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"In This Our Life" dared to point out some issues not discussed by the Hollywood of the 40s. It shows a great director, John Huston, working at the top of his craft on the interesting adaptation by Howard Koch.

Stanley, the girl at the center of the story has it all. She is the favorite niece of the man who was responsible for ruining her father, a gentle soul beaten by the Great Depression. Stanley is a spoiled woman who couldn't care less who she hurt, let alone that is her own sister the one that will suffer because of her actions.

On the other hand, Roy, the good sister, is all kindness; she is just the opposite of Stanley. When Stanley decides she wants Peter, Roy's husband, she doesn't hesitate one second. She takes him and runs away to a life that proves not to be all what she imagined it would be.

Life intervenes in Stanley's life in tragic ways. First with Peter, the man he shouldn't have taken away from her sister, and then when trying to get back with Craig, she causes the death of a young girl when driving under the influence. This would have been a sobering experience for anyone, but Stanley is beyond repentance. Stanley, is a coward who will do anything to get away with murder.

Stanley was a role tailor made for Bette Davis. Her take on this impudent girl is perfect. Ms. Davis shows how good she is in small details that convey her understanding of her character. Ms. Davis reflects all the emotions Stanley is going through with her expressive eyes. One look at her and we know what this woman is capable of.

Olivia de Havilland makes an impression by playing the good sister, Roy. Ms. de Havilland is an actress that always played convincingly in everything she did, as is the case here. Her inner strength is her best asset. Roy is loyal to the point of sacrificing her own happiness and lets her sister take what she loves most.

The strong cast behind the principals is equally excellent. Dennis Morgan is Peter, the man blinded by Stanley. He will leave his adoring wife for a woman he ends up detesting. George Brent, is the kind Craig, the man jilted by Stanley who finally finds love again with Roy. Charles Coburn plays Uncle William with his usual panache. Frank Craven is Asa, the man cheated out of his fortune. Ernest Anderson makes an impression as Parry, the young black man with ambitions to improve himself. Hattie McDaniel only has a couple of key scenes where she shines. Billie Burke and Lee Patrick are seen in minor roles.

The musical score by Alfred Newman enhances the film. Ultimately it's John Huston who shows a clear understanding for the material and who gets excellent performances out of everyone.

The film 'In This Our Life' is adapted from the novel of the same name by Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945), whose novels had healthy sales figures during her lifetime, yet who is now almost totally forgotten. Her own life was extremely unhappy, largely due to unpleasant memories of her abusive father. (In her will, Glasgow stipulated that she was not to be buried in the same cemetery as her father.) If she is remembered at all nowadays, she is classified as both a 'Southern' author and a feminist. A life-long Virginian, Glasgow typically set her stories in that state.

This is the second film directed by John Huston, following his impressive debut with 'The Maltese Falcon'. Considering how far removed the subject matter is from Huston's usual territory, he does an impressive job here. More about Huston a bit later.

Here we have Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland as sisters, and there are no prizes for guessing which is the bad sister and which is the good 'un. The sisters are named Stanley and Roy, but there's no sexual subtext for those male names. The bad sister, having dumped her boring fiancé (George Brent), sets her cap for the good sister's handsome husband (Dennis Morgan).

In her later years, Bette Davis occasionally gave informal talks at colleges in California. My future sister-in-law was present at one of these. During the Q&A, an eager fan breathlessly pointed out that Bette Davis had co-starred with Bogart, Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Ronald Reagan, Errol Flynn and other great male stars ... so, who was her favourite? Without hesitation, Davis replied 'George Brent', leaving most of the audience to murmur 'Who?'. It's not hard to guess the reason for Bette's preference. Brent was a bland leading man who concentrated on making his leading ladies look good, never generating a screen presence with the wattage of Bogart or Cagney. Davis preferred working with Brent because -- unlike Bogart or Cagney -- she didn't have to compete with him.

Here, as Davis's jilted fiancé, Brent gives possibly the best performance of his career in a maudlin scene, getting drunk on a park bench. When I saw this scene, I burst out laughing: Brent overplays it ridiculously ... but this is perhaps the only time in his career when he didn't underplay.

A superlative performance is given here by a young African-American actor named Ernest Anderson -- no relation to the much older Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson -- as a black man unfairly arrested for a crime committed by Davis. (She's perfectly willing to let him take the rap, of course.) Anderson conveys intelligence and dignity, in an era when most roles for black actors consisted of 'Yassuh!' stereotypes. It's a shame that Anderson's career never prospered; few decent roles were given to black actors in his day. In this film, I was impressed with a scene in an all-negro cellblock, conveying that segregation persists even in prison. Also seen here, all too briefly, is a young black man named Ernest Morrison ... who, as a boy, had appeared in Hal Roach's silent comedy shorts as "Sunshine Sammy".

