My parents are remarkably unpretentious people who instilled
in me a habit (if not a superstition) of maintaining a veil of modesty between "public" and "personal". As
such, I weighed whether or not to post a collection of favorite
photos as I had previously done for my mother’s birthday and the anniversary of my cat Toby walking into my life. But I decided I would share a handful of treasured
images, and for two reasons. First and foremost, my sister Jennifer gave us all a gift
when she scanned hundreds of family photosback in 2008 for their digital preservation. This presentation is a gift we give to our parents together, for it would never have been possible had she not spent weeks finding and saving a lifetime's worth of priceless treasures. Second, my parents have been through a great deal of hardship in recent years.
Like so many people around the world right now, financial struggles have
tested their other relationships. When you lose a great deal of
money, you find that many friends and family members suddenly stop caring. (We
do, after all, live in a “what’s in it for me?” society.) You also gain a new appreciation
for those loved ones who reveal that their love and compassion is in no way
connected to money or materialism, a revelation that makes you love those loved
ones more than you ever thought possible. It is through these eyes of love that I present these
photographs, scanned by my sister and taken by many such loved ones over
the course of my parents’ forty year marriage. As much as anything else, my parents have taught me that friendship is at the root of all great relationships, and most especially lifelong romance. My sister and I are more blessed
than words can ever describe to be the children of our father and mother. And nothing
makes us happier than knowing that, “in good times and in bad”, they always
have had and always will have one another.
Possibly the most romantic ending in film history.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM AND DAD,
WITH LOVE FROM BOTH OF US
ALWAYS!!!!!!!!!!!! XOXOXOXOXO
ROB & JEN
"As long as life endures, it's yours....this heart of mine."
When I was fifteen, I had a first love. And fifteen years
ago today, I laid eyes on that first love for the last time. It was June 2nd,
1997, and I saw the side of his face for a split second while he was walking
out of the classroom after finishing a math final exam ahead of me. We had made
eye contact briefly before the exam, when I came into the classroom and caught
his attention right away. I'm pretty sure it's because I was painted orange: I gave
myself a spray-on tan in hopes it would make me irresistible. It didn’t. But my
cartoonish appearance prompted my last glimpse of the face I associate with
"first love". When he walked out, I didn't see his face, just a
whoosh out of the corner of my spying eye. But I still remember what I heard in
my head as he disappeared: "And that was the last time I ever saw
him." The voice wasn't mine, not at that age. For years I was haunted by
it, and wondered if I heard myself in the future, as though I were starring in
a "Wonder Years"-ish reenactment of my life. I still don't know.
All I do know is that that voice was correct.
I've posted vintage writing about my first taste of romance
to this blog twice before, in the form of a paper I wrote at twenty-one and an unsent love letter that was written when I was sixteen During the last three
years of high school and throughout all of college, my unrequited teen love at
an all boys' Catholic school was the most recurrent topic of my creative
writing, both in and out of the classroom. This piece, written for a religion
class in the 10th grade, was the first time I ever wrote about him. I wrote it
as honestly as possible so that it could be a keepsake for my emotions. Then I
went back and switched the gender and tweaked the details to mask my sexuality.
With each paper that delved into this subject, I exerted less and less effort
to hide myself. By college, there was no shame whatsoever in my creative
confessionals--for better or for worse. This version presents the
"honest" account, as originally written, but with the name changed to
"James" as a nod to my other great unrequited love in high school:
James Marsden.
I have been fortunate
enough to have a great deal of unforgettable people in my life. My parents have
had a tremendous influence on me, and have loved and supported me every day of
my life. I am also very close to all of my family members, and I have been blessed
with many great friends. Yet the most unforgettable person in my life is
someone who entered my world unexpectedly, changed my whole life, and then left
as “cinematically” as he came.
