8. Bette Davis in 'Dangerous' (1935)

Plot Intro

Joyce Heath (Bette Davis) is a once-promising but now washed-up actress in New York City. On one of her many drunken sojourns, she is encountered by a wealthy architect, Don Bellows (Franchot Tone) who is engaged to also-wealthy Gail Armitage (Margaret Lindsay). Don was inspired to become an architect by an early performance of Joyce’s. Struck by her fragile, self-hating state, he takes her into his home to begin caring for her- and then starts falling in love with her…

Paul says...

We quickly arrive at another titan of Old Hollywood. Bette Davis is an extremely familiar name in households, even if you haven’t seen one of her films. She’s probably most closely associated with melodramas involving vengeance and, often, murder, thanks to her energetic performances of morally questionable, emotionally broken or downright evil women.

Dangerous is no exception. It’s a very early example of Davis’ work and very much in the centre of her “Golden Age”, when she was churning out hits and garnering pretty much annual Best Actress nominations for them. It’s certainly obvious why she became popular so quickly. She has a penetrating glare, a snarl to give you goosebumps and can go from ranting furiously to breaking down in tears across expensive furniture AND make it convincing! 

In fact, as with many of the Best Actress wins so far, she’s so strong that she exposes the glaring faults of the rest of the movie. The story was the biggest problem. It starts off with so much promise. We don’t really meet Joyce properly until a couple of scenes in and we get our first impressions of her through the gossip and memories of other characters. There is some mention of a “jinx” on Joyce’s career, which apparently started when her first leading man, and I quote, “got killed”!

What on earth happened? Who is Joyce? Is there really some sort of jinx? The script skillfully sets up these questions ready to be answered. It does a great job of keeping them going for a bit longer. We meet Joyce - she’s broken and wallowing in self-pity. She pushes people away deliberately convinced that they’ll get hurt around her. Don’s housekeeper warns him “that girl’s dangerous!” Even more suspense!

And the movie does EXACTLY what we don’t want it to do. It descends into sloppy sentimentality. The antagonism between Joyce and Don turns into a real, soliloquy-laden romance. The “jinx” turns out to be nothing but Joyce’s own self-doubt and irrationality. The leading man who mysteriously “got killed” is forgotten about entirely. The film’s only real twist (that Joyce is still married) is a massive letdown when we discover that her husband is actually just a nice man. 

So what was set up as a melodrama with some juicy twists incoming just becomes limp-wristed mush. The set-up was truly superb but even Davis’ energy wasn’t enough to save it’s impending fate. For better examples of her work, I would suggest her debut performance in 1934 in Of Human Bondage, her later performance in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, and her seminal and most defining work, All About Eve. I would also highly recommend Ryan Murphy’s miniseries, Feud, which charts the alleged rivalry between Davis (played by Susan Sarandon) and another Best Actress winner, Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange). Incidentally, both Sarandon and Lange are Best Actress winners too! It’s tear-jerking stuff.

Highlight

The opening set-up is exciting, especially the hints at a dark past for Joyce.

Lowlight

Basically the entire second half. But the very end scene which reveals Joyce deciding to try rekindle her relationship with her husband despite having tried to murder him in a car accident is not one for the Hollywood Hall of Fame.  

Mark

3/10

Doug says...

It’s a sad fact that as a hard-of-hearing person, watching these early films is sometimes a bit of an ordeal. Most of the films so far have crackly or poor sound, and barely any of them come with subtitles. In a world where platforms such as Netflix have understood and embraced their responsibility to be inclusive of people with auditory or visual impairments, it’s extraordinarily frustrating. 

I will be abstaining from the highlight, lowlight and mark because I was unable to follow or understand what was going on. This is the first time I’ve had to do this and I am truly disappointed. What upsets me more is that this is one of two times we see Bette Davis, who is one of my all-time favourite actresses. So instead of talking about the film, I’m going to talk about Bette Davis - although we won’t cover everything as she does (thankfully) get another appearance in this project, and I have already confirmed we have access to subtitles for that one! 

Bette Davis was a hoofer of the first degree. She worked. Born in 1908, she began work on stage, and quickly moved to performing on Broadway when she was just 21. A year later in 1930 she moved to Hollywood and spent two unsuccessful years, being labelled as low sex appeal and nervous. It was as she was preparing to return to New York that she got given the lead female role in The Man Who Played God by fellow actor George Arliss. It was to him that Davis would always credit her resulting break through into stardom. 

Films quickly followed with Of Human Bondage gaining Davis major critical acclaim. Davis was not nominated for the Oscar’s Best Supporting Actress - a decision that drew so much outrage from audiences (including nominee Norma Shearer!), that for the first - and currently only - time, the Academy announced her as a nominee after the ceremony had taken place. 