Now, about the director. John Huston's father Walter Huston was one of the few character actors who had attained first-rank stardom. To bring good luck to his son's first two films ('The Maltese Falcon' and 'In This Our Life'), Walter Huston played small unbilled roles in both. Here, he plays the bartender in a roadhouse where Davis tarries. The same scene introduces a character played by Lee Patrick. This actress was a Warners contract player at the time, but she's now remembered solely for playing Bogart's secretary in 'The Maltese Falcon' (and hilariously parodying that same character decades later, in 'The Black Bird'.) Because Walter Huston and Lee Patrick show up in the same scene in this movie, an annoying (and untrue) rumour has arisen, claiming that all the major cast members of 'The Maltese Falcon' make unbilled appearances in 'In This Our Life'. Bogart, Astor, Lorre, Greenstreet, Elisha Cook, Uncle Tom Cobley and the suicidal Munchkin from 'The Wizard of Oz' are all ostensibly hiding in this movie someplace. A nice story, but it's just not true. During the roadhouse sequence, bartender Huston keeps trying to have a conversation with some dimly-seen customers in the background while Davis is talking in the foreground ... but they're all just unidentified extras. They're definitely NOT the 'Falcon' cast. Adding to the confusion is the presence in this film of John Hamilton as a cop, after playing a D.A. in 'Falcon'.

There are excellent performances all round here; John Huston's prowess as an actors' director is under-rated. Even Hattie McDaniel has better material than usual. Max Steiner's scoring falls below his usual high standard, but even the worst Steiner score is better than almost anybody else's best. My rating: 7 out of 10. Rest in peace, Ellen Glasgow.

I loved this film, and it had me howling in several parts, such as the classically predictable ending. Such a great morality tale. I especially liked the portrayal of the developing and mature relationship between Olivia de Havilland and George Brent. This is the best Brent role in a Davis movie. I appreciate Davis not playing a more subtle character, such as in Mr. Skeffington, because the Stanley character is so boorish that she can't consider anything but her own whims and pleasures. She is not evil in the sense of making reasoned choices, but as a child, has no capacity for self denial. Delusionally, she actually thinks that Brent can be lured back under her spell after what she has done to him, and that a wealthy white woman's claim will alway be considered above a young black man's. Her world starts to crumble after she reels off the list of those who accepted her story over Parry's, when her sister, de Havilland says "I believe him." This is an emblematic tale of deliverance and hopeful new beginning. Bravo to all involved.

Holy Toledo - Bette Davis has played some really bad women in her life, but the part of Stanley tops it! Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Dennis Morgan, Charles Coburn, and George Brent star in "In This Our Life," an odd film from 1942.

Davis and de Havilland play Stanley and Roy (guess dad wanted boys). Stanley is dating Craig (Brent) and Roy is married to Peter, a doctor (Morgan). The film no sooner begins than Stanley and Peter run away together. It doesn't take long before Stanley becomes dissatisfied with Peter's lack of money as a young surgeon and his hospital hours. After Peter's suicide (I wonder), the good Roy comes and brings her sister back home. Meanwhile, Roy has started to see Craig. Stanley hates being home and prevails upon her lecherous uncle (Coburn) to give her money so she can go away. Meanwhile, I swear she's trying to kill him by plying him with booze. It goes from there, with Stanley becoming more and more horrid with each passing frame of film. Her best line is "YOU'RE AN OLD MAN! WHO CARES IF YOU DIE? I'M YOUNG. I'VE GOT MY WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF ME." Totally outrageous.

One comment asks if it's Davis or the script that wrecks this film. I blame the script. You have the too good sister, so good she's saintly -I mean, her sister stole her husband and she doesn't slap her silly - and then you have the bad sister, so bad she's absurd. Then there's the treatment of black people which is offensive - though that is acknowledged in the film. Plus, Sidney's relationship with Uncle William will give rise to a lot of speculation.

At one point, Olivia de Havilland looks at a portrait of an ugly relation and says, "I'm not as pretty as she is." Well, if that were going to be the case, someone should have done a better job on the painting. De Havilland is absolutely beautiful and gives a very good, sober, well-grounded performance - in juxtaposition to Davis batting her eyes, pouting, and sashaying. Huston obviously didn't know how to handle her. Davis was capable of brilliant performances but she had to be in sync with her director. She wasn't.

