The word “iconic” gets thrown around a lot these days, but it’s a word well deserved when you’re talking about someone like Bette Davis. Over the course of her career, she delivered many legendary performances and her sensitive, vulnerable performance as Charlotte Vale in 1942’s Now, Voyager is easily among her best, with Gladys Cooper also turning in one of the all-time great villain performances as Charlotte’s overbearing mother. Now, Voyager has remained popular over the years with good reason, but before it was a successful movie, it was a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty.
Book & Movie Differences
For the most part, the film version of Now, Voyager is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book. It doesn’t follow the book right down to the letter, but most of the key events are covered, just in a more condensed way.
One of the most significant differences between the book and the movie is evident right off the bat. Rather than opening with Dr. Jaquith coming out to the Vale family home to meet with Charlotte before going off to Cascade, the book opens with Charlotte already on the cruise and the events leading up to her time at Cascade are told through flashbacks. Dr. Jaquith is frequently mentioned throughout the book, but we don’t see Charlotte directly interact with him until near the end of the book, after the death of her mother. While the first 20 minutes of the movie is largely the creation of screenwriters, it does establish some key things about Charlotte and her personal history which are covered in the book, like how she needs to hide things from her mother in her room and the romance she had with a ship employee on a past vacation which her mother actively destroyed.
As for Jerry, the book gets into more depth about his personal life and the state of his marriage. The movie leaves out a scene where he writes a message to his wife from his cabin on the ship which details how very careful he is about choosing his words to avoid upsetting her. It’s also made clear that Jerry has never been able to provide the type of lifestyle his wife desires, which has long been a significant source of stress in his life. Jerry, like Charlotte, has experienced a nervous breakdown in the past, but he was unable to afford to see Dr. Jaquith. The movie really doesn’t touch on Jerry’s economic situation.
The character of Lisa is more substantial in the book as well. In both versions, Lisa is, by far, Charlotte’s biggest supporter in the family. But in the book, she has a larger story arc that makes her something of an aspirational figure to Charlotte, showing her that it’s still possible for her to have the kind of life that she wants for herself. In the beginning of the book, Lisa is recently widowed and had decided to get remarried. During the cruise, Charlotte wears many of Lisa’s clothes, which Lisa lets her keep afterward so that she can start completely fresh with her new husband. After meeting Charlotte upon returning from the cruise, Lisa stays in New York to get married while Charlotte continues on home to prevent Charlotte’s mother from getting too much shocking news at once. By the end of the book, Lisa is expecting another child. While her new baby will be a later in life child much younger than its siblings, just as Charlotte was, Lisa’s baby is very wanted.
The movie mentions that Elliot Livingston is a widower, one thing that isn’t mentioned is that he had seemingly been depressed in the four years since his wife’s death. In the early stages of his relationship with Charlotte, it’s noted that his maids are excited that he’s starting to host casual events at his home again because that’s something that hadn’t been happening in the time since his wife passed away. Between these types of insights about Elliott, Lisa, and Jerry, the book version of Now, Voyager becomes a larger story about people who have experienced hardships in their life helping each other. The recently widowed Lisa helps Charlotte improve her life by getting her to Dr. Jaquith. Jerry’s interest in Charlotte is like a suit of armor that helps her embrace her new life. Charlotte inspires Jerry to make more of an effort in his marriage after the cruise. Charlotte’s relationship with Elliott helps him move on from his late wife. And, of course, Charlotte is able to help Jerry’s daughter, Tina.
As for Charlotte, what you see in the movie is pretty much what you get in the book. You just get more insights to her feelings and personal history, such as how thrilling it is for her to make an impression on people she meets on the cruise without the influence of the Vale name. Or the fact that when she was younger, her older brothers would refuse to pick her up from activities after one of them was mistaken for her father because of the age difference. However, the movie makes some bigger diversions from the source material near the end of the movie. The movie makes it seem like Charlotte’s return to Cascade is purely a result of blaming herself for the death of her mother. But in the book, Charlotte also loses her entire support system shortly after her mother passes away and becomes very lonely. She hit a stretch of time when virtually her entire newly expanded social circle simply wasn’t around. Even many of the servants from the family home had moved on. When she goes to New York to see Dr. Jaquith, she tries to contact her friends there to no avail. As a last resort, she tries to contact Jerry and does see him at a train station, but she stays hidden when she realizes that he is with his family. She can tell that Jerry is also feeling lonely, and while she can’t speak to him, she finds some comfort in the idea that they’re essentially lonely together.
Just as the book begins with some big differences with Dr. Jaquith, we also get some more differences with him near the end of the book. One scene I wish had been included in the movie is a scene where Charlotte sees Dr. Jaquith before her second trip to Cascade, where she laments not having any direction in her life and that the end of her engagement to Elliot means she will never have a home or family of her own. Dr. Jaquith has a very modern perspective and tells her that having a home of her own doesn’t necessarily require a husband and that there are other ways to fulfill her maternal desire without biological children. So when Charlotte meets Tina and wants to work with her, Dr. Jaquith is more receptive to the idea than he is in the movie because he sees that it could be good for her and for Tina, but still has reservations given Charlotte’s relationship with Jerry. (He also plans to start a program for children at Cascade, which he hopes Charlotte will donate to. There’s a brief reference in the movie to a new wing at Cascade that Charlotte is involved with, but it’s never stated that it’s for children.) This scene also gives some extra weight to the ending where we see Charlotte back at the home where her mother lived. While her mother was alive, the home was described as being dark and imposing. But Charlotte has listened to Dr. Jaquith and made it her own — vibrant and full of life, with Lisa’s daughter June often staying with her in addition to Tina. The bustling activity we see at the home at the end of the movie is the norm, not Charlotte simply putting on a show for Dr. Jaquith and Jerry when they visit. The scene with Dr. Jaquith’s advice drives home the idea that Charlotte is now truly leading a rich, fulfilling, well-rounded life, husband or no husband.
Is the Book Worth Reading?
Now, Voyager is the kind of book I didn’t want to finish reading. The movie has long been one of my all-time favorites and I loved the book every bit as much. I’d been wanting to read the novel version of Now, Voyager for a long time and I couldn’t be happier that I finally did so. It’s been a real pleasure to spend so much time with such a thoughtful, beautifully told story. Even though I already knew the basic story from the movie, I loved getting all the additional insights and details the book provides.
The novel Now, Voyager was first published in 1941 as part of Olive Higgins Prouty’s series of books about the Vale family of Boston. Reading Now, Voyager has gotten me interested in finding copies of the other books in the series, particularly 1938’s Lisa Vale. I already liked the character of Lisa since she seemed to be such an ally to Charlotte in the movie, but the extra detail we get about her in the book made me want to explore that character some more.
