Bette Davis at the height of her youth and talent in "Dark Victory" 1939

Bette is very good in this, but yeah, it's hard to watch her character find out she's dying. I tend to focus on the late '30's fashions and home decor. I like Geraldine FitzGerald in just about anything, and the reverse is true of George Brent. He's totally unappealing to me.

Dark Victory is currently on Tubi, BTW...

I love love love Bette and Barbara all day, every day, and especially love them paired with George Brent. I was a latecomer to the George Brent Fan Club, but holy moly do I adore him. He deserves to be rediscovered by younger movie lovers.

Usually I find George Brent wooden, but he had his moments, and he's very warm here as the doctor who falls in love with his patient. Bogie and Reagan are the weak male links here, but luckily the focus is on Bette, George, and Geraldine, who interact beautifully.

Prognosis negative

I thought it was wonderful. The ending was lovely: Bette Davis realizes that she is dying, but she doesn't tell anyone, lies down in another room, and awaits the end.

It was considered as a vehicle for Garbo at one point.

I have seen the Elizabeth Montgomery version. It is well-written and has a heartbreaking score by Billy Goldenberg.

Reply 6, I liked how simply the ending of Dark Victory was portrayed as well...

Except for that damn heavenly choir, r9.

There's a fantastic 1997 book called Star Acting by Charles Affron which is divided into 3 big chapters on Gish, Garbo and Davis. It includes Dark Victory.

This is one of my favorite Bette Davis movies. But I do have an issue with the ending. Couldn’t he TELL she was dying when she told him she wouldn’t go to his conference with him after all? Why else would she not go? And he was a doctor. Yet he just went off and left her. Made no sense.

Oops the book is 1977 not 1997.

Yet another...

From that period of Bette's career, I much prefer The Letter, Jezebel, The Little Foxes and Now, Voyager.

With Cora Witherspoon as Carrie.

R1 Also fan of Geraldine Fitzgerald BUT not in “The Gay Sisters” 1942. Not believable and the character made no sense.

Swamped with your bills?

Late with your rent?

Watch Bette Davis run out on George Brent.

Another reason Bette might have had a problem with Susie...

"Prognosis negative" and her fabulous mink hat and coat are about all I remember of this movie but it has been decades since Ive watched it.

What about when she declares to not being sick and then we hear her tumble down the stairs?

It's on the Internet Archive!

R9, R10 Davi, while filming that last scene, made clear to the director, crew "Now I am going up these stairs" as in, not her AND Max Steiner (who of course produced fantastic scores in some of her best movies) My favorite is that last scene in "All This and Heaven Too" (no spoilers) - it gets me nearly every time.

Movies at that time were always scored, even overscored, so there really was no doubt that Max Steiner would be going up the stairs with her.

George Brent was one of those actors who weren't necessarily appealing on their own, but were great leading men for stars like Davis, Stanwyck, and Crawford. He complimented their performance without ever overshadowing them. Lyle Talbot would also fit in that category, I think.

Lyle Talbot's career as a leading man was shortlived. What's more interesting about him is that he worked with Ed Wood and Ozzie Nelson, at the same time.

Bette Davis was considered rather plain, if not borderline homely, by the Hollywood standards of her era but I've always thought she was quite pretty in the 30s and 40s. Unfortunately, all the booze and cigs took a big toll on her looks and by the 50s she got quite haggard looking.

Here's the memorable final scene in "Dark Victory," beautifully done. As a dog lover, the moment Bette's Judith says goodbye to her dogs on the stairs, sigh!

Bette looked haggard by the mid-40s. Grotesque by the 1950s, r27.

Lyle Talbot was shockingly hot in the early 1930s. Check out some of his oeuvre.

I wouldn't say grotesque, but the cigs and booze aged her hard.

Here's a radio version of "Dark Victory," based on the play, not the movie screenplay. The play, which had run just over 50 performances, got good reviews for star Tallulah Bankhead, but not the play's second act. This radio broadcast stars Stanwyck and Melvyn Douglas.

I think Bette looked her best in Dark Victory and Now Voyager.

Bette had no illusions about her looks. She wasn't vain.

Plain people have no reason to be vain.

[quote]Plain people have no reason to be vain.

Whatever.

This a very good Davis film. I would take it over" Jezebel " any day. I like all the characters including Bogie and his Irish and Ronald Reagan who was quite handsome. The ending is overwrought for me. But if you turn the music off the ending is great. George Brent was not handsome, charming, or interesting. But he did know how to create a chemistry with his leading ladies.

