down (in every sense) on his childhood’s world; yet Bogart’s portrayal never slips into mere gesture. His mastery as an actor lay ahead: but here he’s already fully achieved art.

Quick words of praise should be awarded to Marjorie Main as Marty’s mother. Main, of course, is most remembered as “Ma Kettle” and in countless character actor roles; there is nothing funny about her star turn here. Similiarly, Billy Halop, as Tommy the teenager in trouble, shines above the other “dead end kids” (who would later return as the comic ensemble The Bowery Boys). Dead End has several sub-plots; Tommy’s story is arguably the most important. Finally, Claire Trevor, otherwise an accomplished actress, is awarded second tier billing (same as Bogart and Barrie) but really has little to do, and does it quite forgettably; how she came to Oscar nominee status for the role is a mystery.

Director William Wyler, at 70 films spread over 40+ years, hit his stride in 1935 with The Good Fairy, followed by a string of memorable films annually: Dodsworth (1936), Dead End (1937), Jezebel (1938), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), Mrs Miniver (1942) … not to mention later iconic films such as The Heiress, Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, The Collector and Funny Girl. A strong film, and deservedly memorable, Dead End is the sum of its parts: no more, no less.

Though this MGM re-release is a “bargain” edition — no extras other than the (murky) trailer are included — what a fine print and sound is revealed. Admirers of Bogart, Wyler and the generally under-rated Sidney will not be disappointed. Though now 72 years since its release, Dead End is remarkably contemporary in dealing with the tensions of wealth and power, and the corrupting influence of grinding poverty.

Would-Be War Bride:
The Lady Vanishes
Waterloo Bridge (1931)
Studio: Universal • 81 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 1 Sep 1931
Re-release: Warner Bros — TCM Archives (Dec 2006)
Series: Forbidden Hollywood, Vol 1 (2-DVD)
Starring: Mae Clarke, Kent Douglass, Doris Lloyd, Enid Bennett, Bette Davis
Dir: James Whale

Movie archaeologists who might have believed the long suppressed 1931 version of Universal’s Waterloo Bridge was lost – MGM bought the rights and made a remake with Vivien Leigh in 1940 – were delighted when it was unearthed in the 1970s; it is now, happily, available to the rest of us as part of the initial offering in TCM Archive’s “Forbidden Hollywood” releases of pre-code talkies (1929-July 1934). Without question, the film is a revelation.

Myra Deauville (Mae Clarke) is a chorus girl in a big London production as the nation heads into WWI. Flash forward two years, and she has been out of work ever since, and now works the troops on leave, and other men in the night with money, to make ends meet. She happens to be on Waterloo Bridge when an air raid siren goes off indicating zeppelins above ready to drop bombs; she is rescued by a young American solider, Roy Cronin (Kent Douglass) who ushers her into a safe zone. When the coast is clear, he gallantly sees her home in a taxi. Asking him up, they share innocent chat but clearly the young soldier is smitten. He’s a handsome blond lad, from a well-healed family, having joined the British forces in Toronto, Canada and barely 19. When he offers to help her out with a few dollars for rent, Myra becomes angry and throws him out, relenting moments later. He does not know she’s a prostitute; she thinks he’s too good for her.

Over the next few days, while Roy is on a 14 day leave, he woos the pretty Myra, encountering the persistent landlady (Ethel Griffies), her next window neighbour and fellow aging lady-of-the-night, Kitty (Doris Lloyd), as well as taking her to his family’s country estate to meet “The Major” (his British step-father), his mother Mary (Enid Bennett) and his sister Janet (Bette Davis). All the while, Myra is conflicted: she is a fallen woman, and does not deserve a young man as pure and innocent and handsome and wealthy as Roy. When confronted by Roy’s mother, she confesses all; though kindly, Roy’s mother agrees her son must not marry her. When they return to town, Myra tries to disappear but the lovesick Roy finds her and prevails in his quest to have her accept his hand in marriage. Alas, though he learns the truth about her profession and still insists upon a marriage, his furlough is cut short and they part on Waterloo Bridge, where they first met. Will he survive the next round of battles? Will she survive the bombings in London?

Mae Clarke is poignant, natural, and broodingly heart-breaking throughout. Though this is a very early talkie, when acting styles still tended to silent era gestures, Clarke’s interactions capture the roller-coaster conflicts of finding a man to protect her, and dealing with the harsh realities of her everyday life. As Roy’s mother tells her, she’s basically a fine girl; alas, she is damaged goods and Clarke’s portrayal demonstrates she’ll never be able to forget that. Although not nominated for any major award during her career, Clarke’s performance here is plainly far above chorus girl standing. She had a role in The Front Page and was the (uncredited) face James Cagney immortally squished a grapefruit into in The Public Enemy; but her career – and she was extremely talented based on this film – sputtered into obscurity within next five years or so. I wondered how Norma Shearer, or Barbara Stanwyck, might have handled this same role; in wondering out loud, it makes clear the heights Clarke reached in this performance.