When I read books that were adapted into films, I often have an easy time seeing why certain people are cast in certain roles. When I read Wife vs. Secretary last summer, I could absolutely picture someone at MGM reading it and insisting that they get the film rights because it would be a perfect vehicle for Myrna Loy. With Now, Voyager, I felt like the part of Dora Pickford, Mrs. Vale’s nurse, was practically written with Mary Wickes in mind. As iconic as both Bette Davis and Gladys Cooper are as Charlotte and her mother, Mary Wickes is always a delight and it’s really easy to read her part in the book and think, “This is pure Mary Wickes gold.”
If you mention either Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is bound to be one of the first movies people think of. Beyond its initial success after its release in 1962, its following of loyal fans has steadily grown over the decades thanks to the enduring appeal of Davis and Crawford together (and their oft-debated rivalry). In 2017, the FX series Feud: Bette and Joan once again renewed interest in the movie. But before it was a successful movie, it was a novel by Henry Farrell.
Book & Movie Differences
For the most part, the film version of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane stays pretty faithful to the book. Most of the differences are small, but often very interesting. For example, the timeline in the book is a little different than what we see in the movie. In the first scene of the movie where young Jane Hudson misbehaves after one of her performances, Blanche seems to be fairly close in age to Jane. But in the book, Blanche is just a baby when that incident occurs. The movie version of that scene combines two different events from the book — the misbehavior in front of the crowd and a later incident when young Blanche interrupts one of Jane’s rehearsals on the beach by trying to dance like Jane, which their father yells at Blanche for and their mother consoles her afterward.
Other details from the book add a little more insight to the history between Jane and Blanche. We find out that their parents had died during the 1918 flu pandemic. After the death of their parents, they went to live with an aunt who adored Blanche and was focused on helping her become a star in the movies. Once Blanche becomes a big star, it’s said that Jane only has parts in Blanche’s films rather than getting to star in her own movies as seen in the movie. There’s also less debate over whether it’s Blanche or Jane who paid for the house. It’s made very clear that Blanche had bought the house, but Jane does slip at one point and call it her house while talking to Elvira, who is quick to correct her.
We also get some great details for the present day side of the story that we don’t get in the movie. At times, Jane seems even more menacing than she does in the movie. There’s no doubt about whether Jane had been aware of Blanche’s plan to sell the house — Blanche had the chilling realization that Jane was listening in on the extension during her call to discuss it with their business manager as it happened. The whole concept of old stars finding new fame through television has a slightly more important role in the book. Not only does it bring attention back to Blanche, it’s ultimately what inspires Jane to try and revive her old act because she had seen that other former vaudevillians like Jimmy Durante and Buster Keaton were finding success on television.
One of the most significant differences is that the book gives Blanche quite a bit more attention than she gets in the movie. The version of Blanche that we see in the book is more inwardly complex. It focuses a lot on her inner thoughts, her frustrations with her physical condition, and her conflicted feelings about seeing her old movies on TV. While she is touched to (eventually) realize that she was getting fan mail because of it — which included one letter from an actor she had once been in a studio-arranged relationship with — she also worries that the renewed interest in her career would also lead to renewed interest in the accident and that people might dig up some details that had been covered up by the studio back in the day. A big motivation for deciding to sell the house is that she feels like staying there is a way of clinging to the past.
The book has a lot of details about the house that definitely reflect the “stuck in the past” aspect. In the movie, there’s a reference to the house once being owned by Rudolph Valentino, but the book says it’s located in a neighborhood that had once been popular among movie stars and Blanche was now the only star left. The rehearsal room we see Jane spending time in had been originally built for Blanche to give her space to prepare for her movies. We also get an explanation for why the house has those grates on the windows. Most surprisingly, the book mentions a set detail I’ve been obsessed with ever since I first noticed it — the fact that Jane has an empty picture frame on display. We don’t find out why, exactly, this empty frame is sitting out, but Edwin notices it while looking around the house and wonders what happened to the picture that was once in it, if it had been removed in a fit of anger or grief. (Speaking of Edwin, his opportunistic nature is shown a lot more in the book. He evaluates items in Blanche and Jane’s house like he’s an appraiser on Antiques Roadshow and every guest is bringing in something good.)
Throughout the book, there are several other differences from the movie, but a lot of them don’t really make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. For example, rather than Blanche and Jane living next door to a mother and daughter like we see in the movie, their neighbor in the book is a woman who recently moved to the neighborhood who watches one of Blanche’s movies on TV with a friend. (In the 1991 version with Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, the neighbors are again changed to a married couple.) Many of the biggest differences come rather late in the book. After Edwin finds out about Blanche and flees the house, Jane realizes that he’s going to tell the police and tries to run him down with her car, attracting the attention of other people in the neighborhood. Blanche also makes some efforts to get help which end up being devastatingly futile.
During the beach scene, does it make a significant difference that police are alerted to Blanche and Jane’s presence by beachgoer annoyed by Jane’s parking job in the movie and by a couple at a nearby beach house after Jane blocks their driveway in the movie? No, but it is interesting that in the book, police approach Jane at the beach while she’s trying to call the police herself.
Is the Book Worth Reading?
In a word, yes. I absolutely loved this book. Whether you’ve seen the movie many times before, never seen it at all, or maybe only know of it through Feud: Bette and Joan, it’s the kind of book that anyone might enjoy. For those in the camp of having seen the movie many times, the differences between the book at the movie are enough to make things interesting without deterring too much from the core story. And for those who have either never seen the movie, it’s simply a very solid and engaging story. Henry Farrell keeps things moving along at a nice pace and with lots of great evocative writing.
It’s not a very long book, so if you’re looking for a quick summer read, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is well worth your time. Fortunately, this one is still quite easy to find at a reasonable price.
When you hear the words “the queen of Warner Brothers,” who is the first person you think of? For many people, the answer is probably going to be Bette Davis. After all, she starred in several of the studio’s most prestigious films, like Dark Victory; Now, Voyager; and The Letter, just to name a few, so it certainly wouldn’t be an undeserved title. Over time, she became so closely associated with Warners that she was nicknamed “the fifth Warner brother.” But before Bette Davis, there was Kay Francis.
While Bette Davis was trying to make a name for herself in movies like Parachute Jumper and Fashions of 1934, Kay Francis had been starring in pre-Code classics like Jewel Robbery, Man Wanted, and One Way Passage for Warners, as well as Trouble and Paradise and Girls About Town at Paramount. She signed her first contract with Warner Brothers in 1932 when they offered her a better deal than Paramount was offering her.