"Vain" does not always mean having a high opinion of your looks. At its heart, it means being overly concerned with your looks. A plain person can be vain; for example, being obsessed with always showing to your very best advantage, continually primping, etc. Vanity is basically a preoccupation with shallow or useless endeavors.

By the way, wasn't "Prognosis Negative" one of the fake movie titles from "Seinfeld"?

Bette was at her best under Wyler. Little Foxes, Jezebel and The Letter. All pretty great. Another one though that I love and it is uneven and Bette is not the beauty everyone says she is is Mr. Skeffington. But that ending with her and Claude Raines kills me. A long film to sit through but worth it for that heartbreaking emotional wallop that ends it.

That Dark Victory ending with her alone with Max Steiner is not nearly as good. Vivien and Max do it far better in GWTW.

[quote]r37 = This a very good Davis film. I would take it over" Jezebel " any day

The nice thing is you don't have to.

[quote]Grotesque by the 1950s

Hardly, r29. She looked like a middle-aged character actress which is what she was. She never sold herself as a glamour girl. Why the cruelty?

I prefer Bette's not trying to look eternal than Joan's Kabuki '50s mask. I thought Bette also looked very attractive in "A Stolen Life." After her late life pregnancy with B.D., she started looking her age.

I know actors toss the phrase around too casually, but I do believe Bette Davis was truly and artist and believed herself to be. It's evident in her career choices, which by today's standards don't seem nearly as bold as they were at the time. Bette would play unlikable if the part was good. Yes, without a strong director she could go off the rails at times performance-wise, but she was still fun to watch. She was a live-wire on-screen and utterly watchable. Her performances weren't always grounded in realism, but they were always interesting, because sometimes reality is dull and art is never real anyway.

ITA, R42. A Stolen Life is my favorite of her films. I thought she also looked attractive in Winter Meeting and that was in 1948.

She felt she owed the audience a heightened reality, r43. She played everything from Mildred to Queen Elizabeth I.

Regarding Davis's looks... something I never understood about Bette in the 1950s... her hair (I know this sounds very DL and Mary-ish). When she filmed All About Eve (1949/50) she had a gorgeous head of hair, and it was beautifully styled. Honestly it was amazing.

And yet, over the next few years the hair got cut short and by 60s, she went with that awful look with short bangs and the hair length was also shortened. It was just so wrong for her looks.

Bette's beauty, such as it was, had a resurgence for All About Eve, appropriately for the dazzling stage star she was playing. But I can't imagine Bette could have happily dealt with that Veronica Lake 'do in the unfussiness of her real life.

What went so horribly wrong in Beyond the Forest, her final Warners film? Why does she look so awful in that one?

As Bette said, r47, they should have cast Virginia Mayo. She had to fulfill her contract. She knew she was too old for it.

I thought she was very pretty in Petrified Forest.

I love Mr Skeffington, I love how it depicts the years passing and the changes. The dialog was very witty.

[to Fanny, when she reprimands him for being unfaithful] You mustn't be too harsh on my secretaries. They were always very understanding when I came to the office after a hard day at home.

George Brent should have been co-starring with Bette in "The Little Foxes." Instead we were stuck with the always sappy Herbert Marshall. Nothing about him appealed to me and I thought he was as bad in "The Letter" as he was in "TLF." He almost ruined both films for me. I know Bette "adored" Marshall, so I guess that is why he kept showing up in her films.

My two favorites are Mr. Skeffington and Old Acquaintance.

I like Dark Victory, but I think she as much better films. Of Human Bondage, Dangerous (her 1st Oscar- the Jeanne Eagels story), A Stolen Life, The Letter, Mr. Skeffington, Deception - to me are all better. Height of her looks to me was Dangerous and Jezebel. She also looked great in All About Eve as an older wiser woman of the world.

[quote] I prefer Bette's not trying to look eternal than Joan's Kabuki '50s mask.

Amen Rick. Something about Crawford's 1950s-onward look was fearful to me as a child. Especially post 1960s. I appreciate her oeuvre as a star and find her watchable but she was a scary woman.

Loved her in Sudden Fear, loved her costars, but she was scary. The eyebrows maybe?

I can't look at her without feeling something is off, like Kibuki. Nonetheless I enjoyed her as an actress.