Her leading man, Kent Douglass (later Douglass Montgomery), exudes a heart-throbbingly naïve innocence, and fully inhabits the love-struck young man wanting to win the woman of his heart to his side forever. In an early scene, she sits on her bed and Roy slides down beside her, feet hooked chastely over the bed posts, as they talk and smoke cigarettes together. His eyes, adoring, never leave her; his smile, giddy, with new found love. Director James Whale spent three precious days in private coaching to bring young Montgomery up to speed; there isn’t a false note in his entire performance. Is it multi-faceted, as Clarke’s is of Myra? No, but its touching realism is played exactly right. And he has an infectious giggle.

The other roles are all bit parts, save, perhaps, for the gently strong-willed Enid Bennett as Roy’s mother. In two confrontations, one on the tennis court and the other in her boudoir, Bennett creates a resigned figure who, within the bounds of propriety, will look out for her son and her family. By recognizing Myra as essentially a “good girl”, Bennett is able to reveal a more human, less class-conscious side while relying on Myra to “do the right thing”. Bette Davis, in her third and last film for Universal, is capable and non-descript. That’s not a knock; there is no role for her here.

The other revelation of Waterloo Bridge has got to be the strong guidance provided by director James Whale. This was his second film (he debuted a year earlier in Journey’s End, from Gainsborough Pictures) and was made on the eve of Frankenstein (it premiered just 82 days later). Whale went on to direct The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Man in the Iron Mask and, incongruously perhaps, 1936’s musical smash Showboat featuring Irene Dunne and the great Paul Robeson. Whale’s career spanned ten-ish years, with 20 of his 21 films completed by 1941. Whale’s stage experience (as director), and innate cinematic sensibilities, are fully in evidence here, without a single mis-step. Working within a very tight budget, Whale manages some incredibly effective settings in the musical hall, on the bridge in a bombing raid, in Myra’s lodgings, several street scenes and inside the Cronin mansion – not to mention some “on location” shooting on the grounds. As much as Clarke could have become another Shearer, and Douglass another Leslie Howard, it is cinema’s loss that Whale didn’t fully actualise Whale.

The print is gorgeous for its very, very early date and if the sound is thin, it remains compelling, delivering the rich urgent baritone of Douglass’s young voice. It’s a pity no commentaries or extras are attached to this set but don’t let that deter you from experiencing this unexpected treasure for yourself.

That Lady Hepburn:
No Shrinking Flower She
Morning Glory (1933)
Studio: RKO • 74 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 13 Aug 1933
Re-release: Warner Bros (May 2007)
Series: Katharine Hepburn: 100th Anniversary Collection (6 DVD)
Starring: Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Adolphe Menjou, C Aubrey Smith, Mary Duncan
Dir: Lowell Sherman

Morning Glory (1933) is a touching, well paced story of a young woman vying for success in the glamourous world of New York’s theatre. Premiered a year before the enforcement of the notorious production code, it is less explicit about sexuality than some other films of its time; yet no details of the use (and abuse) of sexual favours by the powerful is left to the imagination, including an attempt to buy off, and never have to face, a young woman taken advantage of in a drunken state. It was only Hepburn’s third film, but it won her her first of 12 Oscar nominations, and her first win – a dramatic start for the 26 year old newcomer to Hollywood. The themes of youthful optimism and sheer determination are as relevant today as they were in the depths of the 1930s depression.

A young woman in simple clothes and coat – Eva Lovelace (Katharine Hepburn) – enters an office building lobby adorned with four portraits, lions of the New York theatrical stage: Maude Adams, John Drew, Ethel Barrymore and Sarah Bernhardt. Taking an elevator to the offices of a prestigious theatrical agent, she encounters an old man, RH “Bob” Hedges (C Aubrey Smith), who is waiting for an appointment to sign a contract for a small part in an upcoming production. Suspecting he might be important, Eva introduces herself and, in an endearingly nervous delivery boldly reveals her life story and unshakeable theatrical ambitions. In short order, Bob has agreed to mentor the aspiring actress, and he has introduced her to the producer Lewis Easton (Adolphe Menjou) and his protégé, a young playwright, Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr). Though the introduction is interrupted by the arrival of box office star Rita Vernon (Mary Duncan), Eva manages to talk herself into a small role in an upcoming show.

