Dark Victory (1939) | |
Background
Dark Victory (1939) is a sentimental, tragic and moving melodrama (a "weepie" or "woman's picture") from Warner Bros. studios - made in Hollywood's most famous and competitive year. The film contains an electrifying, compelling, tour de force, tear-jerking performance from its major star Bette Davis. It was a bit of a risk for the movie studio to make and publicize an intense film about a terminally-ill patient with "prognosis negative." The protagonist is a young socialite-heiress named Judith Traherne (Davis), who suffers from a brain tumor and ultimately falls in love with her supportive and dedicated doctor Frederick Steele (Brent). In the midst of her deadly illness, she comforts her best friend Ann King (Fitzgerald), and courageously meets her fate when her eyesight dims. She climbs her stairs for the last time - accompanied by Max Steiner's swelling score in the film's finale. A title from a film trailer proclaimed: "The love story no woman will ever forget!" The film's screenplay by Casey Robinson was based on the brief and unsuccessful (due to its morbid subject matter) mid-30s Broadway play (starring Tallulah Bankhead) of the same name by George Emerson Brewer, Jr., and Bertram Bloch. David Selznick had originally purchased film rights, but gave up production plans for the property - and Warner Bros. picked up film rights. The adult drama was nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Picture, Best Actress (for two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis), and Best Original Score by Max Steiner, but lost in all categories. [Note: This was Davis' third Oscar nomination in five years, and her second of five consecutive nominations.] Gone with the Wind (1939) took the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actress (Vivien Leigh). Dark Victory was the second of Davis' four films with director Edmund Goulding - the others were That Certain Woman (1937), The Old Maid (1939), and The Great Lie (1941). Humphrey Bogart was completely miscast in a minor role as Michael O'Leary - an Irish stable groom/trainer, although Ronald Reagan as Alec Hamin, a bar-hopping, slightly decadent playboy, was effectively believable. The film was remade as Stolen Hours (1963) and as a made-for-TV movie in 1976 with Elizabeth Montgomery. The StoryThe film opens with a quick introduction to some of the main characters - Michael O'Leary (Humphrey Bogart in an extraneous role), the family's Irish horse trainer and stable man, calls on the phone early in the morning from the feed room/stable to the country mansion of the Trahernes, a wealthy Long Island family. Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald in her exceptional American film debut), the heroine's best friend and confidential secretary, intercepts the call and scolds him for disturbing them at "this unholy hour of the morning." In another upstairs bedroom, attractive, young socialite and heiress Miss Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) is fast asleep - her eyes are closed [prefigurative of her later condition and the film's closing image], and she is "woozy" from the previous night's hedonistic party. She is summoned by Michael who confers with her about a "cash customer for that colt" - her prized horse named Challenger. Early that morning, strong-willed Judith Traherne is living in the fast-moving lane of the race-horse set - she drives recklessly down a country road in her open roadster with Ann disapproving: "It's a nice world if we can just stay in it." At the training track, Michael jumps on the running board and is given a lift - he immediately acts impertinently and freshly: "I hear you've got the finest string of horses in the country. The least you could do is to come down and let them have a look at ya. Surely if the little horses can get up early in the morning to run and jump for ya, you can get up to watch 'em." Ann and Judith banter about firing Michael:
Alec Hamin (Ronald Reagan), Judith's party friend (a "parasite" according to "sensible" Ann), is there to help persuade her to sell her horse to Carrie Spottswood (Cora Witherspoon) or to Colonel Mantle (Charles Richman), but she stubbornly refuses and then defends the courage of her horse to her insolent stableman, employed for only a little over a month: "Michael, you might fold up and I might fold up, but that horse has the breeding." Although she suffers a slight spell of dizziness that "comes and goes," Judith mounts her "little darling" horse Challenger that Michael labeled a "coward": "Some day you'll learn that courage is in the blood." The group watches as she rides her horse over the jumps on the infield, and then experiences double vision as she steers and steadies her horse for a final hurdle. Unconsciously, she pulls on the reins - the horse changes course and crashes into the right wing of the jump, sending her tumbling to the ground. In the next scene, Judith recovers from her accident, sipping milk and petting her Irish setter Daffy - she "escaped being hurt." She blames herself: "That colt didn't throw me. I threw him...You know what happened? I saw two jumps. I tried to take him over the wrong jump...It was the ghastliest feeling. Everything went fuzzy." She has had similar physical problems in the recent past, knocking into passers-by as if she was drunk or disoriented. She already senses her condition is serious and confides in Ann:
Ann has already arranged for Judith to go to a specialist "about that giddiness." Judith ("stubborn as a mule") dismisses and ignores any thought of her own illness: "Oh, but I haven't any time for doctors...I haven't time to be ill. It's just some minor nonsense." Her friend is concerned that her dizziness, headaches, and occasional attacks of double vision may indicate that she is "really ill." Ann's fears are confirmed when Judith tumbles down the stairs - the camera follows her as she moves out of sight at the top of the stairs, and then finds her in a heap at the bottom of the steps. The worried family doctor, Dr. Parsons (Henry Travers) refers Judith to a specialist, a brain surgeon named Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent), who is in the midst of retiring and closing his office and practice. He dismisses the importance of seeing Parsons' patient, telling his nurse/assistant Miss Wainwright (Dorothy Peterson):
