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| Jezebel (1938) | |
| Background
Director William Wyler and Warner Bros' Studios brilliantly fashioned the superb character study with superior production values. [Note: Wyler also effectively directed Davis as an icy woman in The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941).] Davis plays the role of a spoiled, willful, coquettish Southern belle who spitefully and stubbornly ruins her relationship with leading men Henry Fonda and George Brent. She overcomes her own shallowness and selfishness when Fonda becomes ill with yellow fever and she heroically sacrifices herself to care for him. Her character was described in film poster taglines as:
The film earned a total of five Academy Award nominations with two major Oscar victories. Bette Davis won her second (and last) Academy Award for her portrayal of the tempestuous, manipulative Southern ante-bellum New Orleans belle for Warner Bros. [Note: Davis would be nominated eight more times, without an additional Oscar, until the time of her death in 1989.] Co-star Fay Bainter also won the Best Supporting Actress Award (in addition to being honored with an additional nomination as Best Actress for her performance in White Banners.) Other nominations were for Best Picture, Best Cinematography (Ernest Haller) and Best Score (Max Steiner's noteworthy musical score). The screenplay of the astute costume drama was written by Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel, and aspiring screenwriter/director John Huston, and was based on the play of the same name by Owen Davis, Sr. Neither Miriam Hopkins nor Tallulah Bankhead, involved in the short-running, unsuccessful 1933 Broadway stage play, were cast in the film's lead role. The StoryAfter the film's credits that wash across a Southern plantation scene (the title word Jezebel glistens), the film opens in New Orleans - 1852, mixed with French, Creole, and Southern heritages. The camera pans along a row of street vendors selling various masks and other merchandise. Southern gentlemen Buck Cantrell (George Brent) and young Ted Dillard (Richard Cromwell) are chauffeured to the St. Louis Hotel where they enter the Long Bar to share drinks and conversation with other patrons. Cantrell has just lost "the lady of his heart" - Julie Marsden (Bette Davis) - she is engaged to marry Ted's brother Preston ("Pres") Dillard (Henry Fonda). They have an altercation with Frenchman De Lautruc (George Renevant) over his impropriety of mentioning Julie's name in the bar: "...a gentlemen doesn't mention a ladies' name in a barroom," and a duel is proposed. Admiring Cantrell, Ted steps in to defend the slight to Julie's reputation in the next day's challenge: "I ought to get Lautruc myself. It's my brother that's gonna marry her. That makes it much more my problem than yours. Let me act for ya, Buck?" But Buck declines Ted's magnanimous offer. An afternoon party is held at the family mansion of strong-willed Southern belle Julie Marsden. Disdainful of punctuality, she is late to her own engagement party. Aunt Belle Bogardus (Fay Bainter) is scandalized and embarrassed by the predicament. But according to Julie's guardian General Theopholus Bogardus (Henry O'Neill), Julie has always been rebelliously unconventional:
In a scene that defines her inner nature, Julie makes a noisy entrance on horseback along a cobble-stone entryway, riding side-saddle with a long dress/riding habit and crop in hand. She barks to her young slave Ti Bat (Stymie Beard) as he struggles to control the spirited horse (the horse represents her own restless spirit): "Don't stand there with your eyes bulgin' out like that! He knows you're scared." [In contrast, Bette Davis' own eyes bulge throughout the film!] Without time to change into her party dress, she flamboyantly strides into the reception room in her "horse clothes," cracking her whip against her riding habit - in rhythm to her step. She explains her willful tardiness:
Ladies react to Julie's vibrant impulsiveness and tempestuousness: "I declare! Hope I'm broad-minded but I must say!...I always say 'You spare the rod and you spoil the child!'" Buck Cantrell, one of the guests, proposes an incomplete toast to his ex-girlfriend Julie:
Julie's new fiancee Preston Dillard, son of a wealthy banking family, has been detained from attending the festivities while engaged in an important business conference with the directors of the investments and exchange firm of Dillard and Sons - "a venerable institution, a financial colossus with branches in New York, Boston, London, and Paris." In the meeting, Preston expresses his belief that the expansion of Northern railroad lines and rail freight shipments are bypassing the South:
Pres keeps Julie waiting in her carriage outside the bank, although she is confident that she has him trained and obedient to her will: "I've been trainin' him for years." Furious and neurotic, she stomps into the bank and interrupts the meeting, demanding that he fulfill his promise of accompanying her to a dress-fitting for her ball dress for the great Olympus debutante ball to be held the following evening. When he refuses, arguing that he is struggling and "having the fight of my life," she proceeds to the French costume-fitters without him. At Mme. Poulard's (Ann Codee), Julie is sitting on a stool trapped within a wide, hoop-skirt frame while trying on a white crinoline dress in front of a mirror. Exasperated by the uncomfortable, unstylish dress - and to spite Preston, she defiantly commands to have the white dress removed. In her underwear, exposed from both sides by the mirror, she insists on wearing and flaunting herself in a "saucy" and "vulgar" red dress, customarily worn by a demi-mondaine - an "infamous Vickers woman" - rather than the traditional virginal, pristine white gowns worn by unmarried women:
At the Bogardus' mansion, the General advises Preston that Julie, with whom he had a "fuss" at the bank, is "high-headed and willful. Son? If you just come to realize it, what she needs is a firm hand." When fickle-minded Julie insists on remaining in her upstairs room rather than coming down to greet Preston in the parlor, he marches up to her boudoir door wielding a walking stick. While knocking repeatedly, she teases him. As her hair is being pinned up by her black maid-servant Zette (Theresa Harris), she deliberately stalls answering to him. In front of a mirror which displays her image in three panels, she reddens her cheeks and finally responds: "Who is it?" When his patience has been tried to the breaking point, she opens the door and coyly flirts with him:
Having softened him up, she shows off her shocking red dress laid out on her chair, with the obvious intention of scorning convention and publicly embarrassing the conservative banker. Pres immediately objects to her wearing a non-customary gown to the chaste, social event of the year:
After Preston leaves, Julie sends a note via Zette to Buck Cantrell, inviting him to pick her up the following evening. On his arrival, Julie asks about his duel with Lautruc to defend her honor: "Is it true you killed him?" He admits: "It just looked like a busted hip to me." And he admires her sinful, scarlet dress: "Are you all dressed up for a hog killing?" But when he realizes she wants him to escort her to the Olympus Ball in a red dress to arouse Pres' jealousy (a symbol of her sexual recklessness), he declines, claiming that Southern manners wouldn't allow it:
When Preston arrives at the mansion, he (and Aunt Belle and the General) are stunned to see her, inappropriately dressed in a bare-shouldered, flaming red dress. Pig-headed, she challenges her beau to escort her while ignoring his wishes that she be "properly dressed" according to the social conventions:
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Jezebel (1938)
is a romantic melodrama with views of early 1850s New Orleans ante-bellum
society. It was the first in a cycle of films with Dixie backdrops
that studied Southern chivalry and honor. The role of the title character
was offered as compensation to film star Bette Davis - her first
major film role - when she lost the opportunity to play Scarlett
O'Hara in