Over the following year, Eva’s spirit has dwindled: she did poorly in the role and lost the job, and has since led a “starving artist” meal-to-meal existence. She has lost touch with all of Easton’s crowd, including kindly Bob Hedges. Meanwhile, Rita, who is also lover of convenience to producer Easton, has thrived. About to get into a taxi in a heavy downpour, Bob spots Eva through the window of a coffee shop and becomes reacquainted. He whisks her off to a party – at Easton’s! – to celebrate Rita’s latest triumph. It’s clear to all Eva is on hard times; but Joseph, in particular, remembers how smitten he was by her. Having eaten little, champagne goes to her head and she delivers two soliloquies, turning the heads of everyone, before she passes out.

The next morning, Joseph returns to find Eva has spent the night with Easton who, embarrassed, admits he had his way with her. Crushed, Joseph is asked to give her some money when she awakes so Easton doesn’t have to confront her. Instead, he becomes determined to see she gets another chance at acting and arranges for her to have a small role in the next production, his own big chance to shine, “The Golden Bough”. Some weeks later, on opening night, minutes before the curtain is to rise, Rita demands a new contract with impossible terms or she’ll walk. Though Easton is about to give in, Joseph insists they use Eva, who has secretly been understudying the role with coaching from Joseph. As one star leaves the theatre, a new one is born. Bob delivers a stirring speech about the fickleness of the theatre and the short moment in the sun many young talents enjoy, like a morning glory. What will be Eva’s fate?

There is curiously little for Douglas Fairbanks Jr to do, as the producer’s protégé, other than appear handsome, and concerned, and ultimately never quite get noticed by our heroine, with whom he is perpetually in love. Very handsome and barely 24 when this film was shot, Fairbanks had already been married to Joan Crawford for four years; they divorced during filming. How unlike the swashbuckler image of his father Fairbanks is, the mantle of which was instead inherited by Errol Flynn! Though he went on to a distinguished career in movies and television, the inability of his character, Joseph Sheridan, to seize the moment while holding all the career and life cards in his hand, seems rather poignant.

The relatively small but important role of RH Hedges is delightfully filled by instantly recognizable veteran character actor C Aubrey Smith. Seventy years old at the time of Morning Glory, Smith was in no less than 95 talkies before his death in 1948. His birth in London, in 1863, pre-dates Canadian Confederation and marks the mid-point of the US Civil War! (George Bernard Shaw was a mere seven years older.) Adolphe Menjou, as all powerful producer Lewis Easton, creates a fine portrait of a man knowing his own importance, his power over others, and, when he strays, hints at something of a conscience. Though nominated for an Oscar in 1931’s The Front Page, Menjou appeared in many films competently and capably as a supporting player without ever rising to star status.

Director Lowell Sherman, whose career was cut short by pre-mature death at 49, directed 14 films (although he acted in 50); his only other film of note was also made in 1933, the classic Mae West vehicle, She Done Him Wrong. (There is no relation to Vincent Sherman, a director with the same last name whose work inspired and delighted two generations.) Sherman’s touch is light, allowing the actors to act (sometimes a little too much), and the pacing lags only a little. Another director might have made more of the opportunities for comedic moments to lighten the sombre mood throughout.

Zoe Akins, whose play the film is based upon, was born in Missouri in 1886. Her career began as a magazine writer but before she was thirty, her first play was produced on Broadway, in 1915. She wrote 40 plays in total, and began screenwriting for Hollywood by the mid-1920s with Frank Borzage’s Daddy’s Gone A Hunting. In an odd twist of fate, her play Morning Glory never made it to Broadway. Other stage sensations included Declassée which starred the great Ethel Barrymore for 257 performances in the 1919-20 season; and The Old Maid in 1935 which landed her a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted for film as a vehicle for Bette Davis (see review elsewhere on this site).

Katharine Hepburn, of course, though this was only her third film, is pure Hepburn throughout. From the opening scenes where she accosts the elderly RH Hedges with unrelentingly fast, breathy patter, to the sometimes almost over-the-top gestures at the party of Easton as she performs for the crowd in an increasingly drunken state, it’s fully-formed Hepburn at every turn. There is a remarkable parallel to Hepburn’s own career reflected in the story of Eva Lovelace, a woman who put career ahead of all else and was every bit as good as she aspired to be.

The print is gorgeous for its day with only occasional blemishes marring what appears to be a well-preserved original. The sound is somewhat thin though Max Steiner’s romantic, occasionally urgent, score is well presented. Some of the gowns, particularly of leading lady Rita Vernon, are eye popping. A part of a 100th birthday celebration, several other Hepburn films, not widely circulated before, are included. There is no commentary but there are two shorts from 1933, a Bosko cartoon and an early (and badly deteriorated) Technicolor short on how to cook a duck (as a domestic kitchen time capsule, it’s worth watching once).