I still remember the
first time that I ever saw James. I was sitting in math class, feeling nervous
and vulnerable because of my new setting. It was my first full week of being at
St. John’s Prep, having just put behind me two painful years of Masconomet
Junior High. I had lived a “social nightmare” at Masco, and my greatest fear
was that because it had transformed me into this shy, insecure, almost
reclusive teenager who found himself no longer trusting anyone, St. John’s
would be like Masco revisited. I looked up from whatever it was that I wa
doing, and I saw an absolutely beautiful person walking up to the teacher .He
had short, dirty blonde hair, deep blue eyes, and soft, pouty lips. I sat there
staring at him, all the while trying to make myself at least somewhat
inconspicuous. I had a crush on him immediately, despite the fact that I knew
nothing about him. Who knew that that beautiful, mysterious stranger would go
on to become the love of my life.
I realized later that
day that this “stranger” was also in my gym class. Gym was always my least
favorite class, but once I learned that we were sharing the same class
together, I immediately began trying my hardest to become at least somewhat
athletic. I really wanted to impress him rather than come across as a scrawny
little nerd who was always screwing up the game.
I began listening in
math class to find out what his name was, and learned that his name was James.
I saw James a lot in class and in the hallways, but never actually said
anything to him. Yet I found myself noticing that we often made eye contact, and
sometimes I would see him looking at me in the same “fascinated” way that I was
looking at him. This seemed illogical to me since we had never actually spoken,
and since I was neither attractive nor outgoing. As time went on, though , it
became undeniable that we seemed to have a certain “connection” going on, just
through eye contact. Then one day I was walking through an empty hallway at
school when I noticed him approaching. I was nervous, but excited at the same
time because I knew that this was an opportunity for me to finally converse
with him. We merely said “Hey” to one another, but the word had a much deeper
meaning at that moment than it ever had before. When we said it, we were
staring right into one another’s eyes, and there was a certain flirtatious,
almost erotic feeling in the air as if we were both madly in love with one
another and knew it, yet for some incomprehensible reason we wanted to hide it.
Part of this was likely fear, and part of it may have been a game of
“hard-to-get”.
That greeting was
definitely the spark of our friendship. Over the coming weeks, we gradually got
to know each other better in Math and Gym class. Despite the fact that we were
friends, I couldn’t help but be intimidated by his “social status”. James was
extremely popular and well-liked, and while I wasn’t exactly unpopular anymore,
I was far from being King of the Prom. James never gave me any reason to feel
intimidated, though. In fact, he gave me every reason to feel anything but
intimidated. Whenever I was called on in Math class and didn’t know the answer,
he’d whisper it to me. Whenever I performed miserably in gym, he’d help me to
do better, and he was always boosting my morale whenever I felt like I could
never improve athletically. As our friendship grew, I realized that I didn’t
have a crush on James. I was in love with him. It wasn’t teenage puppy love,
nor was it just a sexual attraction. It was bona fide, old fashioned, true
romance. I thought about him every minute of every day, I couldn’t take my eyes
off of him in school, and often at night I would have dreams about professing
my feelings of undying love to him. So many times before in my life I had
thought that I was in love, and I probably was. Yet while the love I had felt
for “the others” was real, it wasn’t true. When I saw James, I saw the man with
whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. I knew that James was, without a
doubt, The One.
In spite of my feelings
for James, I tried my hardest to hide my love from him. I was fearful of
rejection, and feared that if I told him how I felt about him it would end our
friendship. I couldn’t risk losing what I already had, and so I never revealed
my love. Still, he did give me a lot of reason to think that he might feel the
exact same way about me that I did about him. James was sort of a “tough kid”,
and often hung around with that type of crowd. I really wasn’t, but I tried to
act like I was to impress him. He was never really fazed when I would act this
way, and he always treated me the same. When we would speak, he was always very
kind, soft-spoken, and easygoing, which was quite different from the way that
he might act with his friends. He was always very supportive and a great
listener, and I still treasure the conversations that we had together. Towards
the end of the year, when he joined a second semester religion class I was
taking, I began to notice the reoccurrence of The Eye Game. One day in religion
we were having a class discussion, and so the desks were arranged in a
semi-circle. James was sitting directly across from me, and as usual I was
gazing at him with every chance I got. Once again, I found that he was very
often staring right back. Several times I would look up and meet his eyes.
Sometimes he would look right away, other times he would wait a few seconds and
keep staring. We continued this flirtatious behavior throughout the whole
class, and it felt like we were both fully aware of what we were doing.
