Bette Is So Bad!

My favorite picture of Bette Davis ... I wish I could walk around with
venetian blind shadows across my face ... it makes you look so good!

Most of my classic film favorites are on VHS tapes, and we all know those are becoming as obsolete as my old black rotary phone.  The tapes are getting old and the picture and sound quality are deteriorating.  I'm getting panicky about some of the old treasures I have taped off Turner Classic Movies that will never be available on DVD because they are too obscure.  Replace all of my famous favorites with DVDs, you say?  Hah!  Not unless I win the lottery, which I have actually been told is about as likely as having a giraffe with no parachute jump from a plane and crash through your living room ceiling.

Last year I gave myself a birthday present and a Christmas present.  Not that I don't get presents from other people, you understand.  I really do have family and friends who are willing to spend money on me.  These two particular items, though -- I was so greedy that I made sure I got them as gifts by spending my own money on me.  The fact that I had to put off paying the electric and gas bills to do it was a minor point.  I got two of the DVD collections of the movies of Bette Davis.  What a thrill to bring those home!  I lived in Bette-land all weekend with each one I bought.  Today, for some reason I can't explain, I am in the mood to see the great Evil Bette.  Maybe I'm feeling evil, and no one could inspire me to greater heights of meanness than Bette.  So just for fun, I'm going to spend the next couple of evenings (and late nights probably) with Bette at her most bitchy.  Here, in chronological order, are the movies I'm going to devour like a glutton devours dinner:



Jezebel (1938) Bette brazenly embarrasses poor Henry Fonda by wearing a lipstick-red gown at a ball where all young virgins wear white.  Well, maybe there was a good reason she did not wear white, and maybe it was all Henry's fault.  Oh, and later she tries to break up his marriage.  Forgot about that one.



The Letter (1940)  Bette coldly shoots her lover, lies to everybody about it, deceives her trusting husband (Herbert Marshall), hurts him when he finds out the truth, puts him through the torment of forgiving her infidelity, and then tells him ... "With all my heart, I still love the man I killed." 

 Lucrezia Borgia was an amateur compared to Bette.




The Little Foxes (1941) Boy, even her veil looks evil. Bette is a scheming, manipulative woman who has nothing but contempt for her sweet husband (poor Herbert Marshall again!). She wants money from him for a nasty business deal, he won't give it to her, and she watches him die of a heart attack as he desperately tries to find his heart medicine. Why do women like that always get the good ones?



 In This Our Life (1940)  Bette sits as no lady should ever sit with George Brent in the room. She breaks George's heart, steals from Olivia deHavilland (her own sister) the husband that Olivia loves. Bette then drives him to suicide, is nonetheless welcomed home by Olivia and parents, goes out drunk and runs down a little girl, tries to blame it on a young black friend, torments her dying uncle for money, then runs from police, crashes her car and dies. Applause, curtain down, good riddance!



Mr. Skeffington (1944) Maybe this doesn't really qualify as true evil, but Bette is an egotistical woman incapable of love who marries for money (Claude Rains), cares only about her looks, and doesn't want or care about her daughter. She is also really stupid.  Again, a mean woman gets a sweet, loving man.

 It's making me really mad.



Whatever Happened To Baby Jane (1962) Bette at her hammy best as an over-the-top, evil woman. She's also crazy. She's also delusional. And she beats her crippled sister (Joan Crawford) and serves rats to her for dinner. I personally have 4 sisters. I am going to choose carefully who I live with if I can't take of myself!

I hope you enjoyed this trip down Evil Bette lane.  To be fair, sometime I'll do an article about the loving, sacrificial, scared and wounded Bette ... Dark Victory, Now, Voyager, All This and Heaven Too, The Great Lie ... Bette could do anything!

Coming To A Blog Near You!

For my Faithful Readers, I want to announce a new series beginning soon.  The series will be about the golden age of gangster films, 1930 - 1949.  Some of my earliest memories of classic movies are of James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart and Paul Muni as the biggest, baddest guys of all.  I love those movies!  One of the most interesting facets of every one is the bad guy and his counterparts, the former partner turned good, the childhood friend who went a different way, the women who are good for him and the women who are bad.  I hope you will enjoy it.  In the meantime, here is a taste of what is to come:

Brief Reflections

By ClassicBecky

I believe that many classic movie lovers fear the same thing I do, namely, political correctness.  I remember a few years ago when the United States Postal Service released an honorary stamp in tribute to the great blues artist Robert Johnson.  The most famous picture of Johnson that we have is of him looking into the camera holding his guitar and smoking a cigarette.  The Postal Service decided to digitally remove the cigarette from his mouth because of political correctness.  They changed Robert Johnson as he was to a false Robert Johnson who would fit their ideas of what is acceptable.  That is a horrifying travesty.  Anyone who has ever read George Orwell's "1984" is aware of what can happen when such thinking is taken to the limit. 

Our beloved classic films could very well be treated in the same way in the current climate.  Obviously there are things in classic films that society has evolved enough to realize are offensive, i.e. racial stereotypes, social habits that are no longer acceptable, etc.  However, this is history on film, and to change history is to crack the foundation of truth.  I fear that possibly in the near future, these movies will be cut and pasted to remove any dance numbers, comedy bits or habits that no longer fit a society of political correctness.  Removing smoking alone would be a full-time job, especially with a Bette Davis or Humphrey Bogart movie!

This is not a paranoid fantasy.  It happened to Robert Johnson's picture.  I have already seen a movie so chopped up, certainly not a classic one by any means, "Robin Hood - Men in Tights" by Mel Brooks.  Whoever edited this movie for the particular channel that showed it removed all references to gay jokes.  If you have seen that movie, you know that this resulted in its being chopped to pieces.  This may not be a stirring call to arms because of the particular movie, but it illustrates my fears.  If it could happen to one movie, it can happen to another.  Those of us who love classic film must be alert to this kind of trend and speak out if and when it finally hits the films we love.   History is history and truth is truth.  Neither should ever be changed.