Snowclad Noir:
Off-Kilter Cop Redeemed
On Dangerous Ground (1949)
Studio: RKO • 81 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 15 Feb 1952
Re-release: Warner Bros (Jul 2006)
Series: Warner Bros Film Noir, Vol 3 (6-DVD)
Starring: Ida Lupino, Robert Ryan, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Ed Begley Sr, Sumner Williams
Dir: Nicholas Ray

Ida Lupino may have top billing but Robert Ryan walks away with this viewer’s admiration for his evolving portrayal of a cop close to the breaking point but whose humanity is restored through tragic events. As he begins to see himself reflected in those around him, notably a desperate, obsessive man whose daughter was recently murdered, Ryan’s manner softens and his soul renews — he’s a man who rediscovers he has a heart.

Jim Wilson (Robert Ryan) has been on the city police force for 11 years. Unlike his patrol mates, who are happily married, Wilson has no life beyond his work and is growing bitter and angry at the scum and meanness he faces everyday. When he lets his anger out once too often, his superior, Capt. Brawley (Ed Begley Sr) sends him on assignment in the country to help a an under-staffed county sheriff who is dealing with the recent murder of a teenage girl. The girl’s father, Walter Brent (Ward Bond) is blind with rage and, when the scent of the killer appears, teams up with Wilson to seek immediate justice. Unexpectedly, Wilson finds himself in the role of restrainer. The trail leads to the home of a blind woman, Mary Malden (Ida Lupino), whose younger brother Danny (Sumner Williams), is tagged as the murderer and hounded till tragic consequences ensue.

The film opens with classic noirish episodes: night scenes, urban streets slaked with rain, violence, unsavoury characters, and a man — a cop this time — on the edge of disaster. Nicholas Ray was one of the great directors and he, along with Ryan’s superb acting and Bernard Hermann’s tension-seething score, take risks which pay off, time and again. But this isn’t really noir, is it? More than half the film takes place in the snow-laden countryside where the character in anguish finds redemption and reason for optimism that life can be full and good. Never mind: it’s a terrific picture!

Apart from Ryan, Ida Lupino shines, given the rather weak dialogue she has to work with. By contrast, Cleo Moore, who has a bit part as a hood’s girlfriend, gets more memorable lines in an attempt to seduce Ryan earlier in the film. Even 19 y/o Nita Talbot, doing a very good Lauren Bacall impression and having one line in a sleazy bar, stands out. Ed Begley Sr has only three brief scenes, one of them added after filming had wrapped, yet adds gravitas and a warning which the Ryan character finally internalises.

Ward Bond, who plays up the obsessive rage toward his daughter’s murderer almost over the top, also surprises, endearing himself to us as he finally realises, too late, that the killer “was only a boy”, and carries him back to the farm tenderly as if he were his own son. And while he has only one scene, Sumner Williams as the mentally-off-kilter brother Danny, acquits himself with conviction. He only made eight films, several with Nicholas Ray, and wrote one produced screenplay in 1966; I couldn’t find anything else out about this handsome actor who appears to have disappeared completely.

A few words on Director Nicholas Ray. Born in 1911, he studied architecture and theatre at the University of Chicago; and though he received a fellowship to apprentice with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Foundation, clearly theatre (first the stage, then movies) drove his creative energies. In 1947, he directed his first film They Live By Night, at RKO, with John Houseman as producer (Houseman produced On Dangerous Ground as well). His most important work reveals great sympathy for rebellious teenagers, the most famous being Rebel Without A Cause. Ray made an astonishing set of films through the early 1960s, influencing many, including Francois Truffault. His lesser films from this period are generally underrated and deserve full revivals.

Glenn Erickson’s commentary is capable and informative buts lacks the enthusiasm Eddie Muller brings. Packaged economically in slimline Thinpak cases with four other films — plus a 68 min documentary Bringing Darkness To Light and five 20 min shorts from the “Crime Doesn’t Pay” series — Warner Bros Film Noir, Vol 3 matches its predecessors in value, restoring long-buried content in high quality to circulation. Recommended without reservations.