Bette Davis seemed much more genuine. She knew she looked like a hag as early as ALL ABOUT EVE and didn't try to hide it it. She played old well. Maybe defined playing old well.

“Though Bette Davis is one of my favorites, I’ve never seen Dark Victory until 2025“

This doesn’t pass a basic smell test 🧐🤔

For the DL readers here, check out the original novel MR. SKEFFINGTON by the great Elizabeth von Arnim. It's a fabulous read and wonderful insight into the kind of "women's novels" (like KITTY FOYLE and BACK STREET) that were hugely popular in the first half of the 20th century and were often quickly snapped up by the major studios for their leading ladies. The narrative structure is somewhat different from the film in that the elder Fanny, considering leaving her husband, revisits several of her former loves, causing her to flashback to those affairs. But it's truly a fun read.

Good to know about the source novel of "Mr. Skeffington." And I've wondered if the novel of "Beyond the Forest" was a good read, too. Here's my look at "Mr. Skeffington."

Shouldn’t you have already known the source material?

Gorgeous.

I disagree about casting a beautiful actress like Hedy Lamarr or even Viv. Leigh. I think it’s more effective that she’s not beautiful but had such confidence and charm that she dazzled her beaus. I mean, being beautiful makes it too easy?

Kinda like the first sentence of GWTW: “Scarlett O Hara was not beautiful but men seldom realize it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were”

She's almost as pretty as Leslie Howard in "The Petrified Forest." Good movie, like "Dark Victory," based on a Broadway play.

I think it's a tribute to Bette that she could convince someone she was beautiful when she really was not. That's acting!

Perc, Orry and Maggie provided a *very* credible beauty of the day.

R38, prognosis negative shows up a few times in Seinfeld. It is a fake movie, as you recall. Elaine also says "prognosis negative" to Jerry and Kramer when describing the outlook for her formerly fat artist boyfriend who had the Junior Mint sewn up inside of him after Jerry and Kramer accidentally threw it into him from the observation balcony during surgery. There are probably other mentions throughout the show's run.

Gold, Jerry. Gold!

Bette certainly had her glam squad at WB when the role required it. Personally, I thought Davis was at her zenith when she played both unglam as neurotic Charlotte Vale and the beautiful butterfly Vale became after therapy and time away from her wretched mother! "Now, Voyager" is one of my all-time faves...

We know

The Letter is my favorite Bette movie

"With all my heart, I still love the man I killed!"

As has been discussed many times,Now Voyager would have been a great movie if not for that ghastly child shrieking all over the place . Every time she'd start Id scream at the tv "Slap her "!

Janis Wilson or something? She was also grotesque as the young version of Barbara Stanwyck in "The Strange Love of Martha Ivers." Strange in that Martha was crazy for dour toad Van Heflin!

Oscar winner Van Heflin!

Strange in that Martha was crazy for dour toad Van Heflin!

But he preferred good girl Lizabeth Scott.

*Mrs* Van Heflin!

Davis endured Janis Wilson in "Watch on the Rhine" too.

Just watched Johnny Eager recently, Van's character seemed to be in love with handsome but dull gay-ngster Robert Taylor. And Lana Turner as a rich girl studying sociology was a giggle...

George Brent was such a drip.

It's hard to believe he killed a British soldier when he was in the IRA, but it's true.

It's too bad Meryl didn't get to work with Bette...like I did.

Take *that*, Meryl.

Skeffington was originally supposed to be shot in color. Technicolor consultant Natalie Kalmus wanted bright strong colors for Fanny's wardrobe. Bette wanted soft pastel colors. She thought she would have been prettier in color.

In Beyond The Forest that black fright wig (with very small bangs like horns) did her no favor. According to Davis, in the novel the husband was supposed to be like Eugene Pallette, not kindly Joseph Cotten. Virginia Mayo could have pulled this off. Check her out in Flaxy Martin, also from 1949.

I suspect that WB were trying to get rid of her by casting her in a role she was too old for. Everything she did after A Stolen Life either made no or very little money. Her pictures were expensive to produce and she was getting $10,000 a week. That is $134,787.82 in 2025 dollars x 12 weeks (or more) =$1,617,453.84. That doesn't sound like too much today. Also had a troubled relationship with Jack Warner.

I think with the onset of WWII, if you made over $250K you were in the 90% tax bracket. Actors were being given "producing" deals so they could file for capital-gains' rate of 75%. Bette formed B.D. Productions. She only produced A Stolen Life and folded her company a couple of years later.

