C/D: Bette Davis

This is how you introduce a star!!! pic.twitter.com/GQzMsSyeqZ

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) November 3, 2019

Was glad to catch her bad girl bit in Fog Over Frisco, especially the breezing through the nightclub scene that follows the intro above.

Jamie Lee Curtis:

Bette Davis! So, I lived in a building in Los Angeles called the Colonial House, and it was referred to as the Dakota West. Bette Davis lived in the building, along with other filmmakers. At twenty-seven, I became the president of the board. Nobody wanted the job, and I was, like, “I’ll do it.” I’m very organized.

And so, two things. One, Miss Davis would call me in July and August, saying, “I want the heat.” I’d be, like, “I’m so sorry, Miss Davis, it’s not possible, because it’s July, and it’s a hundred and five degrees, and we’re all dying, and I can’t turn on the boilers.” She goes, “*I want the heat*.” She would lay by the pool in a big black hat and a black maillot bathing suit with high heels, black sunglasses.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/jamie-lee-curtis-has-never-worked-hard-a-day-in-her-life

Now, Voyager is mostly terrible, but Warners knew how to make plushness entertaining. The film's best moments all revolve around David and Dame Gladys Cooper squaring off.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn (Alfred Soto), Friday, June 2, 2006 2:16 PM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

You still think so? I was quite taken with it last year

No. I've learned to live with the squeamish elements. She puts so much intensity into the duckling phase of her development that when she relaxes into the princess phase it takes my breath away.

Yeah it really rides the line of schmaltz but for me never veered. Makes a good pair with The Heiress.

I've considered how Davis would've worked in The Heiress. Answer: not at all. I can't imagine her playing the gawky, gauche Catherine, and she's unthinkable opposite Ralph Richardson -- she would've eaten him alive.

wdve slayed in many Streep roles tho

Oh my god, every.

I agree that BD couldn't pull off the extreme about-face that OdH pulls off in The Heiress, partly because her "homely" phase would've have been as shocking and her cruel turn would be typical. So much of that movie is the character's infantile behavior/demeanor/mannerisms, and OdH is so brilliant and subtle, and all I can think of is BD in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, totally flailing.

well HHSC is waaaaay past her prime, that's not fair

de Havilland ever so slightly overplays the homeliness, but the subtle framing and the exchanges with Clift, Richardson, and Hopkins help.

She is awesome in "The Nanny". Weirdly, that might be the only thing I have ever seen her in.

This was on tonight, the children in this film are so good - well, one of them was Pamela Franklin, so no surprise her being so good, but the boy in the film only appeared in one other film ("Doctor Doolittle").

OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934)

enjoying her (not bad) cockney accent

the character leslie howard is playing wants slapping but i guess that's why it has this title

Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte is fuuuuuuuuuuuuun.

The title song turns up in some strange places. Fassbinder has the porn seller/police informant Carla sing it to herself in front of a mirror in "Gods of the Plague". Stranger yet though there's this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlrZUO0QlPA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVTrlB1rVLk