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 Bette Davis is a novelist who engages in a heated rivalry with a long time friend (Miriam Hopkins) in both her professional and personal lives. 1943, 110 minutes
There's only one reason anyone would ever seek out this semi-obscure Bette Davis movie (one of only about 19 that she made during the 1940s alone!) and that can be summed up in one semi-questionable word: catfight! What began a few years before in The Old Maid comes to a throat-throttling head as Bette finally has it out with arch foe Miriam Hopkins. That many of you are wondering how someone you never heard of can be a film legend's arch foe certainly doesn't augur well for how things turn out in this movie. Miriam is probably best known for not getting the part of Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With The Wind or perhaps for turning down Claudette Colbert's role in It Happened One Night. Other than that, she's notable for being eclipsed by Bette's talents in both of their films together and for an alleged feud between the two.
Whether or not there really were any issues between the two or if it was part of a Warner Brothers publicity campaign to drum up business for a pair of movies starring Bette Davis and whatshername is open to debate. If nothing else, it forced me to pay more attention to this tale of dumb people making dumb decisions all the while the movie convulsed here and there between comedy and drama as Miriam demonstrated time and again in poorly played scenes that sometimes the Hollywood braintrust knows what its doing in doling out the starring roles in movies like Gone With The Wind and It Happened One Night. By the time Bette gets around to choking the life out of her late in the film, you're inclined to think that she was peeved that Miriam's hammy and clueless performance was ruining the movie.
Miriam's inability to tone down her shrill antics isn't the sole reason that you end up wishing that she and Bette had just set up a boxing ring on the set of The Old Maid and hashed it out over the lunch hour between set up shots four years before this mess, it's just the most glaring. There's also the way the characters are written. For example, Miriam's character, Mildred Drake, goes from self-absorbed whiner to obnoxious success to shrieking, bug-eyed harridan. Not only was I wondering why I should care what happened to her, I was wondering what Bette Davis' character, Kit Marlowe, was doing putting up with this for several decades. Mildred's long-suffering husband Preston wins over the audience by default by walking out on her after nine years of her treating him like crap.
Bette's Kit is an author who while not necessarily a commercial success, is a darling of the critics and she comes back to her hometown one day and hooks up with childhood pal Mildred. During this trip home, Mildred reveals to Kit that she too had written a novel. Whereas Kit writes serious fiction about how cruddy life is, Mildred writes trashy love stories with happy endings and is thus a bestselling author in no time and able to knock out a new novel at a Danielle Steele pace. Mildred's success never seems to bother Kit, but I'm guessing that's because Kit knows that Mildred's husband Preston is not-so-secretly in love with her and if I know one thing about the ladies, it's that being able to steal your best friend's man is the great equalizer in just about every aspect of life.
In the opening act of the movie though, Preston doesn't do much more than exchange meaningful looks with a mildly flummoxed Kit. It isn't until years later that Preston becomes a babbling fool about how he loves her, even as she's on the phone with the star of her play that's just about to open in New York! What's this? Kit has moved from novelist to acclaimed playwright? The year is now 1932. Preston and Mildred have a daughter named Deidre and Mildred is a rich author. Kit is trying her hand at the theater and everyone is in New York to see her first play open up. We quickly see that while Kit is still fairly well-adjusted (though man-less and therefore maybe not-so-well-adjusted according to Mildred) and likes hanging out with Diedre and taking her shopping and doing girl stuff like that, Preston and Mildred have hit a bit of a rough patch. She's a money hungry material wench and he's a drunk. Though he's a drunk only so that he can tolerate her odiousness, so it's not really so much a substance abuse problem as it is another of Mildred's personality flaws. He's also open about his feelings for Kit.
Though Kit is too good a friend to give her best friend's man the five finger discount, that doesn't stop Preston from running off. Heck, this Mildred is such a disagreeable pill that her husband ran off with himself! Then, as so often happens in these multi-decade melodramas, WWII muscles onstage for the third act like some high profile character actor. It's been another nine years and Preston is a major in the army listening to a radio broadcast being given by none other than Kit Marlowe! If this movie went another nine years (shudder), this chick would have her own variety show on the Dumont Television Network!
After a quick phone call, a meeting at a local club is arranged. Kit and Preston have a warm reunion and Kit introduces Preston to her new boyfriend. He's about ten years younger than Kit and his hunk credentials, though not helped by his relatively slight physical build, are bolstered by his soap opera name, Rudd Kendall. He's played by Gig Young and turns out to be quite an interesting character. Gig that is, not Rudd. You see, Gig Young was originally Byron Barr, but changed his name to the name of the character he played in 1942's The Gay Sisters. This would be like if Tom Hanks changed his name to Forrest Gump or if Charlton Heston suddenly demanded to be called Soylent Green. But Byron, I mean Gig, was just getting warmed up. He was talented enough at his craft to be nominated for an Oscar three times, winning once. He was somewhat less talented in his personal life though as he was married five different times, the last time lasting only three weeks. Most of the blame for the failure of his final marriage can probably be laid at his feet since he shot and killed his wife and then used himself for target practice. Among the former Ms. Gig Youngs breathing easier after that was America's favorite suburban witch, Elizabeth Montgomery.
Though Rudd isn't quite as colorful as Gig, he was a bit of a low watt heel himself. He's constantly pressuring the reluctant Kit to marry him, but she begs off because she's kind of creeped out by their age difference (you and me both sister!). The creepiest thing though in the entire movie was that since this was one of those deals where the characters have to age, that meant that we had to use a little make up and some different hair styles to show the ravages of time on these folks. This resulted in Bette having a big white streak in her otherwise dark hair and gave her the look of an overly-articulate Bride of Frankenstein. Lady, if you're looking like that and you've got a younger guy named Rudd begging you to marry him, you need to be signing up for that before he wakes up and gathers a mob of pitchfork and torch-wielding villagers to storm your penthouse.
While Kit dilly-dallies over getting married to Rudd, she re-introduces Preston to his now grown, super-blonde and stacked daughter Deidre. Hmmm, Deidre and Rudd seem to be about the same age. You don't suppose? In spite of some initial friction, it only takes about ten minutes for Rudd and Deidre to end up at some dive listening to the latest music and breathlessly muttering their desire to make love to one another. While this is going on, Kit is back at home and decides that she ought to take her young stud up on his offer of marriage. Meanwhile, Mildred is expecting Preston to come and visit her so that they can get back together.
Both Kit and Mildred end up crushed as their respective men punk out on them and are literally at each other's throats once Preston admits that he's always loved Kit and that Kit always loved him as well. I suppose the ending was supposed to be kind of melancholy when Mildred and Kit were together and Mildred was lamenting that she was going to have to change the ending of her latest novel since it was based on both of them and now that they ended up all alone, she would have to write her first unhappy ending, but I found it a bit funny. Umm, you're both middle-aged and the men that you've given your hearts to have just pink-slipped your respective asses and you're busy musing about how your latest potboiler is going to be affected? Trust me when I say that this was simply the perfect capstone to a film wildly uneven in pitch that leaves the viewer off balance in a most off putting manner. As ludicrous as the stories were in The Old Maid and the slightly inverted remake The Great Lie (also starring Bette Davis of course) they at least had the skill to realize what they were trying to be and stayed their dramatic course throughout. The fact that as I was watching Miriam camping it up during one of the last scenes as she ranted and raved, I kept thinking that I was watching Kathie Lee Gifford, is just about the most vivid description I can give about what was wrong with this thing.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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