Alexis Smith told a funny story about bette and Mr. Skeffington. I think I told it in another thread.

After Bette's biggest commercial success at WB, A Stolen Life, she made Deception, Winter Meeting, and June Bride, all increasingly unsuccessful. By 1949, Bette was 41. Jack Warner didn't like actors and he was tired of tangling with Bette. So he stuck her in the dud, Beyond the Forest. Most actors at WB either sued Jack or left on bad terms.

Tell the Alexis Smith story here, r79. Please.

So, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis spent several years together on the Warner's lot? Joan moved over there in 1945, I think. I guess Joan's presence also convinced Jack Warner that she could fulfill all the over-40 roles better than Bette could and Joan had her Mildred Pierce Oscar to prove it.

I think it was about Mr. Skeffington. Bette was unsure she wanted to do the film so other actresses were tested. Alexis was one of them though she was much younger than Bette. When Bette found out she apparently told Alexis - if I am not sure I can play the part, you certainly cannot.

I find George Brent fat and ugly.

Casting wise, Ida Lupino might have made a great Fanny Skeffington. Ida was lovely in her youth and a decade younger than Bette. But Ida and most of the other actresses on the WB lot were not big enough box office to carry a lavish 2.5 hour soap epic.

What about Ann Sheridan?

I haven't seen her in enough, but from what I have seen, I can't imagine Lupinos as Fanny Skeffington. Ida presented rather hard and lacking in the ability to play the soft, genteel oblviousness that Davis put forth in her depiction.

Ida could be waifish when she was younger but not a world class beauty.

I had no idea there was a 70s era TV remake with Elizabeth Montgomery AND Sir Anthony Hopkins.....how random!

I think they considered Merle Oberon but she didn't want to be ugly in the second half.

[quote]She never sold herself as a glamour girl.

WB certainly tried, glamming up ingenue Bette in the Connie Bennett mold. But Bette felt uncomfortable in that skin and bristled at the parts she was given. She fought hard for better parts and won over audiences by not shying away from unglamorous and unsympathetic roles.

Hedy Lamarr was considered for a number of films in the '40s that thankfully did not come to pass, such as Laura, Casablanca, Gaslight, and Mr. Skeffington. Hedy may have been an "inventor," but she wasn't a very inventive actress!

I think Mr. Skeffington required a larger than life actress to play Fanny. Bette had a field day, but my first choice still would have been Vivien Leigh. As for Ida, she probably couldn't have carried this super soap, but Lupino rocked "The Hard Way" around this time and when her character becomes rich, she's quite glam here.

And Bette Davis, who turned down THE HARD WAY, saw it in a Warners screening room and supposedly said “How did I let that one get away?” Weirdly, Lupino hated it and told director Vincent Sherman while they were making it that the film was terrible and she was terrible in it. She even walked put of the screening room halfway through seeing the finished picture, she hated her performance so much. And then she won the NY Film Critics Award for Best Actress!

I love contrasting Bette’s work in IN THIS OUR LIFE and NOW, VOYAGER in the same year, 1942. LIFE was the first film I ever remember seeing her in when I was a child, and I found her intense neurotic performance completely riveting. The incestuous flirting with her uncle even somehow came across to me as a kid. The movie was a revelation to me and later, a revelation to me that I was gay! And it was the first time I had a concept of people I was watching on TV actually shaping a performance. As lurid as it is, I still love watching it, red-blooded melodrama at its best, and Davis is so much more interesting to watch than matronly-looking Olivia DeHavilland as the good sister.

Bette worked on her look for that very carefully with costume designer Orry-Kelly and especially makeup man Perc Westmore. Her hair was curled and feathered with fluffy bangs, she wore false eyelashes and her mouth was over-lipsticked to look bee stung. She wore a selection of flashy, ultra-feminine dresses with swing skirts that showed off her legs and ass. She was meant to look like a small town mantrap. But the women and girls that made up her fan clubs were outraged, they hated how cheap and flamboyant she looked.

Contrast that with Charlotte Vale after her transformation. She looks sensational wearing really chic, classic-looking clothes with a simple upswept hairdo. She looks her age, but so glamorous and soignee, and clearly this was the Davis fans wanted to see.

