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 This movie has two cousins, Charlotte and Delia in love with the same man. He
gets killed in the Civil War and then Charlotte has his baby, even though she
is unmarried. They tell the kid she is an orphan and when Delia "cunningly
wins the girl's devotion, once-lovely Charlotte deteriorates into a bitter,
sharp tongued" woman known as Aunt Charlotte. The New York Times is quoted as saying that Bette Davis in the role of Charlotte "gives a
poignant and wise performance" and Leonard Maltin gets himself quoted as well
babbling on about how Davis and co-star Miriam Hopkins "create
fireworks". 1939, 95 minutes, VHS
I'm not about to sit here and pigeonhole a movie as being a "woman's film"
just because it deals with subject matter that only a woman could enjoy. At
least a woman from 1885 that is. I frankly think that a lot of women that see
this movie starring Bette Davis would think she was a doormat for no good
reason. The guys who see this movie are obviously just trying to suck up to
their girlfriend or probably have no use for girlfriends. This one came out in
the late thirties so I suppose it was possible that some unwed mother could
have had to lie about her baby's origins for her whole life just so that her
baby could have the advantages of being a rich adopted kid, instead of a poor
bastard. But this movie wanted to pile on the drama beyond that and the result
was one of those deals where I never quite figured out the purpose for most of
Bette Davis' actions. Oh I understood it was because she loved her daughter
very much and wanted only the best for her, I just never got why that required
her to become a dried up, crabby old maid. The Old Maid was somehow based on a novel by Edith Wharton and a Pulitzer Prize-winning
play and I
sat there wishing that this film would make up its mind as to what its source
material was exactly (I assume that the play was based on the novel and then
they used the play as the basis to film this movie, thus explaining the fact
that most of the movie is spent almost entirely on a single set). Some of you
women's libbers out there are probably still stewing that I insinuated this was
a chick flick earlier, but I do have the evidence to back this up. All you
need to know is two things: one is that this is the kind of movie where
everything revolves around weddings. You and I know how gals are about
weddings. It seems like every morning talk show has a segment on which boring
couple is going to get a dream wedding (I suspect the only dreamy part for the
groom is that he doesn't have to plan or pay for it). The other tip off that
this is one for the ladies is that the background music is made up entirely of
those tearjerker strings movies like this and always employ. Bette Davis
couldn't go and moon after her lost love or secret daughter without these dang
strings serenading her misery. Maybe she wouldn't have been such an old prune
is she played some upbeat tunes from someone like Smash Mouth or Sugar Ray.  Now I said there were some weddings in this movie and I counted at least four
actual or almost weddings spaced out over 96 minutes of screen time. A quick
bit of tenth grade math shows us that that averages out to one wedding for
every 2.5 Keystones consumed during the course of this movie. With four
weddings to get to, the movie wastes precious little time in getting us to the
first ceremony. In the very same town newspaper (and on the front page no
less) that announced some problem at Fort Sumpter, there is also an
announcement that one Delia Lovall is about to get her money-grubbing,
social-climbing hooks into one of those Ralston boys that everyone in town
knows is a fine catch. Delia is played by Miriam Hopkins and is the cousin to
Bette Davis' Charlotte Lovall. Supposedly Miriam and Bette had some kind of
feud going on, but none of that really comes out in any of the scenes they play
together. It is fun to think that as Miriam was making this Civil War era
epic, she had desperately wanted to be in another, much more famous Civil War
epic that also came out in 1939. Oh well, maybe you didn't get to smell
Clark's bad breath, but you did get to endure the glowering stares of Bette
periodically through out this movie. Even though the venom reportedly between
these two didn't evidence itself in this movie, they appeared together again in
1943 in Old Acquaintance, so maybe by then they were power bombing each around the set. These two
cousins live with the granny and everyone is pretty excited that Miriam is
getting married. Everyone is less than excited that a telegram comes hours
before the ceremony. A telegram in these old movies is never good news and
most often gives us information on one of two things: somebody just bought the
farm off-screen or someone is finally coming back from a trip abroad to reclaim
their old girlfriend back. This time it is the latter and involves a guy named
Clem Spender. As soon as I heard that name, that Spidey sense that Superman
always used to ferret out trouble starting burning in my groin. This is
because whenever I hear the name Spender, I am always reminded of Spender from
Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. That Spender went a little nuts when he went to Mars and didn't want man to
inhabit that planet because he said we'd just crap the joint up and ruin
everything. Then he whacked his crew or something. The Spender in The Old
Maid is an older-looking dude with a lot of shine in his hair and for some
reason thought that when his girlfriend said she would wait for him, while he
wandered around off-screen for two years, the little tramp meant it. Well, you
know how debutantes are and he's a bit put out when he comes back to see that
she is getting married to someone else (someone she doesn't really love - you
know how these kinds of movies are). While the Martian Spender would have
killed everyone at the wedding and declared the plantation safe for all
Martians, our Spender gracefully exits through the back door and smack dab into
the civil war.  Bette Davis isn't an old maid yet, so she kind of hooks up with Spender and
sees him off at the train station so that he can go get himself killed in the
war. It's a bittersweet moment when he sees Delia at the train station and
seems to take a greater interest in her than he does in Charlotte, but then
again it is Charlotte who somehow gets herself knocked up by Spender without
even being married. I guess you could say that this was definitely before her
"old maid" phase. The war years quickly pass by for the audience as each
successive year is listed on the screen over some footage of Civil War guys
getting shot and blowed up and stuff. The war ends with us lingering over the
grave of that poor Spender guy who got his ticket punched in some God-forsaken
jungle called Vicksburg. When we check with that slut Charlotte, we find her
running an orphanage for little kids. Her cousin shows up to try and tell her
what a dope she is to be wasting all her good non-slut years on these
ungrateful brats. There is also some mention about how years ago she went out
west for her health and Charlotte seems to be very attached to one little girl
in particular, a little foundling named Tina. Somehow or other Charlotte also
has herself a new boytoy, the other Ralston boy. They are going to be married,
but he wants her to give up the orphanage. She refuses and it comes down to
crunch time on the wedding day. Is she going to give it all up for him? Will
he make her? Is her cousin going to ruin her whole life by telling the Ralston
boy that Charlotte is too sick to marry him? What do you think? Charlotte,
like a lot of dummies in life, screws the pooch by confiding in a family
member. There is no quicker road to hell then swearing a blood relative to a
secret, but she unloads the dark deeds she did and it turns out that Tina is
really Clem's love child and she went out west to have the baby without anyone
ever knowing. I always wondered if the West
ever wondered what all these chicks from the East were doing, coming out there,
popping out their kids and then going right back home again. Since Tina is her
own kid, she can't give up the orphanage. That's a pretty sweet undercover
gig, huh? Nothing like creating an entire orphanage to cover up your one night
of sin. 