Bette went on to be in this film Dangerous, winning the Oscar. Her acting - fresh and often full of vitality and power - was a breath of air in the industry. It also meant she missed out on some very famous gigs including It Happened One Night and Gone With The Wind - some directors didn’t want to take a chance on such an actress. 

Davis is most known for a handful of roles, but her filmography is prolific. She simply had to work, and would take pretty much any role, preferring unlikeable, tempestuous characters who she could channel energy into. Films like The Little Foxes, Now Voyager, Dark Victory, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex allowed her to take risks playing characters who were a far cry from the passive unimpeachable women that saturated screen dramas only a few years before. 

Divorced three times by 1950 and married four times (a final divorce in 1960), her love-life was eventful and she had three children. And it was in 1950 that Davis would go on to star in - in my opinion - her masterpiece, All About Eve. But we’ll leave it there for now. 

Highlight

Abstained.

Lowlight

Abstained. 

Marks

Abstained. 

7. Claudette Colbert in 'It Happened One Night' (1934)

Plot Intro

Spoilt heiress and socialite, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is about to marry equally spoilt heir. Her overbearing father disapproves and, furious, Ellie flees his yacht in Miami to head to her fiance in New York. As she struggles to sustain herself independently on her cross-country trip, she encounters Peter Warne (Clark Gable), a savvy but unemployed journalist who realises that finding Ellie could reinstate his career. But as they travel and bicker, love starts to filter in…

Doug says...

This is a cracking film. In fact it’s probably the only older film I’ve seen from the whole ‘Best Picture’ project that feels like it could have been made yesterday. While the references to the Depression, motels and more are very rooted in their time, the dialogue and events are somehow utterly timeless. It rattles along, wasting no time, and it’s not until the final two scenes that it even begins to take a breath. I love it. 

A lot of the success is down to Clark Gable (why don’t any stars these day look like him? He is so utterly swoon-some) and Claudette Colbert. Their chemistry is palpable and they seem to be having the best time. It makes it even more surprising when you find out neither of them enjoyed making it and Colbert had to be fetched off a train to attend the Oscars ceremony as she was sloping off on holiday, certain she wouldn’t win. Their utter professionalism means you’d bet money on them having a ball. Impressive. 

Colbert is fabulous. Her line delivery is so on-beat, sarcastic and hilarious that it could be delivered in an episode of Schitt’s Creek or Gavin and Stacey. It’s a performance that continues to feel ridiculously fresh, despite being over 85 years old. One moment when she sprawls on a fence watching Gable haplessly try to flag down a car, is brilliant - loaded with an amused wit, we side with her and like her instantly. And while the Rich Heiress Fleeing Family Duties isn’t something that we will all resonate with, there are undertones of it in modern cinema still - just think of Henry Golding trying to avoid his familial duty in Crazy Rich Asians for a start. Colbert, for all her scorn of the script, brings a ready wit and joie de vivre to the role, and inserts notes of vulnerability at points while never making her a Pathetic Heroine. She’s gutsy, sharp and ready to jump off a ship to escape her overbearing father. 

Colbert also manages the transition from Spoiled Heiress to Lovable Heroine In Love With Rough & Ready Guy very well. It’s not easy - Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story doesn’t quite manage it and countless others fall foul at some point, but at every point of Colbert’s performance she is believable and you can’t help but cheer for her. 

A cracking film that stands up to the test of time perhaps better than any other I know - and two timelessly fresh and invigorating performances at the helm of it. Oscars all round! 

Highlight 

It’s a tie between Colbert’s ridiculously high eyebrows - or the scene when Ellie and Peter play-act a marital row to get out of suspicion from detectives. Colbert and Gable launch into it with such verve that it’s an utter delight to watch. 

Lowlight

The penultimate scene does drag a bit, but it ties up a lot of key threads to allow the joyous (and at the time risque) ending to happen. 

Mark 

10/10

Paul says...

This is our first of eleven instances where the Best Picture and Best Actress awards tally up. Interestingly, four of these eleven instances happen before 1943, while the rest are more spaced out over the decades. In fact, It Happened One Night was a monster-hit, and an unexpected one at that- even the two main stars thought it would be a failure. It nabbed Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay, a feat only equalised by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs. And it is, indeed, a film that has stood the test of time. Even on my fourth viewing, I found moments that made me laugh and moments that made me think, and that dual achievement is what makes it one of the best romantic-comedies ever made.

In our previous project, I wrote a lot about the screwball comedy genre, which was pretty much originated with this movie. It was particularly popular in the late-Depression era due to its frequent tackling of rich and poor mixed together with funny and romantic results. 