Nonetheless, we never actually spoke of it.
In May of that year, I
learned that James was leaving the school. To this day I don’t know why he
left, but he had already had his files transferred and was set to start there
in September. I was devastated when I heard him talking about this with some of
his friends in religion class. Still, as always, I hid my feelings and didn’t
let them know that I had even heard what they were saying.
That night, I wrote James
a letter. I didn’t actually tell him that I loved him, but I did tell him that
I had heard he was leaving and that I wanted to let him know that he had been
an amazing friend to me that year, and that our friendship had really meant a
lot to me. I left my number at the bottom of the letter, and said that I would
really love to hear from him that summer if he ever got a chance. I held on to that
letter for the last several weeks of school, and anxiously awaited the last day
of school so that I could send it out. I didn’t want to send it out before
school ended because I was worried that it would make our relationship somewhat
uncomfortable in school I thought that maybe this letter would help make him
realize that I loved him, or at least that it would strengthen our friendship
and help to lead to something else.
The last time we spoke
was about a week before school ended and our meeting was hauntingly reminiscent
of our first “conversation”. It was in another empty hallway. I saw him walking
towards me, only this time when he saw me, I am almost sure that I could see a
smile light up across his face from ear to ear. We said that usual “Hey” to one
another, only there was a certain feeling of happiness and love there that was
more evident than ever. A week later, it was the last week of school, the end
of that fateful year we had shared together. I walked into my first final exam,
and unknowingly looked right at him. At that moment, our eyes met once again.
As I was finishing my exam, I looked up just quick enough to glimpse him
walking out the door, though he didn’t see me. After that day, I never saw James
again.
All
summer long I waited for that fateful phone call, but never received it. I was
so worried that perhaps he was offended somehow by the letter and that he hated
me now and that we would never be friends again .I suppose my fears were a
result of my own insecurity, for James certainly didn’t give me any reason
during the year to feel this way. The three months of summer vacation went by
fast, and during that whole period I never once took James off of my mind.
Despite my secret devotion, I never heard from him over vacation.
It
was September 16th, four days before my birthday. I had just gotten
home from school, and my Mom told me that there was a message from “James” on
the answering machine. I have several friends with that name, so I hoped and
prayed that it would be The James.
Before I could go to listen to the answering machine, the phone rang and my Mom
answered it. She said that a “James” was on the phone but she didn’t quite pick
up his last name. Immediately, I knew he had called. I nervously picked up the
phone, and was immediately soothed by the sound of his voice which was as soft
and gentle as it was during all of our conversations in school .He called to
thank me for the letter, and we ended up talking for a half an hour about the
previous year of school and about his new school and about many other things I
did my best not to lead him on about my true feelings, maybe even going too far
to hide exactly what I wanted so much for him to know. Nonetheless, we had a
terrific conversation and that day remains to be one of the best days of my
life. All that night I felt completely optimistic, teeming with child-like joy
and so very, very much in love. Sadly, that was the last time that I talked to James.
Every
day since then, I have prayed that we will be reunited and that we will be
together forever. I still love James more than ever, and I know that he is The
One, the one with whom I want to spend the rest of my life. I went into St.
John’s Prep a scared boy and came out a confident man who finally knew what
love really was. James changed my life in a way that no one else ever could
have, and that no one else ever will again. I don’t have a girlfriend, or a
boyfriend for that matter, nor do I have much desire to have one because James is
the one I love. It simply wouldn’t be fair to the other party or to myself to
go out knowing that there was someone else I wanted to be with. Very few people
know about James. It has always been my own secret love story, but I know that
it is, in fact, a love story that is just beginning. I firmly believe that we
will be together again, and that when we are, we will stay that way forever.
Miss Joan Crawford is my second favorite movie star of all time, behind only Miss Bette Davis. She is often and rightfully lauded for setting the career standard for all movie stars to follow, but to her ever-thriving global fanbase she is equally regarded as an exquisite actress. She was less trained than many of her contemporaries, and she was certainly unprepared for the mental toll of superstardom. But that inimitable combination of rawness and polish makes her work as consistently revealing as it is consistently brilliant. I feel that the performances referenced below speak to precisely what I mean.