By 1935, Kay Francis had reached the peak of her career at Warners when she officially became the highest paid star at the studio, receiving a salary of $4,000 per week and a lavish new dressing room. Following the success of I Found Stella Parish, she was given a new three-year contract with Warner Brothers even though her contract wasn’t up yet. Louella Parsons reported that this new contract was Jack Warner’s way of rewarding her for her cooperative nature and for never turning down a script offered to her. This new contract bumped her salary up to $5,250 per week.
Even though things were going extremely well for Kay at Warner Brothers at this point, she had lofty ambitions for where she wanted her career to go next. She aspired to work with Charles Laughton. Notably, she was interested in playing Edith Cortright in Dodsworth, but the part went to Mary Astor instead when Warners refused to loan her out. She was also interested in starring in adaptations of Tristan and Isolde and of Mildred Cram’s novel Forever, the latter of which fell through when it was discovered that Norma Shearer already owned the rights to it. Kay was even involved in the early stages of forming a studio similar to United Artists along with Richard Barthelmess, Clive Brook, and Ronald Colman, which also never came to fruition.
All was seemingly going well for Kay Francis — and then The White Angel came along. The Story of Louis Pasteur had been a big hit for Warner Brothers, so they decided to ride their own success by producing The White Angel with Kay Francis starring as Florence Nightingale. Not only was there pressure to live up to the success of The Story of Louis Pasteur, being given the chance to play a historical figure was an opportunity for Kay to move past her image as a fashionable glamour queen. But while Kay’s performance received many good notes, and a compilation of reviews featured in the Motion Picture Review Digest largely ranged from very positive to average-but-not bad, the movie as a whole didn’t make the impression Warner Brothers was hoping for. While The Story of Louis Pasteur earned two Academy Award wins for its writing (Best Writing – Original Story and Best Writing – Screenplay), The White Angel didn’t have the strong foundation that Pasteur‘s screenplay offered.
When Kay first read the script for The White Angel, she recorded her reaction in her diary: “Read my new script — dear God!” You might not expect that a biopic of Florence Nightingale would be particularly controversial, but getting approval from all the necessary parties proved to be surprisingly difficult. First of all, a key part of the movie was supposed to feature Florence Nightingale being presented to Queen Victoria. But when the production was denied permission to depict Queen Victoria in the movie, the reworked scene lacked the same dramatic punch as the original version would have had. The Breen office also took issue with scenes depicting brutality, which is highly restrictive when trying to tell the story of a woman providing care to soldiers wounded in a brutal war. One scene involving an amputation had to be cut.
The timing of the release of The White Angel also didn’t work to the movie’s advantage. A movie like The White Angel could have potentially benefitted from people seeing it for school assignments, as was the case for Romeo and Juliet with Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard. Unfortunately, The White Angel was released in late June 1936, after the school year had ended. Kay later said she regretted making The White Angel and producer Hal Wallis noted it was a box office disappointment.
The White Angel was followed by 1936’s Give Me Your Heart, which was a more typical Kay Francis movie and was more successful financially than The White Angel. Of course, Jack Warner decided this meant that Kay should stick to her usual fare: movies full of glamour and melodrama. Give Me Your Heart was followed by 1937’s Stolen Holiday and Another Dawn. In her diary, she said of Stolen Holiday, “Script from studio — BAD! Too sweet — old hat.” Considering all the ideas Kay had for her career, getting stuck in the same old types of roles over and over was very disappointing.
Another Dawn is an interesting movie in the sense that a lot of key people involved with it didn’t particularly want to be involved. Warners had originally planned the movie for Bette Davis, who got placed on suspension after refusing to do it, which is how it ended up going to Kay Francis. Kay seemed utterly bored by her role and said of it, “I don’t do much in it. Things just happen to me. I am just a wife who has been unfortunate in love, as usual.” Errol Flynn didn’t really want to do the movie, either. Director William Dieterle only did the movie as a favor to Hal Wallis.
Reviews for Another Dawn were, at best, mediocre. Generally, critics thought the writing was weak and the premise was trite. A critic for the New York Times said of it:
“Not since the fabled phoenix has the Arabian desert blossomed into anything quite so stunning as Kay Francis and her extensive wardrobe in ‘Another Dawn.’ Too often, however, has it, or its romantic Hollywood substitute, beheld the the familiar triangular plot…The picture is not entirely without merit, of course. Herbert Mundin is in it, and the California sand dunes have rarely, if ever, been photographed more beautifully.”
Warner Brothers had wanted Another Dawn to be a special production, so “nice sand dunes” was hardly the reaction the studio was hoping for.
1937’s Confession has undergone a critical re-evaluation over the years and has become popular among Kay’s modern day fans, but its initial reviews were somewhat mixed. Many critics thought it was Kay’s best movie in a while, but also thought the plot was a rehash of other Hollywood melodramas. By now, Kay was fed up with all the melodramatic roles and welcomed the comedic change of pace that First Lady (1937) offered. Unfortunately, First Lady was mostly well regarded for its writing and for Verree Teasdale, but Kay’s performance got some good notes from Variety and Hedda Hopper.
However, before audiences even had a chance to see First Lady, a career-altering event for Kay was happening behind the scenes. During her most recent round of contract negotiations, she had a very specific project in mind: starring in Tovarich alongside Charles Boyer and with Anatole Litvak directing. She felt strongly enough about it that she considered being able to do Tovarich a key condition of accepting this contract. Given the quality of material she had been recently been given to work with, she felt that Tovarich would be a surefire way to give her career a shot in the arm. When Warners announced that Claudette Colbert, on loan from Paramount, would be starring in Tovarich instead, Kay was angry enough to file a lawsuit to get out of her contract.
News of Kay’s lawsuit may have been surprising to many because, while some people found her cold and aloof, she wasn’t exactly known for being a diva, either. Remember how Jack Warner voluntarily gave her a new contract in 1935 as a reward for always accepting projects offered to her? The House on 56th Street and Mandalay were both rejected by Ruth Chatterton before Kay took them on without objection. When it came to work, she was extremely professional. She was punctual and always tried to keep her personal and professional lives separate. She was very reliable and had a nine-year streak of not calling out for even a single day off, which lasted until the production of Confession. There are many stories about her being generous and kind to others at the studio, at times rejecting special treatment on the set if it wasn’t also being given to extras. Of course, there were some disputes during productions, but Kay would often come back to smooth things over after calming down. In her personal life, she was known for leading a surprisingly modest lifestyle for a big movie star and didn’t even get a nice car for herself until 1937 — and even then, she preferred driving herself to hiring a chauffeur.