His most recent patient's operation "was a brilliant success - but the patient just happened to die...Look at any brain surgeon's mortality rate. You'll find out just about how unfunny it is." Steele tells a colleague, Dr. Carter (Herbert Rawlinson) that he is "going back to medicine" in northern Vermont to carry out valuable brain cell research and scientific study on the growth of cells:
According to Parsons, Judith is "desperately ill...and she's been losing ground each day." She has been having persistent headaches "even before the accident, I suspect...She calls them hangovers...She's a very stubborn patient...She won't cooperate. She won't even tell me anything...It was a queer sort of accident. She crashed into the right wing of a jump almost as if she'd held her horse deliberately at it. I was there, I saw it." When Judith meets Dr. Steele in the waiting room, she is cold, openly hostile and antagonistic, and contemptuous. As he makes her acquaintance, he calmly observes burn marks on her right hand:
In his inner office during her first exam, she continues to be defiant, flippant and seemingly invincible, but nervously edgy in her movements, vulnerable and intensely frightened on the inside. In contrast, Dr. Steele is respectful, dedicated, and completely professional:
Admitting to drinking and smoking a bit more than she should, she is insensitive to the bright light from the window, but struggles to keep her poise. When Dr. Steele questions: "Do you use your eyes a great deal?", she quips: "I generally keep them open, Doctor." He rises to walk around and intently study her behavior, as she speaks about her rich, full, and comfortable lifestyle on Long Island:
In contrast to her unappealing pursuits, his "racket" is similarly "awful": "brain surgery, a large practice, about ten days off every summer." He must guide her hand to light his own cigarette - she exhibits more problems with her vision. She reduces her hostility slightly when envying him for his complete dedication to his work while dreaming about her own carefree future:
When he probes with questions about her short-term memory, she shows signs of mental deterioration and memory loss. She is unable to remember if she saw the play Cyrano in the afternoon and played bridge in the evening, or vice versa. She accidentally divulges that she has been suffering from headaches, and then attempts to recant and dismiss her illness:
He presents her with the truth of her decreasing capacities and the serious nature of her ailments. Her head is bowed and she stares at the floor as she listens to his diagnosis and silently admits the threats to her life:
Further tests are utilized to probe more deeply into her condition, including a squeezing test with her right and left hands. With a reflex hammer, he tests her elbows and knees and he examines her eyes with an electric light or ophthalmoscope. She commends him on his patient technique: "You're very kind to your guinea pigs, aren't you?" Judith is unable to "make out" or identify the objects that are placed in her right hand. Upon further questioning, Judith describes the onset of her headaches and vision problems:
The doctor cancels his train tickets to Vermont and temporarily postpones his plans to leave his practice: "Never mind. There are other trains on other days...A few days one way or the other doesn't matter." Judith finally lets down her guard, cooperates and apologizes - she is grateful and relieved:
Later in her bedroom, Judith is surrounded by two other specialist doctors that Dr. Steele has consulted with. They have just completed further diagnostic tests to confirm his tests and findings. Afterwards, on the stairwell, Judith jokes to Alec about her supposed ailment: "Maybe it's kittens," but it is definitely more serious than that. The "verdict" is delivered by Dr. Steele - she makes light of his pronouncement as if she is being sentenced: "The prisoner will rise. The sentence." He suggests that immediate brain surgery is imperative: "We've got to operate...Well, after all, the brain is like any other part of the body. Things get out of kilter, have to be adjusted." Judith rejects Dr. Steele's orders with a frightful, alarmed look: "Oh no I won't!" He has discovered, in all likelihood, that she has a possibly-malignant brain tumor or "glioma" originating in the central nervous system: "It is rather like a plant - a parasitic one." Judith is stunned and denies the reality of the situation with repression: "Suppose we just don't talk about it anymore." In front of her dressing room mirror, she pulls back the hair above her forehead as her maid Martha (Virginia Brissac) shows concern:
The scene fades out to black and then fades in to the name plaque of "FAIRVIEW HOSPITAL" in New York City. In the hospital corridor outside Judith's room, Dr. Steele overhears her loud, spoiled, off-screen voice: "I said no and I mean no." She rejects the wearing of an ugly hospital gown and he grins: "Oh my, they are pretty dowdy, aren't they?" She also reacts to taking a sleeping pill: "But I don't want to sleep. Anyway, how could I in a two-by-four like this? At home, I have a bed that's big enough for six - why I can't even move." As she becomes drowsy, she complains about having her hair cut off for the operation, but then rests back on her pillow and peacefully expresses confidence in her doctor and in the outcome of the operation (performed off-screen):
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