In honor of her birthday, here are a dozen reasons why everyone should be celebrating!
Because the finale of HUMORESQUE is silent film acting at its very best, and ranks among the finest sequences in the entire history of cinema.
Because when you cut through the camp appeal, Joan and Bette gave two of their most incredible performances in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?.
Because she opened her deepest wounds and bore her soul in HARRIET CRAIG.
Because she and Clark Gable had enough onscreen and offscreen chemistry to turn the Salvation Army melodrama LAUGHING SINNERS into one of the most smolderingly hot MGM pictures of the Pre-Code era.
Because MILDRED PIERCE is as thoroughly entertaining and endlessly rewatchable today as it was in 1945.
Because FEMALE ON THE BEACH is as every bit as sexy and shamelessly enjoyable as the title suggests.
Because if you cut out what doesn't work, what does work in TORCH SONG is pure Hollywood magic.
Remember when Madonna's American Life album was (mostly) attacked by U.S./U.K. critics and (mostly) ignored by U.S./U.K. listeners but went on to become one of her most celebrated albums in France? Critically and commercially, Madonna’s “W.E.” has already bombed in the U.S. and U.K. But, upon having finally seen it myself at an unintentionally private screening in Boston, I am left convinced that French audiences will love it as much as I did.
After much anticipation and a secretly massive dose of skepticism, I am so very happy not to be lying when I say that I absolutely LOVED “W.E.”. I can’t possibly write a review because it will come off as a studio plant’s phony attempt to coax people into seeing it. The people who need to see “W.E.” will discover it and the people who don’t will probably avoid it like the plague. Besides, I’m so high off of my own satisfaction, and especially my pride for Madonna, that I could not possibly care less about what people think of it or how much money it makes. It’s not like me to think that way about any aspect of Madonna’s career, what with my desire for her to always be on top and smashing records as she gets there. But the euphoria I get from seeing a movie which I truly adore, regardless of what the rest of the world thinks, supersedes my most cynical impulses. And I truly adored “W.E.”.
I’ve been awaiting this film for several years, and like many Madonna fans, I was slightly frustrated that her music career was put on hold by such a risky project. But I knew it was a worthy risk, for I’d dreamed of “Madonna, the filmmaker” for years and years—in spite of her occasionally promising but mostly unfulfilling pseudo-debut, Filth And Wisdom. I didn’t think that that was a terrible film, despite what I’d feared from excerpted clips, but it felt more like a long lost film student’s project than a proper debut. “W.E.” is that proper debut. As is the case with Madonna’s albums, videos, and stage shows, I relish its imperfections as much as its strengths, and I’m sure that generations of fans will come to as well—I suspect that the film is destined for greatness as a minor cult classic thanks to its deeply spiritual themes and bold defiance of conventional narrative form. Adherence to a rigid three act structure is replaced by a loose, deliberately planned yet seemingly haphazard journey through time and space. As a movie lover, I was delighted by the opportunity not to know what was coming next. As a screenwriter, I was reminded of how much the cinematic instincts on display in Madonna's music has affected me; here it is her musical instincts that are being put to use on film. I speak of not only the rhythmic editing of multiple film stocks, but also the jarring spatial and thematic shifts that keep the pace from dragging or the proceedings from sinking into sappiness. If anything, I thought the film could have used a bit more sap—when Edward tells Wallis he’ll abdicate the throne for her, my heart was craving an instrumental prompt of Madonna's “Masterpiece”.
In spite of her romantic tendencies, avoiding pop sentimentality is clearly Madonna’s taste as a film fan, and in turn she stands by this as a filmmaker—after all, Madonna, unlike me, was not particularly enamored with James Cameron’s Titanic. But slickness and uptempo pacing are not the only attributes ported over from Madonna’s music career. The assembly of scenes feels more like the arrangement of a concept album than an outline to a contemporary Hollywood screenplay. I applaud her decision to flex her creative muscles as a director instead of surrendering to a widely accepted mindset shared by the people who would come to negatively review her film.
