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Bette Davis in Dark Victory

© K Cruver

After four years, here is my last column as the contributing editor of the Classic Actresses topic at Suite101. I'm saying goodbye with an essay about the movie, and the actress, that got me hooked on classic films. Thank you to all my readers for your support over the years. It has been a pleasure knowing you.

I was thirteen years old. There were still lots of classics to be found on broadcast television, and that was lucky for me. One night I saw Dark Victory (1939), starring Bette Davis, on channel 11. Even then, I knew that I was seeing something life-altering.

I started watching near the beginning of the movie. I saw Davis striding around the grounds of a stable, saying good morning to people and barking orders at her trainer (played by Humphrey Bogart). Something about her bright energy intrigued me enough to watch for a while, but I was only halfway paying attention to the movie at first.

The moment when I truly noticed Bette Davis was transformative. I remember it clearly. She was leaning back against a tree trunk, discussing the sale of a race horse in a crisp, efficient manner. She flipped her eyelids up and down in an exaggerated way, and it should have been absurd, but I was mesmerized. (I was disturbed by the raisin color of her lipstick-turns out I was also seeing my first colorized film, from that dark period instigated by Ted Turner. We can forgive him now that there is TCM.)

Davis herself best described the intense acting style that riveted me; in an interview she said: "I think that one should know one is acting. I think we can sit on the street corner and see real people. . . .I always believed that acting is larger than life."* She was unusual in that she successfully transferred the most powerful elements of her stage technique to the screen. Many other stage performers have failed in attempting the same thing, but she somehow turned what could have been hammy into something more effective (though I will concede that she was not always successful in doing this).

Part of the reason Davis' stage "projection" worked was that she peppered her performances with little bits of business that made her characters seem real. Many of these mannerisms appear in Dark Victory. Though they are easy to take for granted, those small, seemingly absent-minded actions, such as the way she takes out a handkerchief to dab her nose while she talks to a nurse, or how she anxiously twists the arm of George Brent's jacket while she talks to him, give her Judith Traherne a texture that is true to life.