Filing a lawsuit wasn’t even Kay’s first line of action. She tried resolving the problem out of court, but was forced to go to court on September 3, 1937 when Warners refused to budge. In her suit, she accused Warner Brothers of putting her, “in pictures of inferior quality and putting her name in a special interstudio register which kept other studios from bidding for her services.” So not only was she prevented from doing Tovarich, she clearly hadn’t forgotten her disappointment of not being loaned out for Dodsworth.
Bette Davis before her court hearing.
Her case had some common ground with other lawsuits that had already been filed against Warner Brothers by James Cagney and Bette Davis. In all cases, pursuing those legal disputes was very risky for the stars involved. Bette Davis didn’t win her case, but she still got the better roles she wanted. On the other hand, James Cagney did win his case and his contract with Warner Brothers was nullified in 1936. However, other major studios weren’t willing to work with him because they’d be in a tough spot if Warner Brothers succeeded in getting the ruling overturned. This led to Cagney making two movies for the independent studio Grand National, both of which lost money. Cagney later returned to Warner Brothers in 1938 with better contract terms.
These types of legal disputes also had the potential for damaging the star’s reputation with the public. Both Cagney and Davis faced their share of slings from the media during their disputes. In Bette’s case, some tried to paint her as ungrateful and money hungry. But in a letter to Jack Warner written by Bette on June 21, 1936, months before her day in court, she talks about wanting a loan out clause in her contract and vacation time, and even offers to accept less pay if her terms were agreed to. (This letter is available to read on Stars and Letters, but doesn’t talk about her wanting better roles at Warner Brothers, which was another big part of her case.)
With Kay’s status as being a top-paid star, she certainly faced the risk of also being labeled money hungry. But similar to Greta Garbo, Kay Francis wasn’t a big fan of dealing with the media. Kay tolerated it more than Garbo, but she had her limits and valued her privacy. Unfortunately, this meant that some publications seemed to already be losing their patience with Kay even before her trial and were eager to cite specific examples of what they deemed bad behavior. In the July 3, 1937 issue of Picturegoer, there is a letter from the editor dedicated to Kay Francis, chiding her over reports of becoming too temperamental. These issues include a vague mention of trouble while filming 1934’s Wonder Bar, having a reporter thrown out of a party she hosted at a restaurant, not being attentive enough to British press on a trip to England, and arguing with director Joe May about dialogue in Confession. The letter also essentially blames her for the state of her career at that point, as if she controlled the projects she was given:
It seems very likely that nobody wanted to see a revival of the charming and sophisticated Kay Francis of One Way Passage and Trouble in Paradise more than Kay Francis.
Picturegoer ran another article about Kay Francis in their October 2, 1937 issue which opens under the pretense of being sympathetic, reminding people of her reputation for being highly cooperative with Warner Brothers, before citing some brief examples of “artistic temperament” during the productions of The White Angel (which they erroneously call The White Sister) and Confession before airing some grievances about Kay’s relationship with the press:
“It is particularly unfortunate that, amid her other troubles, Kay is not on the best terms with the Hollywood writers and is not getting a sympathetic press at a time that she needs it. She has never liked being interviewed, but until recently managed to maintain particularly friendly relations with the reporters.
The trouble all started when Kay gave a party some time ago. She lives in an extremely modest little house, and when she entertains on on any scale she does so in one of the larger Hollywood restaurants. On this occasion, a reporter gate-crashed.
No one likes to have her party gate-crashed, but Kay might have handled the situation more tactfully. She had the intruder ejected.
Her press vendetta has moreover been intensified by her friendship with Delmar Daves, a screenwriter she met during the making of The White Sister, and with whom her name has been linked in the romance rumors.
Kay has always felt that her marriage to Kenneth McKenna might have stood a better chance if it had not been for all the publicity that surrounded it from the outset, and she has openly resented press interest in her new romance.”
(One can’t help but wonder if the reporter who crashed Kay’s party worked for Picturegoer since they sure seemed salty about that incident.)
Not much is known about what, exactly, went on during Kay’s trial. What we do know is that, rather than having her contract nullified as Kay initially wanted, it was decided that Kay would finish out her contract at Warner Brothers. The official explanation was simply that Kay and Warner Brothers had reached an amicable agreement. Even other people who worked at Warner Brothers were rather baffled by the outcome and weren’t quite clear about what happened. Decades later, Bette Davis said of it:
“Out of the blue, it was announced she would complete her contract by starring in B-pictures! It was simply unprecedented and no reason was ever given. A huge embarrassment for such a star — she had many, many fans…Jack Warner was despicable to Miss Francis. I felt awfully sorry for her, and it certainly scared every actress in town. She said what she had to: that she was looking forward to retiring. Or, at least, taking some time off after working so hard. No one dared question her explanation, but it was known.”
Regardless of what exactly went on in the courtroom during Kay’s trial, her relationship with Warner Brothers was irreparably damaged and the agreement seems to have been anything but amicable. Jack Warner set out on a mission to make Kay miserable enough to break her contract so that the studio could sever their ties with her. But Kay refused to take the bait and continued to collect her big paychecks until her contract ended in September 1938.
Despite the quality of her recent movies, Kay was still considered a popular star among moviegoers. But despite her lasting popularity, Jack Warner insisted on putting her in what he considered the worst, most demeaning projects possible. First up was 1938’s Women are Like That, which was not particularly well received.
“The plot lacks both dramatic continuity and point. The mood wavers between connubial romance and connubial ruckus, without ever becoming persuasive.” – New York Herald Tribune
“It represents a courageous attempt to explain in the protracted seventy-very-odd minutes at its disposal certain aspects of a human problem which has baffled philosophers through the ages…There is only one question I must ask the authors of Women are Like That. It is, “Like what?” – New York Times
“Women are like that; so probably a good proportion of upper middle class women will like the extremely dull story, pseudo-intelligent dialogue, the romance between middle aged Francis, middle aged O’Brien. It is a woman’s picture for a comparatively small proportion of women at that. Estimate: weak programmer.” – Philadelphia Exhibitor
Some media outlets were also still taking jabs at Kay’s behavior. In an article titled “Kay and Pat are Like That!”, which ran in the January 1938 issue of Screenland, the writer does talk about the warm, friendly side to Kay, but it comes after the writer spends a considerable amount of time making heavy-handed efforts to paint Kay in a bad light while building up Pat O’Brien as the nice, easygoing good guy. After talking about how Kay filed her lawsuit after not getting to do Tovarich, they talked about how Pat O’Brien ended up doing Women Are Like That after rejecting another project:
“And it seems that Pat O’Brien was scheduled to go into Swing Your Lady but he didn’t like the script (neither did Joan Blondell who walked right off the set and took a course in hula dancing), and Pat didn’t want to pile up another suspension so he said holy mackerel and jumping catfish, haven’t you got something else around here I can do?”