And NOW, VOYAGER is probably my favorite of her films and certainly the most emotionally satisfying movie she ever made. I often used to have an argument with a female friend who hated the movie and hated that Davis had to give up her great love at the end. Whereas I argued that I thought by the end of the film Charlotte had outgrown Jerry, she didn’t love and need him anymore, she had moved on (but was too tactful to tell him so) while he was still stuck in a loveless marriage pining away for her.

I had always been struck by Bette Davis telling Dick Cavett on his interview show that she believed Charlotte went back to school, became a therapist herself and wound up running Cascade with Dr. Jacquith, presumably as a married couple. That made me see the film in a different light — that NOW, VOYAGER was really a love story about Charlotte and the doctor finding their slow way to each other. And it clarified Claude Rains’ performance for me too, since it’s clear they have an instant rapport.

Rhapsody in Noir

R82, Joan signed with Warner Bros in 1943, but was being very selective with her first starring role at her new studio. She waited until 1945's "Mildred Pierce" to make a big splash and it was worth the wait. (She had appeared in WB's "Hollywood Canteen" the year prior, but that was just an extended cameo).

What's interesting is how the dynamics had shifted between the two over the course of a decade. Joan was already a big movie star when Bette arrived in Hollywood in the early '30s and supposedly, Joan gave her the cold shoulder when they first met around that time. Fast forward to 1943, and Bette was Queen of the Warner Bros lot, while Joan was "box office poison" seeking redemption at WB by taking on Bette's rejects (both Bette and Barbara Stanwyck turned down "Mildred Pierce"; "Possessed" was another that Bette vetoed). When Joan moved in, she demanded the dressing room next to Bette's and proceeded to shower her with flowers and small gifts in a bid to buy her friendship. Bette sent them all back.

After Joan scored her big Oscar win for "Mildred Pierce," Joan was given the lead in "Humoresque," a role that Bette later admiitted she wished she had played, but was never offered.

I love Bette, but cannot see her in "Humoresque" at all.

The film is a bizarre mash-up of Clifford Odets Group Theater, gritty WB melodrama and glamorous Joan Crawford Women's picture, yet it is incredibly entertaining and succeeds at being all of the above. Joan doesn't really appear in the entire first hour of the film!

Humoresque is an odd picture---"Body & Soul" with Crawford thrown in or "Golden Boy" with better casting of the male lead, but worse casting of the female. Davis would have been even worse.

As mentioned above, Tallulah Bankhead originated the Judith Taherne part on Broadway in the 1934 production of "Dark Victory." The year prior, Miss Bankhead was slated to star in the Broadway debut of Owen Davis' play, "Jezebel," but she got sick with gonorrhea, forcing her to drop out. The part was recast with Bette Davis' nemesis Miriam Hopkins. I don't know if Tallu ever got a chance to perform in "Jezebel" but in the clip below, Bette Davis seems to think so.

Bankhead had also originated the Regina Giddens part on Broadway in the 1939 production of "The Little Foxes, " thus making it the third part that Bette Davis "stole" from her.

I very much pictured Vivien Leigh when I read the novel of MR. SKEFFINGTON, though she would have been too young to play her when the film was made. The book was written in 1939 and first published in the US in 1940.

Maybe I'm thinking more of the novel and not the film, but isn't Fanny in middle age and older through much of it?

Bette Does Dishes

[quote]Humoresque is an odd picture---"Body & Soul" with Crawford thrown in or "Golden Boy" with better casting of the male lead, but worse casting of the female.

I disagree. Crawford should have been nominated again as Best Actress for "Humoresque".

I think Davis was pretty brave to do that early backstage scene in “All About Eve” with no makeup on. For 1950, you didn’t see many famous actresses do that.

[quote]I think Davis was pretty brave to do that early backstage scene in “All About Eve” with no makeup on.

She was a truly dedicated actress. She was never afraid to go there -see Mildred..

[quote]For 1950, you didn’t see many famous actresses do that.

Jan Sterling got an Oscar nomination for doing it in 1955.

Bette interview.

The Mr. Skeffington thread.

That "All About Eve" scene, where Margo gets a middle of the night long distance call from Bill, was brilliantly acted . And also bravely, with Bette actually looking like an older woman in the middle of the night. For contrast, note how Joan Crawford looks at bed time with Jack Palance in "Sudden Fear."

Legend has it that Ida Lupino lost much of her hair to a bout of Diphtheria, so maybe she might have made a good Fanny!