Bette Davis on TCM: THE OLD MAID; NOW, VOYAGER; THE WORKING MAN

Bette Davis, Warner Bros.' top female box-office attraction from the mid-'30s to the late '40s, is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" performer-of-the-day this Wednesday, August 3. TCM will be presenting 12 Bette Davis movies, in addition to the 2005 documentary Stardust: The Bette Davis Story. [Bette Davis Movie Schedule.]

Unfortunately, none of TCM's Bette Davis movies is a local premiere. So, don't expect anything rare like The Bad Sister, Seed, The Menace, or Way Back Home. Or, for that matter, Connecting Rooms, Bunny O'Hare, The Scientific Cardplayer, or Wicked Stepmother. (Luigi Comencini's The Scientific Cardplayer, co-starring Alberto Sordi, Joseph Cotten, and Silvana Mangano, is an interesting film; hopefully TCM will get a hold of it one of these days.)

Anyhow, at least there's the little-known The Working Man (1933), a perfectly enjoyable Depression Era comedy-drama starring a surprisingly effective George Arliss as a big businessman who, incognito, lives the life of a "working man" — at his chief rival's factory. Bette Davis has a pre-Bette Davis supporting role; in other words, the eyes are Bette Davis' eyes, the voice is Bette Davis' voice, but the Bette Davis intensity isn't quite there, yet.
Now, Voyager (1942) is one of those movie classics I've never been able to "get." The moon and the stars and Max Steiner's music and Sol Polito's cinematography notwithstanding, I find this Irving Rapper-directed romantic melodrama neither romantic nor tear-jerking. Now, Edmund Goulding's The Old Maid (1939), though not exactly "romantic," is one of the most effective melodramas of the studio era. Not because of Bette Davis, who somehow manages to come across as both stiff and mannered in the title role; The Old Maid belongs to Miriam Hopkins, one of the most effective, most versatile, and most underrated performers of the time.

Archie Mayo's Bordertown (1935) is a perfectly watchable melodrama despite the presence of Paul Muni, while Mayo's The Petrified Forest (1936) is a surprisingly effective suspense melodrama. The film's stage origins are obvious and Humphrey Bogart is woefully ineffectual as the meanie, but Leslie Howard quietly steals the show as one of the hostages at a desert cantina. The Petrified Forest is also one of the few movies in which Davis is believable as a "nice" girl.

There isn't much I can say about William Wyler's The Letter (1940), except that it's one of the greatest and most beautifully acted, shot, edited, and scored Hollywood movies ever made. The other Wyler-Davis collaboration of the day, Jezebel (1938), isn't that good, but it's a solid melodrama all the same. Davis is fine as the black-and-white Scarlett O'Hara who wears a red dress at the ball, but Jezebel (a Miriam Hopkins flop on Broadway) is no Gone with the Wind: it lacks both the scope and the characterizations of the David O. Selznick production.