Other highlights from that article include:
“A suing actress isn’t the most sociable person in the world — instead of the customary one chip she has the whole block on her shoulder — she is utterly convinced that the studio is trying to ruin her, so why should she be pleasant to anyone? The boys and girls from the publicity department hang an imaginary ‘Small-pox’ sign over the door of the stage and keep as far away as possible. Little people like you and me run like mad in the opposite direction. A suing star, it seems, has all the delightful charm of a coiled cobra.”
“On the set, she is slightly aloof, even when not suing, and doesn’t like to have crowds of tourists gaping at her when she is doing her scenes, or interviewers hanging around waiting to ask if she is going to marry Delmar Daves. On the other hand, Pat O’Brien, a cordial good-natured Irishman, and as natural as the day is long, likes nothing better than having mobs of people watching him act — in fact he and Humphrey Bogart even act better, if that is possible, when they have an admiring audience — and he doesn’t care what an interviewer asks him because his life is an open book. When Pat first started working at Warners, a guy asked him, ‘Mr. O’Brien, do you want your sets closed or not?’ To which our Mr. O’Brien replied, ‘If you want to tear down the sides of the stage and put in grandstands it’s all right with me.'”
Warners hit the mark in demeaning Kay by making her do Women Are Like That, but following it up with 1938’s My Bill ended up backfiring by being more successful than expected. Secrets of an Actress and Comet Over Broadway, also released in 1938, both failed to make an impression with critics and audiences. Comet Over Broadway is notable for being another movie that Kay Francis starred in after Bette Davis refused to do it. Bette called it, “the first nothing script I was given since my court battle in England,” and claimed that she was sick but would have made an effort for better material.
Comet Over Broadway wasn’t the last time the careers of Kay Francis and Bette Davis would overlap. After Bette was put on suspension for refusing to do Comet Over Broadway, she was assigned 1938’s The Sisters, a movie that had been planned for Kay. Kay had expressed an interest in doing 1939’s Juarez, but it ended up going to — who else — Bette Davis. Prior to her lawsuit, Kay had been considered for Dark Victory, and she was interested in the doing the movie, but Jack Warner made sure the part went to Bette.
When Kay Francis was included in the Box Office Poison ad published in 1938, nobody was probably less surprised than Kay. This was exactly the sort of thing Jack Warner had been hoping for post-lawsuit and even in the few years leading up to the ad’s publication, she had no delusions about the quality of scripts she had been receiving.
In addition to assigning her the worst projects possible, Warners continued punishing Kay Francis behind the scenes. Her nice, big dressing room had been reassigned to John Garfield and, subsequently, to Bette Davis. When she wasn’t busy working on set, the studio had her do screen tests with young actors the studio was considering working with. Not only was this the kind of thing that would’ve been considered way beneath the pay grade of someone like Kay Francis, a lot of stars of her stature would consider it an insult to be asked to do it. But Kay still showed up every time and did those screen tests without complaint. Warners even resorted to doing completely petty things just to make her more miserable, like giving her call times that were several hours earlier than when she was actually needed on set and denying her lunch pass requests so that she couldn’t eat with friends in the studio commissary. But she was determined to ride her contract out to the very bitter end, as she said, “even if they put me in a bathing suit and have me walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard!”
Many other Warner Brothers employees were quietly sympathetic to Kay’s situation. The two who had the most influence and best understood what she was going through, Bette Davis and James Cagney, arranged a meeting with Harry Warner to advocate for better treatment for Kay since Harry had the power to overrule Jack Warner’s decisions. However, they weren’t able to get anywhere. There is some speculation that Harry Warner was actually the one behind the studio’s campaign of humiliation for Kay Francis, not Jack Warner, and it was blackmail for some incriminating information they had about Kay, possibly an affair involving another woman. However, I did not come across any meaningful evidence supporting this claim.
By the time she did King of the Underworld, released in 1939, she was still a bigger name than Humphrey Bogart. The script for King of the Underworld was reworked to enhance Bogart’s role, but much of the film still focuses on Kay’s character. Despite this, Warner Brothers decided to give Humphrey Bogart top billing in this movie; his first time getting top billing in a movie. Knocking Kay down in the billing order was such a blatant power move on the studio’s part that critics understood exactly what was going on and couldn’t help but comment on it. Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times, “We simply want to go gallantly on the record against what seems to be an act of corporate impoliteness.” Bogart also felt bad about the way Warner Brothers was treating Kay. Even the movie’s original title — Lady Doctor — feels like an insult with its laziness.
Kay’s last movie for Warner Brothers was Women in the Wind, released in April 1939, which some noted had an aura of people just being eager to get the movie done and over with as quickly as possible. Perhaps the most notable thing about the production of Women in the Wind is that it’s when Kay gave a widely-quoted interview that was the basis for an article in the March 1939 issue of Photoplay magazine. This is where the famous quote, “I can’t wait to be forgotten,” came from. That line was said when she was about to film the last scene of her last Warner Brothers movie.
This article includes many candid quotes that show someone at a real crossroads in their life. She talks about wanting to take time to relax, enjoy life, and enjoy the freedom of not being under contract. She talked about wanting to retire, but didn’t completely rule out the idea of doing more movies.
“I don’t say I’ll never make another picture because if I should happen to be in Hollywood and some producer offered me a good part, I’d jump at it. But as far as another contract, or making a career of pictures is concerned, I’m through!…The parade is passing me by and I don’t care.”
Looking back at her career and the way she handled things, she was remarkably honest in her thoughts:
“Perhaps I’d have been better off if I had fought for better stories, but the end didn’t justify the means. I’d have been suspended and the time I was under suspension would have been added to the end of my contract. So, instead of being free now, I would probably have had another year to go. And, even then, I’d have had no guarantee the stories I picked would have been any better. Even if they had been, the only difference would have been that I would be retiring in a blaze of glory instead of more or less inconspicuously — and this is the way I want it. I’ll be forgotten quicker this way.”
Despite her difficulties with the studio, it’s still clearly a bittersweet ending for her. Kay still had great relationships with many crew members at the studio and got a bit misty eyed over the fact that this was the first time she wasn’t hosting a wrap party for the cast and crew.
