In 1974, two music industry veterans wrote a song called “Bette Davis Eyes.” Nine years later, the tune became a major hit for Kim Carnes, and the 73-year-old diva wrote a letter thanking everyone involved for making her “a part of modern times.” (She also noted that the song had won her new respect from her grandson.) Davis’s prominent eyes were indeed distinctive. When she was at the height of her filmmaking powers, young movie fan (and future novelist) James Baldwin overcame his sense of his own ugliness when he recognized that he too had “Bette Davis eyes.”
Which makes it all the more striking that “Dark Victory,” one of Davis’s most major screen triumphs, is about a woman who’s going blind. To be clear, she spends most of the movie with her sight intact, but the threat of blindness hangs over her throughout. What’s the problem? It’s one of those mysterious movie diseases that I suspect never show up in any medical textbook, but there’s a brain tumor involved somehow. Davis’s Judith Traherne is a socialite, headstrong and bold, who suffers a serious riding accident when her vision suddenly fails her as she tries to urge her horse over a fence. Despite her initial defiant resistance, she allows surgeon Frederick Steele to operate, and all seems well. But in fact the tumor remains present, and medical experts agree that she’ll soon succumb to blindness and die almost instantly thereafter.
The bulk of the film is devoted to various characters’ attempts to conceal from one another the fatal prognosis. Out of love, Dr. Steele hides from Judy the deadly truth. Of course she discovers what’s going on, and tries to resist Steele’s marriage proposal, assuming it’s an act of pity. To me, one of the film’s most dramatic moments is the use of a match struck to light a cigarette: Judy’s sudden awkwardness tells us that she’s experiencing double vision, a symptom of her neurological problem. But I also loved the late section of the film in which Judy—usually as tough and egocentric as only Bette Davis can be—is blissfully in love, reveling in a modest domestic life far from her previous haunts. In this part of the story she seems physically transformed, and her gaiety is infectious. But then, of course, life comes crashing in on her, leading to a heroic but weepy conclusion.
Warner Bros. released Dark Victory (a stage hit for Tallulah Bankhead) in 1939, a year that’s often touted as the greatest in Hollywood history. Davis’s Oscar-nominated performance was upstaged by Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind, and other big films included Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, and The Wizard of Oz. Though Dark Victory won no prizes, Davis has called it her favorite performance. Co-starring with her was George Brent, a reliable but (to me) somewhat stolid actor who played alongside Davis in multiple films and was involved with her in a tumultuous two-year affair. But I was more intrigued by two featured players. None other than Humphrey Bogart plays Davis’s stablemaster, Michael O’Leary. He wrestles with an Irish accent but aces a scene in which he reveals his unrequited love for her. (I’m told there was once a final scene of him weeping after Judy’s demise, but test audiences would have none of that.)
Also aboard is a future U.S. president. Yes, Ronald Reagan is featured as a wealthy playboy He’s always around in the party scenes and apparently has a yen for Judy but knows that a serious-minded swain like Dr. Steele is more her type.
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