On The Noir Road:
Rotten To The Core
Thieves’ Highway (1949)
Studio: 20th Century Fox • 94 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 10 Oct 1949
Re-release: Criterion 224 (Feb 2005)
Starring: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J Cobb, Millard Mitchell, Barbara Lawrence
Dir: Jules Dassin

The name Jules Dassin is not widely known, except to certain movie goers and film scholars, in no small part due to the rather small number of films he directed: 25. But Dassin was not a tragic figure who died too young — that output is spread over 40 years. And he is credited as writer on fully 10 of them; and producer of six. He even appears as an actor in five of those, and fully credited as such in four. In short, despite his relative “unknownness”, Dassin is no cinematic footnote and perhaps the closest thing one comes to being an auteur in this business. He did manage two Oscar nominations in 1960 for Never On Sunday — both as writer and director — and an earlier film, Rififi, landed him Best Director at Cannes in 1955. Thieves’ Highway was his last film made in the US for 15 years having been caught up, as so many noir-ists were, in an anti-Communist purge.

Given so many emigres arrived in Hollywood in the 1930s and ’40s, it’s important to remind ourselves that Dassin was an American director born in Connecticut in 1911 — before the onset of WWI; he died in Athens, in 2008, at the age of 96. His wife, who pre-deceased him, was Greece’s former cultural minister, and sometime movie star, Melina Mercouri. Though Dassin began his career in acting, and entered the world of theater production, he found his career (and calling) after a stint as to assistant Alfred Hitchcock during the 1940 filming of Mr and Mrs Smith.

Greek-American Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) has just returned to his parent’s home after a lengthy tour as merchant seaman. His girlfriend Polly (Barbara Lawrence) has dutifully awaited his return; but tragedy has struck and his father, a truck driver, has lost his legs in an accident. A crooked fruit wholesaler in San Francisco, Mike Figlia (Lee J Cobb), had cheated Nick’s father out of money and was responsible for the accident; the son now vows revenge. Nick teams up with seasoned trucker Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell) and hauls a load of apples from a nearby orchard to the SF market hoping to encounter Figlia. When he arrives, Nick is side-tracked by local prostitute Rica (Valentina Cortese). Corruption abounds on the road, in the markets, and in most of the deals the players make: but redemption is possible, even if imposed, unexpectedly, by studio boss Daryll Zanuck in the final scenes.

Richard Conte is one of the actors of this period who is capable, and occasionally memorable, but rarely great; here he plays the good guy who steps up to corruption but never crosses the line. The guy’s so super good, you just know he flosses twice a day. I like the guy but, hey, this is 1949 and the dead centre of the noir universe … let’s have a few blemishes at least, please? The studio is Fox, after all, not Disney.

I can’t make my mind up who steals the picture: Lee J Cobb, as the unredeemable corrupt grocer, or the radiant Valentina Cortese as the local prostitute working the “seediest” end of town. Cobb is billed in the trailer as having recently starred in Broadway’s Pulitzer Prize winning Death of a Salesman and there’s no doubt he commands attention in every scene. Conte may be a tough guy but it’s not clear why Cobb would acquiese. To Cobb, Conte never represents a serious threat; at most, a temporary annoyance or perhaps a chump he can squeeze consistently in the future. Cortese, too, might be forgiven for falling for the “tall, dark and handsome” Conte but a degree of natural jadedness, given her profession, seems lacking. Nonetheless, allow me to repeat: Cortese is radiant on screen and no match at all for the shallow and money grasping girlfriend played by Barbara Lawrence. Surely no one in the audience roots for Polly.

There are some remarkable moments in the film, and they tend to be visual, and related to apples rolling down a hill: the scene as Nick and Ed pick up their load from the apple orchard and, temporarily attempt to chisel on the deal; and later, when a truck loses its load high on a hill and the crates of loose apples cascade down. This is not a noir with snappy dialogue nor humourous interludes to relieve the tension; in fact, its general tone of earnestness is a little too relentless. And while commentator Alain Silver, on the included secondary audio track, picks out a number of scenes of technical prowess, none of them quite touch the heart as those apples careening out of control, a visual metaphor for the characters in the film.

The extras that premium priced Criterion provides are adequate, not generous; one remains grateful for the (brief) Dassin interview. In it, the director reveals he had no idea a new ending had been ordered, shot and inserted into his film before release — as he had by this time fled the US and was working on his next film in London, Night And The City, with Richard Widmark and Gene Tierney. Thieves’ Highway has some pretty bleak moments and dire potentialities so this studio-inflicted sunshine-and-lollipops ending is not just jarring, but borders on laughable. Fortunately, the artistry of the preceeding 91 minutes is solid and repays repeat viewings.