“I knew I’d start crying and so would some of the others. I didn’t want to become maudlin or sentimental. I didn’t want to say my goodbye that way. I want to remember all these people as friends with whom I used to kid — with whom I had swell times. I don’t want to remember them — or have them remember me — with long faces and red eyes. I want to saunter off the lot and out of their lives as casually as though the picture weren’t finished and we’d be meeting again in the morning.”
As Kay Francis left the Warner Brothers studio lot for the final time, she was saluted by the attendant at the gate. Her dispute with the studio took so much out of her that she never wanted to speak of it again, simply referring to it as “her great struggle.”
After leaving Warner Brothers, she stayed active films for several years, mostly in movies for RKO and Universal but with a few for 20th Century Fox and Monogram also in the mix. Of her post-Warner Brothers movies, the best remembered is 1939’s In Name Only with Carole Lombard and Cary Grant. She also had the opportunity to appear in movies alongside people like Deanna Durbin and Rosalind Russell. 1944’s Four Jills in a Jeep is also notable for being inspired by a USO tour she did with Martha Raye, Carole Landis, and Mitzi Mayfair during World War II. After making her final film in 1946, Kay moved onto the stage and did touring productions of plays like State of the Union, Let Us Be Gay, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, and Goodbye My Fancy. However, health issues began to take a toll on her life and she gave her final stage performance on August 5, 1954. After her shoulder was fractured during a fall, she retired from acting.
For months, the classic film community has been abuzz about FX’s mini-series Feud: Bette and Joan. From the day it was announced to the season finale, it seems like just about every classic film fan has had something to say about it. One thing that can be safely be said for sure is that among classic film fans, there isn’t one overwhelming opinion of the series. Some have loved it, others have loathed it, and I fall somewhere in the middle.
After having spent several years of watching other Ryan Murphy-produced projects like American Horror Story and American Crime Story, one thing I’ve learned is that you can’t gauge the quality of a series (or a season, given that his shows often change themes season-to-season) based on any one single episode, which is why I waited until I’d seen the entire series before giving a review of it. Unlike some other projects Ryan Murphy has done, which started out strongly and turned into a trainwreck by the end, Feud is at least pretty consistent in overall quality. There weren’t any episodes that truly wowed me, but there weren’t any episodes that completely bored me, either. While it had its flaws, Feud is a far cry from the disaster that was Lifetime’s Liz and Dick.
Although Feud was mostly promoted as being about the production of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, it wasn’t the sole focus of the show. It goes beyond the completion of Baby Jane and the 1963 Academy Awards and goes into the production of Hush…Hush Sweet Charlotte andwhat both Davis and Crawford’s careers were like after working together, going all the way through to Joan Crawford working on Trog and her final days in her New York apartment.
You can’t talk about Feud without commenting on Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon’s respective performances as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. One of the biggest criticisms I’ve heard about their performances is that neither of them tried to sound very much like their real-life counterparts. Personally, this didn’t bother me too much. I can see that they were clearly trying to avoid having their performances being called drag queen-ish or being compared to Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest. I actually liked both of their performances. It took me a little while to warm up to Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis, though. For the first few episodes, I felt like she was phoning it in, but I started to like her more as the series went on. Jessica Lange did a great job of capturing the more human and vulnerable side of Joan, but certainly didn’t shy away from the competitive side, either.
Feud‘s supporting cast was pretty terrific. I loved Dominic Burgess as Victor Buono, Judy Davis as Hedda Hopper, and Stanley Tucci as Jack Warner. Jackie Hoffman as Mamacita, Joan’s housekeeper, was also a real scene stealer.
I’m not going to get into just how historically accurate or inaccurate Feud is. I’m not particularly knowledgeable about this era of either Davis or Crawford’s careers and there’s been so much gossip and speculation around the production of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane that I’ve never been 100% clear on what’s real and what’s fiction. However, I will say that Feud seemed pretty accurate to the things that I do know to be true. There isn’t much in here that I didn’t already know or haven’t at least heard before. As with any biopic or film based on true events, there will always be some level of dramatization involved. Feud is no exception and those who have worked on the show have gone on the record to confirm this.
Throughout the run of the series, much was said in the media about how much attention to detail went into recreating things like the 1963 Academy Awards ceremony, right down to the color of the nail polish worn by Joan Crawford that night, and Joan Crawford’s home in Brentwood. The level of attention that went into creating these settings certainly didn’t go to waste; the sets were truly fantastic and were one of the best things about the series.
While so much research went into recreating locations, shockingly little attention was paid to some of the smaller details. For example, in the second episode of the series, B.D. gets into an argument with Bette and B.D. yells about how she grew up listening to Bette say things like, “When’s that old hag Norma Shearer going to give it up? When’s Claudette Colbert going to put herself out to pasture?” This probably wouldn’t stick out to someone who has no knowledge of Hollywood history, but as a fan of Norma Shearer, I thought this was a terrible line. It’s extremely unlikely B.D. would have ever heard Bette say anything like that about Norma Shearer. B.D. Hyman was born in 1947, 5 years after Norma Shearer made her final film. So by the time B.D. would have been old enough to remember her mother saying anything, it certainly wouldn’t have been tirades about how Norma Shearer needed to hang it up already. And although Claudette Colbert did stick around longer than many other contemporaries of Crawford and Davis, she was slowing down by the early 50s.
The biggest thing I really didn’t like about Feud is how they used interviews with Olivia de Havilland and Joan Blondell to frame the main action of the series. First of all, I didn’t particularly care for the casting of Catherine Zeta Jones as Olivia de Havilland, but at least it made sense for Olivia to be there since she was the one who ultimately stepped in to finish Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. There really wasn’t a reason to have Kathy Bates as Joan Blondell in this at all since these were supposedly interviews for a documentary about Joan Crawford and Blondell and Crawford never made a movie together; Crawford didn’t even work at Warner Brothers until after Blondell had left.
I know a lot of Joan Crawford fans were frustrated by Feud because it only focuses on her career when it was in decline and they feel that makes her look kind of pathetic. This probably wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it weren’t for the fact that so much of what a lot of people know about Joan comes from the movie Mommie Dearest. While I liked that Feud showed Joan’s more human and vulnerable side, which is something you don’t really get in Mommie Dearest, I do agree that it would be nice to see a film or mini-series which also covered the early days of her career and how she worked her way into becoming one of the greatest movie stars of all time.
If you go into Feud without any knowledge of Joan Crawford’s career, or Bette Davis’s career for that matter, it’s probably going to be a bit like watching Sunset Boulevard — you’re told Norma Desmond was once a major movie star and there are details to back that fact up, but you pretty much just take the movie’s word for it that she once was a huge star. Not actually seeing that history isn’t necessarily a detriment to the movie. However I will say that I thought the finale was the most powerful episode of the series because I went into it knowing exactly how big of a fall it was for Joan. And I can say the same about Bette Davis. You can certainly enjoy Feud even if you don’t go into it with any knowledge of either of their careers, but just remember, you’re only seeing one era of their lives and careers.