Watching this film again but with a stronger focus on the acting of Colbert, you can see how these themes feed into the characters in nuanced ways. Ellie may be wealthy, but she isn’t cruel or heartless, she’s simply incapable as a result of her sheltered upbringing. Peter has to prevent her from buying a box of chocolates when she’s down to her last dollar, showing how she has never had to budget anything in her life. She expects the bus to just wait for her at its stop and is flabbergasted when it leaves at its appointed time. But what Colbert does so well is display Ellie’s resilience (she cracks a joke when the bus crashes), her resourcefulness (the famous scene in which she hitch hikes by exposing her thigh) and her natural empathy in an oft-forgotten scene in which she comforts a boy whose mother is sick and penniless, a powerful reminder of a society in the throes of a devastating economic downturn.

In other words, this is a strong precursor to Schitt’s Creek, which also tackles the consequences of the wealthy and spoilt suddenly having to rub shoulders with the inexplicable idiosyncrasies and tastes of the working class. It is not just a movie made and released in the '30s, it’s a movie that epitomises the '30s in that it shows both a wealthy and poor character working together to try and survive even when they have no money, no roof over their heads and the police on their tail. And Colbert earned her Oscar. Her comic timing is flawless, she’s endlessly likeable in her naivety and strong-will, and the final scenes in which she convinces herself that Peter hates her inspire a lot of sympathy from the audience. She absolutely ticks every box.

Born in France and emigrating to the US with her family at the age of 3, Colbert may be a name that has perhaps been overshadowed by other contemporaries of hers, but she was a hugely successful star. She earned two subsequent nominations for Best Actress and reached a point where she didn’t need to renew her studio contract because she was able to make even more money as an independent actress, such was her demand. She very nearly got the role of Margot in All About Eve until a back injury caused her to hand the role over to Bette Davis who made it her signature performance. Colbert acknowledged her own bad luck in this.

Colbert was known for being headstrong, hard-working and a bit of a perfectionist by colleagues. She apparently was reluctant to be shot from her right side, and was anxious about performing in colour movies due to worries about how she’d be lit. Her career remained constant although she transferred to theatre and TV from the 1950s onwards. She married twice, becoming a widow when her second husband died, but never had children. After a series of strokes, she died at the ripe old age of 92 in 1996. The American Film Institute places her at number 12 in their top 25 list of female stars.

Highlight

Oddly enough, I’ve found the last 10 minutes to be a bit of a slog on past viewings. But after watching Colbert’s acting more carefully, her indecision over her marriage to Westley at the end is all the more tense, and all the more thrilling when she finally realises that Peter is best for her.

Lowlight

Some of Peter’s treatment of Ellie feels a bit “dark age”. He insists that she should be slapped and put in her place, which has perhaps lost its amusement in 2020.

Mark

9/10

6. Katharine Hepburn in 'Morning Glory' (1932/33)

Plot Intro

Eva Lovelace (Katharine Hepburn) is an aspiring actress just arrived in New York City and desperate for a role on Broadway. She comes into the acquaintance of aspiring playwright Joseph Sheridan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr) and theatre producer Louis Easton (Adolphe Menjou) as well as various other actors, actresses and critics. But as time goes on and her career fails to fully take off, Eva becomes increasingly desperate…

Paul says...

And here we arrive at the Titan (or Titaness?) of Best Actress winners. The American Film Institute, which compiles many movie-themed “Best of” lists, names Hepburn as the Best Actress of all time, higher up the list than Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Audrey Hepburn (no relation), Ingrid Bergman and Elizabeth Taylor, all of whom we will see on this project. Hepburn’s career lasted from the early '30s all the way through to the '80s. She received a total of 12 nominations for Best Actress, which only Meryl Streep has managed to surpass. She holds the record for the most Best Actress wins with a total of 4, meaning we’ll be encountering Hepburn 3 more times on the course of this project. This is actually a gargantuan number- all other Best Actress winners have only ever won once or twice (including Streep), and none of the Best Actor winners have equalised this record although Jack Nicholson has won 3. 

She is also my personal favourite actress from the pre-1960 age of Hollywood, a title which actresses have obviously murdered their own mother to try and achieve. 

But even I must admit that Morning Glory is perhaps not a great example of Hepburn’s work. Like the last few Best Actress wins, it’s an unassuming, terribly understated piece of drama that is really geared towards showing off the leading lady’s skills in all their glory. Morning Glory starts off quite strongly showing the cattiness and ruthlessness of auditioning for Broadway, but descends into unbelievable romantic sentiment by the end. It steers too clear of portraying the male upper echelons of Broadway as the money-grabbing businessmen that they are- they’re incredulously kind and gentle towards Hepburn, her big opportunity comes far too easily, and one of them even admits to sexually molesting her in a drunken stupor which is treated as completely fine! Actresses who have suffered at the hands of predatory and manipulative movie and theatre executives and directors may wish to give this one a miss. 