A Dark and Stormy Night:
Whale’s Eccentric Night In Wales
The Old Dark House (1932)
Studio: Universal • 70 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 20 Oct 1932
Re-release: Kino Video (Sep 2003)
Starring: Boris Karloff, Raymond Massey, Gloria Stuart, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton
Dir: James Whale

If ever an early talkie deserved the opening line narration “It was a dark and stormy night …”, this is it. This rain-soaked early horror, freshly churned out by the director and studio which gave us Frankenstein, is based on a JB Priestly novel, “Benighted”. Five travellers stumble upon the Femm estate in Wales during a horrendous rain storm and appeal to spend the night. The residents, the four Femms, and their disfigured mute butler Morgan, are a creepy, eerie lot. As the evening wears on, the “eccentric” Femms show their true colours, terrorizing their guests till morning.

Though Frankenstein had been a huge hit for Universal, The Old Dark House was not. Though it was re-released in 1937, it was soon banished to the vaults and the rights to the story sold to another studio. It was remade in 1963 by schlock-meister William Castle for Hammer films and starred Robert Morley, Joyce Grenfell and Tom Poston playing up the humour over horror. Over the years, the film was thought to be lost but it turned up after an exhaustive search in the late 1960s and was restored from surviving negatives and other pre-production prints. Definitely pre-code, the very sexy 22 year old Gloria Stuart reveals much; Stuart appeared on screen as late as 1997 in Titanic as the elderly Rose. (She also appeared in Whale’s The Invisible Man.)

A relatively unknown actor, Ernest Thesiger, deliciously plays the key role of house host Horace Femm; however, you’ll be hard pressed to think of a more spineless character to reside in a fearsome place like the Femm residence. You may recall him as the Emperor Tiberius in the 1953 bible-pic The Robe, but more likely in yet another Whale horror, as Dr Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein. At 81, he made his 2nd last film, The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone. Toronto-born Raymond Massey is one of the hapless travellers; not yet a star (though he appeared in his first talkie the year before as Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band), he doesn’t even rate in lead billing. The always wonderful Charles Laughton plays Sir William Porterhouse, travelling with a chorus girl but obsessed with his recently dead wife. In filming order, this was Laughton’s first US film, though Devil and the Deep (with Laughton, Gary Cooper, Tallulah Bankhead and Cary Grant) was released a few weeks ahead of The Old Dark House.

Boris Karloff is the “star”, and simply billed as Karloff; but he has the ungrateful role as drunken homocidal, love-starved Morgan, the mute butler. He makes of it what he can but his talents are much better served up in a number of other pictures. With a remarkable career extending back to 1919, this was already Karloff’s 85th picture! Melvyn Douglas is arguably the true star who, as happy-go-lucky Roger Penderel, has the wittiest, most sophisticated dialogue and eventually gets the girl. Remarkably – for modern day audiences – while playing passenger to Massey and Stuart before their jalopey breaks down not far from the Femm estate, Douglas sings a few lines of “Singing In The Rain”!

There are drawbacks: the story isn’t really convincing; the acting is relatively stiff and the actors are performing as if on stage, throwing their voices to the back of the hall; the Femm’s 102 year old father, living in a room upstairs, is played by a woman!; and the surviving print is pretty murky in spots, even allowing for the bad weather. But then, this isn’t horror in the same sense of the classics Universal turned out in this era – which is probably why it was a disaster at the box office. (It did quite well in England where audiences were more familiar with farce than horror.) The production does have dollops of charm and it is quaint, in a nice way. You won’t be hiding behind the sofa in the scary bits; nor will you be surprised by the actions of any of the characters; yet somehow the thing redeems itself through the artful dialogue, crisply paced action and a genuinely heart-warming innocence.

Davis and Hopkins:
Author! Author! Sausage or Filet?
Old Acquaintance (1943)
Studio: Warner Bros • 110 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 27 Nov 1943
Re-release: Warner Bros (May 2006)
Series: Bette Davis Collection, Vol 2 (6-DVD)
Starring: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, John Loder, Gig Young, Dolores Moran
Dir: Vincent Sherman

An unexpectedly stylish comedy, underpinned by a hen-pecked husband and deliriously egomaniacal wife, Old Acquaintance (1943) zips along like a bubbly champagne slipping down the back of the throat, occasionally going the wrong way causing a serious cough or two. Edmund Goulding, who had directed Davis in four films to date was scheduled to make it five; however, a heart attack forced him to withdraw and Vincent Sherman was assigned to fill in. Sherman was relatively new to directing, having joined Warner Bros in 1939 directing, as a first project of all things, Humphrey Bogart in the bizarre horror, The Return of Doctor X. Four years, and seven films later, Sherman had become a master of playing off witty dialogue against serious issues of real life relationships.