Sisters Stanley (Bette Davis) and Roy Timberlake (Olivia de Havilland) both come from a prominent family, but lead very different lives. Roy is the more humble and sensible sister and is married to Peter (Dennis Morgan) while Stanley is very selfish and is much more wild than Roy. Stanley isn’t a particularly likable person, but her uncle William (Charles Coburn) adores her and loves giving her expensive gifts and foots the bill for her reckless lifestyle. Stanley is engaged to Craig (George Brent), a lawyer, but the night before they are to be married, Roy runs off with Peter, marries him, and they leave for Baltimore.
Roy isn’t one to wallow in self-pity so she gladly divorces Peter and channels her energies into her work. One day, she runs into Craig and the two of them hit it off and start seeing each other. Craig is a very good man; an honest lawyer and even gives a job to Parry Clay (Ernest Anderson), the son of the Timberlake family’s maid Minerva (Hattie McDaniel), so he can put himself through law school. Meanwhile, Roy and Peter’s marriage is a complete disaster. Roy is still incredibly selfish and Peter doesn’t approve of her spending habits; they’re both completely miserable. Eventually, it drives Peter to kill himself, just as Roy and Craig decide to get married.
Stanley comes back home and it isn’t long before she’s bored and wants to leave. However, she needs money to leave and she can’t get it from her father or her uncle, so she tries talking to Craig to see about getting money from Paul’s insurance policy early. She invites him to come join her for dinner one night and when he stands her up, she gets raging drunk and tries to drive home. Along the way, she hits a child, who dies. Stanley’s car is pretty recognizable to people around town so it isn’t long before the police come to see her. Desperate to avoid accepting responsibility, Stanley tries to pin it all on Parry, but she doesn’t realize how protective Roy is of Troy.
In This Our Life is a really overlooked movie. With lesser stars and a lesser director, it easily could have become a completely forgotten film. But Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland are both so perfect for their roles in it, plus the supporting cast is fantastic, as is John Huston’s direction. Together, they all took what easily could have been a mid-rate melodrama and made it something memorable. Stanley is exactly the type of character Bette Davis reveled in playing and Olivia de Havilland made the perfect calm, yet strong, contrast to Davis. If you’re a fan of Davis or de Havilland, there’s a lot to love about this movie. In This Our Life is also very noteworthy for having a rather progressive representation of African-American characters, which is indeed refreshing to see in a 1940s-era film. Definitely keep an eye out for this on the TCM lineup; it’s well worth a watch.
Mary Dwight (Bette Davis) works as a hostess in a nightclub, but when the club is taken over by notorious gangster Johnny Vanning (Eduardo Ciannelli), he wants to turn it into a not-so-legitimate clip joint. Mary and the other hostesses are not happy about their new boss, but Vanning is very powerful and crossing him could be dangerous, so try to be as cooperative as possible with him.
One night, Mary spends the evening with Ralph Krawford (Damian O’Flynn), who thinks he’s pulling a fast one on the club owners by running up a big debt at the casino and paying it off with a bad check. Mary warns him about the danger he’s in and advises him to leave town right away. But Vanning wasn’t born yesterday and has Krawford killed before he can even make it to the train station. The police find out Mary had been with Krawford the night he was killed and arrest Mary.
Prosecutor David Graham (Humphrey Bogart) tries to convince Mary to rat on Vanning, but although she eventually starts to seem cooperative, she’s too afraid of what could happen to her if she does and her testimony helps him go free again. Meanwhile, Mary’s sister Betty (Jane Bryan) is visiting from school and is too scandalized by the incident to go back. Mary loves her sister and doesn’t want Betty getting involved with her lifestyle, but one night, Betty joins fellow hostess Emmy Lou (Isabel Jewell) for a party, where she ends up getting on the bad side of one of Vanning’s cohorts and Vanning kills her. Now Mary is more eager than ever testify against Vanning, even if it puts her life on the line.
Marked Woman has all the hallmarks that 1930s Warner Brothers movies were famous for. Gangsters? Check. Fast pacing? Yep, it’s got that. Snappy dialogue? Oh, yeah. Stars like Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis? Check and check! This is just a good old fashioned gangster movie, but unlike most other gangster movies, Marked Woman focuses on the nightclub hostesses, who often tend to be relegated to supporting character status. When you hear about a 1930s Warner Brothers movie that involves gangsters and stars Humphrey Bogart, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that Bogart will be playing the gangster. Instead, he’s fully on the side of law and order here. So although Marked Woman is, in many ways, a classic Warner Brothers gangster flick, it does shake things up in a couple of ways, which I found refreshing. It’s a great movie.
Happy January and happy 2015! I hope you had a nice holiday season. After all of the chaos of December, it’s time to relax with some TCM.
Overall, it’s a pretty calm month, but still has a lot to offer. January’s Star of the Month is Robert Redford, whose movies will be featured every Tuesday night this month. The theme for this month’s Friday Night Spotlight is movies based on the works of Neil Simon. On January 22nd, TCM will show a night of Debbie Reynolds movies in recognition of her receiving the Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild.
Even from a very young age, Mary Keaton (Joan Blondell), Vivian Revere (Ann Dvorak), and Ruth Wescott (Bette Davis) were on completely different paths in life. They were classmates together as children; Mary the class bad girl, Vivian the popular one, and Ruth was one of the most studious.
Ten years after parting ways, they run into each other and meet for lunch. After a stint in reform school, Mary is now working as a showgirl. Ruth is a stenographer and Vivian married to powerful attorney Robert Kirkwood (Warren William). Although Vivian seems to have everything a person could ever want, she’s grown increasingly dissatisfied with her life. To shake up her life, Vivian takes her son on a trip, but on the ship, she gets mixed up with gambler Michael Loftus (Lyle Talbot). Before long, she’s descended into a life of drugs and alcohol, making it impossible for her to take good care of her son.
Mary is aware of Vivian’s hard partying and goes to see Robert to come up with a plan to at least get the child away from her. Once her son is away from her, Vivian and Robert divorce and Vivian hits rock bottom. When Vivian and Michael are desperate for money, Michael kidnaps Vivian’s son and holds him hostage.