I put up my “Vogue Boy” video in anticipation of the world premiere of “W.E.” because I dreamed that someone would ask Madonna about my video while she walked the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival. I followed the film’s trek from Venice to Toronto to New York to LA and back to New York for its American premiere and proper release. All the while, I was committed to seeing the film in Boston, where I’d previously seen every single one of Madonna’s films since Four Rooms in 1995. Prior to that, seeing Dick Tracy on the big screen made me a lifelong Madonna mega-fan. Seeing A League of Their Own sparked my inner commitment to making films that appealed to audiences the way that WWII Era “women’s films” did. No Madonna movie-going experience could be quite as epic as the night I saw Evita, but all of my first Madonna movie viewings have special significance, and "W.E." was among the top highlights.
Attending a Monday night show was not a surefire bet for a packed house, particularly considering the film’s poor business in limited release. But I did not expect that I and my sister Jennifer Jeffrey, who like Madonna is a budding female filmmaker, would have the whole auditorium to ourselves. We did, and it made for a more relaxed viewing: minus the insecurities of how the audience was reacting to more daring filmmaking choices allowed me to appreciate the movie as an admittedly flawed but totally fulfilling work of art-as-entertainment. I suppose the inevitable sadness I should have felt for the lack of an audience dissipated instantly as a result of the lights going down as soon as we took our seats. With only two tickets having been sold, the theater didn't bother to show more than three minutes' worth of coming attractions. Either that, or someone in the projection booth timed the start of the film with our arrival. It’s a shame that so few people will end up seeing it on the big screen, because it’s gorgeous to look at and stunning to listen to: Abel Korzeniowski’s truly exquisite score is a powerhouse in surround sound, and an invaluable asset to the film. The big screen setting also captures the oppression that dominates both Wally (Abbie Cornish) and Wallis (Andrea Riseborough), and the ever-moving camera makes it difficult to look away. The script may not be rock-solid, but Madonna’s talent as a director matches her talent as a stage performer, and thus the overall impact is similarly “WOW”-inducing. After seeing it for myself, I’m honestly glad that it won’t be labeled “an Oscar film”. It IS a shame that such a promising debut should be mercilessly slaughtered by critics and ignored by audiences, but the initial rejection by the masses does add to the rebel quality of a film that refuses to cater to the crowd that it would appear to be appealing to—much like Wallis Simpson herself.
Thanks to its upcoming home video release and today’s announcement that the film will be streaming on Netflix instead of premium television, I look forward to it being discovered by young women who are feeling frustrated by a repressive society and looking for mentorship from those who have broken free. The decision to so brazenly depict the concept of a spirit guide speaks to Madonna’s own spiritual beliefs and her adamant refusal to downplay such convictions—even, and most especially, when it threatens the very commercial success that she is ever gauged by. In this regard, the film is as shameless as anything Madonna has ever done, and her commitment to every single aspect of its execution, good or bad, speaks to her belief in the message she has built it upon. Its message is deeply spiritual, and quite literal, and should survive the test of time to rise above the cries of critics. “W.E.” made me feel so happy and optimistic when I came home from seeing it that I had to immediately write my thought down, lest I ever forget the sensation of satisfaction following years of anticipation and months of bad press. I know it will continue to inspire that response in surprised viewers for the rest of time.
After Halloween, Valentine’s Day is my favorite major holiday. A lot of people hate Valentine’s Day because they see it as a cheap commercialization of the romantic experience. I myself see it as a celebration of eating chocolate, watching romantic movies, and the color pink: three of my great passions in life. I don’t feel particularly inclined to blog about my love of pretty colors, but I would be remiss not to acknowledge the first Valentine’s Day since I started blogging with a celebration of a woman who could portray romance on the big screen like no other screen actor before her or since: Miss Bette Davis.
Bette Davis was an incredibly romantic person, onscreen and off. In her autobiographies, Bette wrote about her great love affairs with the same fondness that she spoke of her finest roles in film. Hedda Hopper once famously said that she gave her best performances when she was in love, and that’s evident in several of the films here: she was in love with two co-stars and at least one director featured on this list. The films are All About Eve, Dark Victory, and Jezebel, and the respective romances attached were with final husband Gary Merrill, beloved co-star George Brent, and the legendary William Wyler. Miss Davis often cited William Wyler as the great love of her life, but I’ll bet I’m not the only fan who suspects brilliant New Englander Gary Merrill was her true soul mate.