Charlotte thinks that her wedding was ruined because he found out she had a kid
out of wedlock and is really pissed when she finds out that Delia told him it
was because she had lung disease or something and not because she had peanut
butter legs (They spread easy!). I never quite got the nuances involved here -
to me it seemed like the end result was the same - no man and life ruined. Who
cares why he walked out her? Bottom line is that it happened. Delia has her
own troubles as well. As is usually the case in these old movies that take
place in and around the civil war, somebody goes and gets themselves dumped on
their head by a horse (see also Gone With The Wind ). This time it is Delia's husband and he soon croaks, paving the way for her
grouchy cousin Charlotte to bring Tina and move in with her. Tina immediately
starts calling Delia mommy and refers to Charlotte as her aunt. Tina is then
raised in this household not knowing that Charlotte isn't just the nasty old
aunt, but actually her biological mother. The rest of the movie details how
Charlotte treats Tina like crap while Delia is very nice to Tina. I was never
sure what grand plan there was with Charlotte and her daughter and why they
needed to go through all this deception except to make Charlotte the biggest
martyr since good old J.C. hisself. I understand the power of someone
sacrificing their own happiness for someone they care about and that probably
makes a very dramatic and appealing story, but why couldn't Charlotte ever
claim this kid as her own? Because no good family would want to marry Tina
then? Shoot, Charlotte ain't getting married to anyone anymore so who in the
hell is she helping by hiding this kid's true parentage? No one cares if she's
an old maid or an unwed mother - she'll be shunned either way. They pile on
the scenes
between Tina and her secret mama wherein Charlotte is prim and an ass to her,
always minding her business and telling her what to do while Tina retorts that
Charlotte has never known love and never danced and is just a crappy old maid
(they make sure to get that line out a couple of times, just in case you forgot
what this movie was called). I began to think that maybe I was supposed to
believe that Charlotte wasn't simply one of those moms that puts everyone ahead
of herself, like you sometimes have to read about in rags like Parade magazine,
but was in fact mentally unbalanced. This is most striking when Charlotte lets
us know that she actually practices saying cold, stern things to Tina and then
we get to see her sitting in the dark going through her speech to Tina before
Tina even gets home! How is any sane person going to relate to that or feel
anything other than pathetic pity for such a twisted creature? The movie ends as it begins, with a wedding! Finally, Tina is all filled out
and ready to be packed off to be the shallow wife of some good family's son.
How was this accomplished in view of her "raised by wolves" status? Simple,
Delia legally adopted her! This gives Tina the Ralston name (What name had she
been using before?) and access to the Ralston money, which was good enough for
the family of the boy she was hot to trot for. This upper crust folks do have
their standards you know. Charlotte threatens to tell Tina her real heritage,
but doesn't and when Delia goes to talk to her, she tells Tina that Charlotte
never got married because she refused to give Tina up and that Tina should be
really nice to Charlotte when she gets married and give Charlotte the last kiss
before she and her new hubby go off in their carriage (I'll bet her groom is
hoping
that peanut-butter legs run in the family!). This makes Charlotte get as close
as she is capable of to a smile and seems to be the pay-off for a lifetime of
misery and unhappiness for her. Bette Davis does a good job with the
ridiculous material she is given and is able to play the various emotional
states she is given with decent weight. The problem is that this only serves
to highlight the inconsistent nature of her character. Other than when she was
with Clem (portrayed way too briefly on screen), she never seemed more at peace
than when she was in charge of a house full of children. She was warm and all
that good stuff and really seemed to enjoy looking after them all. Then,
without explanation, they all disappear and she is only left with Tina. She
dotes on Tina in these early scenes, but for some reason all their
buddy-buddiness disappears as soon as they go live with Delia. Then we see
Charlotte suddenly turn into the stereotypical old maid , complete with bun
hairdo and constipated face. I never believed for a second that Charlotte
behaved in any fashion approaching anything resembling a real woman. All these
unexplained changes just underscored that the story desperately wanted to
squeeze
emotion from the dames in the audience, even if it wasn't necessary or
justified. I never will understand why all this lying and crap was necessary,
but even if you accept that for some reason, they could never tell anyone about
Tina's origins so that she would have the proper social status (a dubious
reason at best), Charlotte surely could have and should have told Tina herself.
What harm would come from that? And doesn't she deserve to know where she
came from? Davis' talents are wasted in this slice of tearjerker cinema that
doesn't ever come closer to jerking anything other than your chain, chiefly due
to the schizo main character and the pointless sacrifices the story demands
that she make.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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