My Thoughts
When I first saw Three on a Match, I was mostly watching it for Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart since those are two of my favorite movie stars. I know I’m not the only one who was drawn to this movie because of those two, but while many people watch for Bogart and Davis, they stay for Ann Dvorak. Out of all the major stars, Ann Dvorak is now the least widely remembered of the bunch, but she completely steals the movie from every single one of her costars. Bogart and Davis, at the time, were up-and-coming stars and weren’t being used to their full potential yet. Warren William and Joan Blondell are both good, but are totally eclipsed by Ann Dvorak’s mesmerizing presence.
Three on a Match is also a master class in efficient storytelling. It fits more into 63 minutes than most movies do in two hours.
The Definitive Pre-Code Moment
Herve (Humphrey Bogart) insinuating Vivian’s drug addiction.
Why It’s an Essential Pre-Code
One last “fallen woman” tale for this series of essential pre-codes. In some ways, Vivian’s story reminds me of several other “fallen woman” movies I’ve highlighted this month, but her story ends up feeling really unique. Vivian reminds me a bit of Temple Drake from The Story of Temple Drake in the sense that they were both women with a pretty high standing in society and when they fall, they fall very hard. They both slip into these incredibly dirty worlds that are anything but fun. Three on a Match does nothing to glorify the lifestyle Vivian and Michael end up leading. But the fact that Vivian is a mother and her lifestyle directly endangers her child adds a more shocking element to her story. Helen Faraday from Blonde Venus is another fallen woman who is also a mother, but she was much more concerned about her child’s welfare; Vivian was too strung out to properly care for her son. However, she does redeem herself in the end by making the ultimate sacrifice for her child.
Just as cab driver Tom Hurley (Ernest Borgnine) finally saves enough money to fulfill his longtime dream to own taxi cab, his daughter Jane (Debbie Reynolds) is engaged to her boyfriend Ralph Halloran (Rod Taylor). Since Jane and Ralph don’t have a lot of money, they decided to get married after Ralph was presented with the opportunity to drive a car across the country so the trip could be their honeymoon. Since they plan on being married a week later, Jane insists the wedding will be a small, simple affair with the guest list very strictly immediate family only.
Tom and his wife Aggie (Bette Davis) try to fulfill her wishes for a small wedding, but Aggie’s brother Jack (Barry Fitzgerald) lives with them and if they invited Jack, they’d have to invite a slew of other people. Jack is very upset when he finds out he isn’t invited, and as word of Jane’s impending nuptials spreads to friends and neighbors, everyone questions what the rush is and why they aren’t having a bigger wedding. While Jane comes from a working-class background, Ralph’s family is more well-off and wants them to have a more elaborate wedding. Between all the pressure from others and Aggie’s own regrets over her own rushed wedding, Aggie insists on a bigger wedding, even though it would cost everything in Tom and Aggie everything, including Tom’s opportunity to own that cab.
As they start planning the lavish wedding, unexpected expenses start popping up left and right. First Jane’s matron-of-honor’s husband loses his job and can’t afford a dress. Then Ralph’s mother invites far more many people than she was supposed to. Everything costs way more than Tom expected it to. As the expenses mount, so does the tension between family members. Eventually things get bad enough for Jane to call the whole thing off and go for the small affair she and Ralph had originally envisioned. In the wake of Jane’s decision, Aggie is faced with the realization that for the first time since they were married, their household will soon just be her and Tom.
The Catered Affair is like the more dramatic counterpoint to Father of the Bride. Wedding plans spiraling out of control isn’t exactly fresh material for movies, television, and plays, but The Catered Affair is still a rock solid, nuanced drama; a real career highlight for Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, and Debbie Reynolds. Despite the done-before premise, the writing is strong enough to easily stand out from the crowd. The cast is phenomenal; Bette Davis is particularly great with her sensitive, restrained performance. With Aggie’s insistence on having a big wedding, it would be really easy for her character to turn into an over-the-top tyrant. Instead, Aggie has a lot of complexities and extremely sympathetic moments. Debbie Reynolds’ performance impressed me since at the time, she was mostly doing more fluffy, lighthearted material, but she held her own quite nicely with the likes of Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine.
If I ever want to talk about the differences between the pre-code era and the Hays Code era of filmmaking, I can’t think of a better example to use than The Letter. The Letter was originally a stage play by Somerset Maugham and was adapted as a film for the first time in 1929 with Jeanne Eagels starring as Leslie Crosbie. The Letter returned to the silver screen in 1940 with the incomparable Bette Davis having her turn as Leslie. So we have two movies based on the exact same source material, but because of the production codes that were in place for the 1940 version, the movies are incredibly different.
One of the key differences is that in the 1940 version, it takes the viewer time to find out whether or not Leslie is telling the truth. The movie opens with Leslie shooting Mr. Hammond, but we don’t see what led up to it and the truth doesn’t come out until later. But in the 1929 version, we see everything that led to Hammond’s death. We see Leslie writing the letter inviting Hammond to come over and we see what happens when he tries to end his relationship with Leslie. (We also see that Mr. Hammond is living with a woman who isn’t his wife, which would have been strictly verboten by the Hays Code. Hammond was married in the 1940 version.) So while audiences might have been able to sympathize with Bette Davis’ Leslie Crosbie for at least part of the movie, there’s nothing sympathetic about Jeanne Eagles’ Leslie Crosbie. In the 1929 version, we watch Leslie kill a man in cold blood, lie through her teeth about it, and get away with it.
In fact, the Leslie Crosbie played by Jeanne Eagels is a perfect representation of so many things the Hays Code abhorred — a completely unrepentant sinner who literally gets away with murder. When Jeanne delivers the famous line, “With all my heart, I still love the man I killed,” it is as an act of defiance in response to her response to her husband trying to punish her. But when it was Bette’s turn to deliver the same line, she couldn’t get away with saying it the same way. Not only is there nothing defiant about it, Mrs. Hammond makes sure Leslie pays for what she’s done.
It’s also worth noting that in the 1929 version of The Letter, it’s much more apparent that Leslie’s hatred of Li-Ti, Hammond’s mistress, is very racially motivated. As if it weren’t enough that Hammond had moved on, Leslie can’t stand that he moved on with a Chinese woman. Li-Ti realizes this and has a little fun with it by doing everything she can to make Leslie very uncomfortable when she comes to buy the letter. While Li-Ti takes the opportunity to humiliate Leslie in front of as many people as she can during that scene, the 1940 version of this scene plays out with a lot more tension and drama and with fewer witnesses.
But despite the differences between the two versions of The Letter, there is one very notable similarity — Herbert Marshall. In the 1929 version of The Letter, Herbert Marshall played the ill-fated Hammond. In the 1940 version, he played Robert, Leslie’s husband.
The Hollywood Revue 