This list is a celebration of Bette Davis’s gift as an actress; specifically, her ability to represent an unparalleled range of romantic emotions. This is not to say the films here all fall under the category of “Romance”. My twenty favorite Bette Davis love stories span five decades and many genres, from literary adaptations to gangster movies to film noir to showbiz melodrama to Southern gothic horror. These films thrill me as a viewer, inspire me as a writer, and have truly shaped my heart.
The list begins with her first great film, John Cromwell’s Of Human Bondage, and ends on her last great film, George Schaefer’s Right of Way. But these are not my votes for her twenty finest films, perhaps not even for her twenty greatest romances—these are just the ones that mean the most to me. Some of them parallel my own relationships, while others offer an insight into my greatest fantasies or darkest fears—or both. All of them are, like love songs, linked to moments and memories in my life that can never be erased, and the massive impact they’ve all had is largely attributable to that divine leading lady. Not that the directors, writers, composers, cinematographers, and fellow actors are not vitally essential to what makes every one of these films superb. But there’s just no denying it: Bette Davis’s interpretation of human emotions, and of the infinite ways in which love will manifest in life, is what most captivates me and the millions of people who adore these films and have made them among the most rewatched of all time.
Some of these are funny, some are depressing, and a few are downright shocking. While they take place in a world separate from our own, their revelations of the infinite nuances of romance make them utterly relatable. That’s thanks to the one consistent element to be found in every single one of them: Miss Bette Davis herself. She fought for realism in her films with the same might with which she also fought for sentimentality. She achieved that delicate balance when she brought true love to life on the silver screen in these twenty films. And that’s what makes every one of them beautiful.
1. Bette Davis gave her first great performance as the seemingly cold-hearted Mildred, the object of Leslie Howard's unrequited love in John Cromwell's classic adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (1934)....
2. ...while Paul Muni was the object of Bette's unrequited love when she gave her second great performance as the deeply disturbed Marie in Archie Mayo's gritty classic Bordertown (1935).
3. Leslie Howard finally found love with Bette Davis in in Archie Mayo's utterly brilliant adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood's hit Broadway play The Petrified Forest (1936). The movie introduced the world to Humphrey Bogart and still serves as a timeless standard bearer for intelligent Hollywood filmmaking.
4. Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart play a prostitute and a district attorney fighting unspoken romance in Lloyd Bacon's classic crime melodrama, Marked Woman (1937). It was Bette Davis's first role after her legal battle with Warner Bros, and marked the beginning of her most glorious decade as an actress.
5. Gangster Edward G. Robinson is in love with moll Bette Davis, but she's in love with idealistic prizefighter Wayne Morris in Mike Curtiz's Kid Galahd (1937). The Elvis Presley remake is more well-known but the original is 1930s Warner Bros. filmmaking at its best and boasts an unforgettable ending.
6. Bette Davis and Leslie Howard teamed up for the third time as self-indulgent stage stars in Archie L. Mayo's romantic screwball comedy It's Love I'm After (1937). It was, sadly, their last film together before Howard's death in WWII. It also marks Davis's last collaboration with Archie Mayo and first collaboration with her greatest screenwriter, Casey Robinson, and one of her most treasured friends and co-stars, Olivia de Havilland.
7. Bette Davis had her first onscreen pairing with Henry Fonda while under the direction for the first time of Edmund Goulding in That Certain Woman (1937). Bette gives a timelessly brilliant performance that foreshadows the roles that would soon define her career, beginning with William Wyler's Jezebel.
8. As Julie Marsden, one of the greatest roles in film history, Bette Davis was in love with Henry Fonda onscreen and in love with director William Wyler offscreen. The career-defining Jezebel was a blockbuster in 1938, and in 1939 it won Bette her second Oscar and cemented her status as a legend.