However, Hepburn, true to form, puts her all in. From the word go she displays Eva’s desperation (she asserts that she loves acting so much she’ll die on the stage), her naivety, as well as an underlying calculation as she seems to be reading into the advice and promises made to her by her various co-workers. I was surprised to hear how high-pitched her voice is here and I can only assume that, in her youth, this probably made her more endearing to casting directors. From the '40s onwards, her voice takes on the more gravelly, penetrating tone that she became known for. 

Hepburn quickly established a reputation for strength and assertiveness in the public eye. She was brought up by progressive, left-wing parents - her mother was a notable Suffragist and co-founder Planned Parenthood; her father was a urologist who advocated research into cures for venereal diseases (a pretty shocking advocacy in the late-19th century). Hepburn encountered tragedy at a young age- at 13 she found the body of her 15-year-old brother who had hanged himself, and another relative tried to take his own life by defenestration but landed on spiked iron railings below (true story!). Hepburn famously wore trousers before they became fashionable for women, and had a dominant, outspoken and forthright personality, unafraid to present her political views. Her autobiography, aptly titled “Me”, is pretty much Hepburn sticking the middle finger up at conventional memoirs and choosing to just write whatever the hell comes into her head. In fact, some press often dismissed her as arrogant, argumentative and difficult to work with. 

She attended the all-female, presitigious Bryn Mawr College, then after a brief stint in theatre, broke into movies in the early '30s and instantly made a name for herself. She notably played Jo Marsh in the '30s adaptation of Little Women. When her career started to take a downturn as the 40s approached, she survived thanks partly to her family’s wealth and also her partner Howard Hughes buying the rights to The Philadelphia Story which was a huge success in 1940 and although she didn’t hit the heights as she once did, Hepburn’s career stayed steady and eventually picked up again thanks, in part, to her partnership with one Spencer Tracy.

But, having covered her early life and career, we’ll leave Hepburn there for now. We’ll see her again twice in the 1960s, and then once more in the early '80s, so we can divide her eventful life up into several parts. Needless to say, she is a fascinating and important figure in the history of Hollywood and even mid-20th century feminism. But Morning Glory is one that hasn’t stood the test of time. From the first two decades of her career, I would recommend Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story and Adam’s Rib as better examples of her skills.

Highlight

Hepburn’s acting in the first lengthy scene is a prime example of why I admire her so much. She throws herself into the role full throttle but manages to remain natural at the same time- a tricky thing to balance.

Lowlight

The way in which the film deals with Eva being drunkenly molested by a theatre producer is shoddy and primitive.  

Marks

3/10

Doug says...

You may have guessed from the above that Paul loves Katharine Hepburn. 

I myself love Bette Davis more, so you can prepare yourself for a deluge when we hit 1950 and Bette is entirely robbed of her Oscar for All About Eve. And actually, had she won that, I think we’d be in a different discussion because she’d then have won three - and honestly I don’t think Katharine deserved one for this. So they’d be equal. Who’s the Greatest Actress Ever now, American Film Institute?! 

That’s not to say Katharine Hepburn is bad here. She’s fine. But we know from her later performances that she is a Barnstormer. She enters and from that moment on, the stage belongs to her. Screw the other actors. Screw the fact that she opened the wrong door and wasn’t even meant to be in this play. It’s hers now. 

But here, ehhh. Not so much. It’s very much a case of Meryl Streep in the early ‘80s, being not that great. The fact is that some actors take time to find their footing, and Hepburn doesn’t really suit playing a rather pathetic dreamer. In one protracted scene at a party, she has two glasses of champagne, dances around, and then performs the Juliet Balcony scene to rapturous applause. Only Hepburn’s apparently brilliant Juliet - wasn’t very good. Because these are not the roles she excels in. Hepburn, as Paul’s biography lays out above, is better at Strong Gutsy Women Who Don’t Take Shit From No Man. I love that. We need more of those roles. 

Whereas here, I felt Hepburn overreaching constantly, trying to fit flickers of something else into a rather pastiche character. It didn’t work for me in the narrative. If she was at all malevolent, then why didn’t that get reflected in the plot? 

Speaking of which, any plot that has a powerful character deliver a mildly regretful monologue about shagging his passed-out ward can fuck right off. 

The writers also apparently left the room for lunch and just forgot to come back. The ending is not an ending. It should be the halfway point of the film, instead they crowbar in an old woman who used to be famous, have Hepburn deliver some speeches about the possibility of success fading to her, and then end it with some loud classical music. It makes zero sense and reminds me of my attempts writing a play when I was fourteen. Has anyone googled it? Was the writer actually fourteen? 

It would make more sense.  

Highlight

I enjoyed Mary Duncan’s turn as the spoiled starlet Rita Vernon. Interestingly Duncan was also the star of FW Murnau’s City Girl - one of three films he directed at Fox, one of the other’s being Sunrise starring…Janet Gaynor. Small world. 

Lowlight

As Paul says, featuring sexual assault as ‘whoops!’ is just unforgivable.   

Marks

2/10