Millie Drake (Miriam Hopkins) lives in a small town but has big ambitions. When long-time school chum Kit Marlowe (Bette Davis) returns on a book signing tour, Millie is both jealous of Kit’s success and inspired to become an author in her own right. Kit aspires to “literary” works; Millie has secretly written a pot-boiler and asks Kit to help find a publisher. Millie is also pregnant, but that hardly matters; and her husband, Preston Drake (John Loder), has a crush on Kit. Millie is so totally self-absorbed, impetuous and, it has to be said, continuously rotten to everyone – she’s a drama queen par excellence – life flies by without her noticing she’s not part of it. What matters is fame, fortune and more fortune and more fame. By the time their daughter, Dierdre (Dolores Moran) is seven, Preston has had enough and walks out of the marriage. Meanwhile, Kit has stayed around (the successful Millie has moved the family to New York) to help raise Dierdre.

Flash forward, and Dierdre has now come of age and herself shows signs of impetuousness – but with a conscience. When Preston returns – chancing to hear Kit deliver a stirring war time broadcast – he realises he’s still in love with Kit. Alas, Kit is “involved” with Rudd Kendall (Gig Young), ten years her junior, and is considering marriage to him. When Millie finds out that Preston once cared for Kit (and is about to remarry), in a fit of jealousy she tries to destroy the relationship Kit and Deirdre have – more mother and daughter than Millie ever bothered to attempt. In a whirlwind finale, partners change partners and old friends become friends again – but who with whom?

Miriam Hopkins plays every scene to the hilt – going quite over the top several times – making her seem not just bitchy and irresponsible but bordering on loathsome. It’s a delicate balance director Vincent Sherman must make not to lose the audience’s natural sympathy (he succeeds). Still, in a classic confrontation scene where Kit, having lavished a lifetime’s patience on Millie, finally breaks down and “shakes up the friendship”, there will be few not cheering the mock violence. For all this, Hopkins manages only to create a flesh and blood caricature.

Not so Bette Davis and, it has to be said, everyone else. It’s not that there aren’t laughs, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes wry. Speaking of being a part-time mom to Dierdre, Kit tosses off: “Well, she’s really partly mine anyway. I was at the hospital when she was born. As a matter of fact, she gave me her first smile. Her mother said it was gas.” Kit is a smart, well-rounded, grounded woman whose literary career has been built through steady steps – not “grinding them out like sausage” as one reporter describes Millie’s work. There is tenderness toward Preston; resolve to be a true friend to Millie; determination to save Dierdre from making a life mistake triggered by a reaction to her mother: Davis treats each facet of her multi-sided relationships with the appropriate care. Unlike Preston, and the brash Rudd, she won’t ever be walked over in the name of love – but perhaps too forgiving in the name of friendship. In tossing off the repartee, playing straight man to Hopkins, or gently breaking uncomfortable news to others in her life, Davis adjusts marvelously, sometimes on a dime, creating a warm, believable, humane and fully human character.

John Loder got fourth billing but deserved more. First hen-pecked, then resolute, and willing to work for what he wants and change plans realistically when he must, Loder adds increasingly deeper layers to his character as the years and events pass. It’s surprising Loder’s career never quite took flight; he’d appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage in 1936 before emigrating to the US. During the filming of Old Acquaintance, he married Hedy Lamarr who gave him three children in four years (and then promptly divorced him). Both Gig Young and Dolores Moran have smaller roles, with little opportunity to do more than react to changing circumstances.

In sum, Old Acquaintance is a delightful, well-paced, sometimes laugh out loud entertainment serving up some fine performances by Davis and Loder, and a delicious one-woman bitch fest from Miriam Hopkins. There’s just enough seriousness to keep the story grounded and sympathetic to the outcomes of everyone, save perhaps the ruthlessly self-centred Millie.

The sound and print are strong – although there are a few visual blemishes toward the end. The supplements include a featurette about women’s films of the era including recent clips with director Vincent Sherman; two Warner shorts from 1943; and an engaging commentary by Sherman and Boze Hadleigh, author of Bette Davis Speaks.

Davis and Brent:
Lights Out In Vermont
Dark Victory (1939)
Studio: Warner Bros • 104 min B&W • AR 1.33:1 • US: 22 Apr 1939
Re-release: Warner Bros (June 2005)
Series: Bette Davis Collection, Vol 1 (5-DVD)
Starring: Bette Davis, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Reagan
Dir: Edmund Goulding

Justly celebrated since its original release, Dark Victory (1939) continues to delight fully 70 years later. Though Bette Davis is in virtually every scene – this is not exactly an ensemble picture – she never outstays her welcome as her moods swing from good to bad to good to worse as the tragedy of her character’s fate unfolds. Davis is nicely supported by George Brent (who, for once, fulfills his promise as a leading man), Geraldine Fitzgerald in her American film debut* and a classy original score by Max Steiner – all under the collaborative guidance of Edmund Goulding (he directed Davis in no less than four films from 1937-1941).

Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) is a spoiled 23 year old socialite with her whole life ahead of her. Among her passions: horses, and horse-racing; happily among her other possessions, she owns a stable of thoroughbreds. Her father is dead; her mother absent in Europe; Judith’s family seems to consist of best friend Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and perpetually drunk Alec (Ronald Reagan). New to her circle is Michael O’Leary (Humphrey Bogart) who joined the stables a month earlier, from Ireland, and is included in the first scenes featuring a promising young horse, Challenger. As everyone cheers the future prospects of Challenger, Judith gets a headache. Not long after, she takes a tumble down the stairs and is referred to Dr Frederick Steele (George Brent) who is a brain specialist – those damned headaches! He quickly recognises Judith is in serious shape, cancels his plans to retire to Vermont, and orders a battery of tests, and specialists, to confirm his grim prognosis. An operation to remove a brain tumour is ordered; the operation is a success but, when the tumour grows back, there is no hope. The prognosis is plain: Judith’s future is unalterably young, pretty and dead.

In a splendid turn of ethics, Dr Steele reveals the truth to Judith’s best friend Ann but withholds it from Judith. With just months to live, Judith can have a full life before the end when she will suddenly go blind and perish a few hours later. He proposes to Judith, whom he has fallen in love with, but before the marriage can take place, the truth leaks out: enraged and betrayed, she begins a drinking spree (allowing Alec to return to the story). Judith has continued riding and, following a triumph at the track, Michael summons her to the stables to check in on fever-ridden Challenger. In the ensuing conversation, Michael proves himself to be a philosopher and delivers some impassioned advice to our heroine. Judith resolves to become a better person; marries Dr Steele; retires with him to Vermont; invites Ann to come for a visit; and suddenly notices it’s getting dark out though the sun seems still shining in the garden ….

In lesser hands, this would be a bloody awful melodrama but somehow the performances lift it beyond the sum of the parts. Bogart has been particularly criticised as being “horribly mis-cast” as the stable hand with a suspect Irish brogue; and there is no denying the accent, and curly hair, seems out of place. There’s also almost zero sexual tension between he and Judith, which seems a seriously missed opportunity (Judith shows no interest in anyone except Dr Steele throughout). But to give him his due, Bogart’s “pick yourself up by the bootstraps” soliloquy plays well and is good enough to earn the character a place in the picture. Ronald Reagan has so little to do, it hardly matters whether he’s in the picture or not; and to be candid, he’s not the most convincing drunk on screen – and that’s his major contribution! Henry Travers plays the family physician and (grand-)father figure stand-in; he’s delightful, if repetitious (“I brought her into the world!”), and most audiences will flash back to kindly Clarence the Angel from Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life whenever he’s on screen.

Geraldine Fitzgerald’s best friend warmth is an added plus; her character and performance are more fully rounded than anyone else’s other than Davis. She’s particularly good in the interaction in the garden toward the end; and with Dr Steele on the patio as he reveals Judith’s fatal condition. In other notes, I have been less impressed with George Brent; here he rises to the occasion as a solid, patient doctor, and compassionate and passionate husband. Brent easily makes the case for why Judith falls in love with him, and forgives him. If nagging doubts remain, it’s perhaps that he’s just too goody two-shoes for my liking; other than professional ethics, there is no “dark side”, let alone any fallibility, to Brent’s portrayal – which ultimately leads to “job well done” as opposed to “bravo!”. As noted in the opening, this is an exquisite outing for Davis and is not to be missed. She was at the peak of her powers at the onset of WWII and, in the hands of a studio willing to surround her with the best available talents, she delivers superbly. Although Davis may not have seen it that way at the time, her legacy as a great film star is made up of a handful of performances which very definitely includes this one.

The sound and print are strong – although it seems that the latest Bette Davis box has even finer video remasterings. The supplements include a featurette highlighting other films vying for the 1939 Academy Awards (Gone With The Wind won Best Picture in a field of 10 nominees; Davis was nominated alongside Greer Garson, Irene Dunne, Greta Garbo and, of course, Vivien Leigh who won for Scarlett O’Hara in GWTW); and an engaging commentary by film historian James Ursini and film critic Paul Clinton.

*OK, so that’s a stretch. Geraldine Fitzgerald also appeared in Wuthering Heights in 1939 and it opened 15 days earlier than Dark Victory. Plus, Fitzgerald was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Wuthering Heights; she lost to Hattie McDaniel’s vivid portrayal of Mammy in GWTW.