9. Bette Davis had a famous romance with co-star George Brent onscreen and off when she gave what she considered her greatest performance in what she also considered her finest film: Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory. It was one of the signature blockbusters of 1939, the year considered by film fans to be the peak of Old Hollywood greatness, and remains perhaps the most powerfully affecting film ever made about meeting death with dignity.
10. Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins are both in love with George Brent, even decades after his character's death, in one of the biggest and most beloved films of 1939: Edmund Goulding's The Old Maid.
11. Bette Davis's first time playing Queen Elizabeth and last time working opposite Errol Flynn remains one of the greatest films ever made about a powerful older woman in love with an ambitious young man: Mike Curtiz's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).
12. Bette Davis gives one of her subtlest, finest performances and shares one of the screen's greatest quiet romances with Charles Boyer in their only film together: Anatole Litvak's epic adaptation of Rachel Field's All This...And Heaven, Too (1940). Bette was nominated for an Oscar for The Letter that year, or else this film, a Best Picture nominee, would have no doubt earned her a fourth Best Actress nomination.
13. Do you think the universe has kept count of how many billions of times the final cigarette exchange in Now, Voyager has been rewatched? The onscreen romance between offscreen friends Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in Irving Rapper's adaptation of Olive Higgins Prouty's Now, Voyager (1942) is one of the most beloved love stories in the history of film. In my book, it is also the greatest American movie ever made.
14. Bette Davis played one of her most atypical characters and gave one of her best performances opposite her favorite actor, Claude Raines, as the titular character in Vincent Sherman's Mr. Skeffington. One of the biggest hits of 1944, it earned Bette her seventh Best Actress Oscar nomination and, like so many Davis classics, has an ending that is powerful enough to transform a viewer's life...as it did mine.
15. The first of two movies in which Bette Davis played good and bad twins, Curtis Bernhardt's A Stolen Life was a box office smash and a film noir classic. It's also a touching love story opposite rising star Glenn Ford, set against an effective soundstage recreation of Bette's beloved Cape Cod.
16. Bette Davis said that Bretaigne Windust's Winter Meeting (1948) could have been great if it had not been butchered by the censorship of its era. She was absolutely right. In spite of this, the connection between Bette Davis as a repressed New Yorker and Jim Davis as an aspiring priest also serves as an unintentional but devastatingly relatable parallel to unrequited love between a straight woman and a gay man.
17. What more can possibly be said about Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve? It is a perfect work of art in addition to being one of the great screen entertainments of all. It is also a beautiful love story between older actress Margo Channing and younger director Bill Sampson. Bette Davis and Gary Merrill's passionate offscreen romance in those respective roles no doubt adds to the film's pulsating energy and timelessness.
18. Sterling Hayden is in love with Bette Davis for the woman she is, not the Hollywood star she used to be. Stuart Heisler's The Star (1952) is as relevant today as sixty years ago, and its timeless love story is deeply affecting for anyone who has ever fought for a career while dreaming of a soul mate.
19. Bette Davis's portrayal of a deranged Southern recluse in Robert Aldrich's Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) is a staple of 60s horror. But it is her obsession with her great love (Bruce Dern) whose life ended violently decades earlier that makes her performance, and the film, endlessly fascinating to watch. This rendition of the theme song, sung in character on "I've Got A Secret", speaks to the tragic romance at the heart of a suspense classic.
20. The equally legendary Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart finally got to work together in one and only film: George Schaefer's Right of Way (1983). As a married elderly couple who have decided to end their lives together, two of America's most talented and beloved actors bring a vital, relatable warmth to a telefilm so controversial that it was rejected by the major networks and aired on HBO to great acclaim. Having explored countless facets of human emotion in her body of work, Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart's lone collaboration is a truly beautiful insight into the depth of a love that has only grown over decades.Sadly, her second film with Schaefer and only film with Stewart unexpectedly capped off the "Silver Age" of Bette's career, during which time high quality telefilms provided some of the best roles she had played since Warner Bros. Right of Way was the last film Bette made before a devastating stroke impacted the rest of her acting career, and as such, it is almost unbearably sad to cite it as "her last great film". Yet, in many ways, it is the perfect book end to Dark Victory, her proudest accomplishment, and thus makes for an undeniably appropriate final chapter in what might be the richest body of work of any screen actor.