Morgan and Brent are the mild types of leading men Warners usually cast opposite strong women. Morgan is very handsome and believable as the put-upon Peter - and if he did kill himself, you can't really blame him. Brent does a good job as the attorney who turns his attentions to Roy. As the young black man whose future is threatened by darling Stanley, Ernest Anderson gives a wonderful performance, giving his character the appropriate likability, intelligence, and lack of aggression. Always an excellent emotional actress, Hattie McDaniel scores as his mother.

This thing is one big potboiler, complete with an overwhelming score by Max Steiner that is really a bit much. So is the movie. And guess what, I still recommend it. Even an overdone Bette is better than no Bette at all.

The family patriarch (Frank Craven), who has long since lost control of the business he himself started, and winds up only being an employee at, raises two distinctly different daughters. One (played by Bette Davis) is corrupted by her own personality defects and the attentions of her uncle (Charles Coburn), who has plenty of ability in business (it is revealed that he swooped in and took over the business that Craven started at an opportune time), but has a childless and cold marriage and presumably for that reason, showers money, gifts, and attention on his niece, foolishly believing he can buy her love and his happiness. This turns out to be probably Stanley's (Bette Davis) most formative relationship. Why De Havilland's Roy is so different we can only assume was because she came more under the influence of her father (Craven). That involved background story is actually more interesting than the story that is presented in the foreground, of Davis and sister Olivia De Havilland and their relationships with George Brent and Dennis Morgan. Nonetheless, Davis' relationship with Uncle William (Coburn) reaches a climactic point that ties in beautifully with the climax of the film.

I remember, in my former life, a long, long time ago, when a college professor told me that something that is created by another human being that gets your attention and stirs something inside you, and gets your visual attention, and captivates you, maybe is art.

Well, this motion picture got my attention. Yes, it captivated me. The story, the actors and the moral was superb. Many times when I see these movies of an older era, I try to imagine in my mind, what the adult audience was thinking then, as they saw the story, the emotion, the characters. All the actors did a excellent job. Bettie Davis did it to me again. Her character made me hate her, and feel pity for her at the same time.

I still don't understand why I still have a crush on her. Maybe it's that old false thinking that the right man, could change her, me! Through the years, the more I see her, the more I love her.

All too often, many reviewers pick a motion picture or the actors apart on some of the most insignificant and minuet details. The director should have done this or it wasn't true to the book, or she or he could have acted a little better, blah, blah, blah. Even I have done that-- more than once. But, if things are done "reasonably" well and it holds your attention... Well, that's entertainment. That is what you pay the ticket at the box office window for. If I had paid for a ticket at the old box office for this movie, I could say that I got more than my monies worth in entertainment. And, I am still thinking about it after the movie is over.

Sisters from a wealthy family (named Stanley and Roy!) become estranged when rascally Stanley runs off with Roy's surgeon husband; Roy rebounds after meeting a smitten attorney, but Stanley's erratic behavior spells doom. John Huston-directed yarn seems to be a cautionary tale about playing with fire, and it isn't a whole lot of fun. 'Bad' Bette Davis bats her eyes and prisses her mouth, but can't really come up with a convincing character; Olivia de Havilland is much more attuned to this soapy material, and she has a funny exchange with Hattie McDaniel near the beginning. Disappointing film hasn't held up, is interesting solely for its cast and their director, doing decent but simple work. ** from ****

John Huston makes his second film, adapting a novel by Ellen Glasgow from a script by Howard Koch, and showing his Wyler influences crystal clear, helped in no small part by his casting of Bette Davis as one of the leads. Apparently sanding down all of the rough edges to satisfy both the Production Code and Southern states and their treatment of race relations, Huston efficiently worked through the script, spending all of his free time with Olivia de Havilland, and ending up with a handsome but muted sophomore effort.

The Timberlake family has lost its ownership stake in the tobacco firm they had partnered with the patriarch Asa's (Frank Craven) brother in law, William Fitzroy (Charles Coburn). Asa's daughter Roy (Havilland) is married to the young doctor Peter (Dennis Morgan) while his other daughter, Stanley (Davis), is engaged to marry the radical, young lawyer Craig (George Brent). Things go sideways when Stanley and Peter abscond in the middle of the night, leaving Richmond for Baltimore and setting up a life together there.

Off the bat, I was reminded of Wyler's Jezebel, not only because of the presence of Bette Davis, but because of her incredibly unlikeable character. This film does not make the same mistake as Jezebel in trying to give her a last second redemption, but it does embody the same melodramatic space. The difference between melodrama and drama can be razor thin, and I think it has everything to do with tone. A performance of flailing one's arms around and screaming can be melodramatic, but pare that back to something quieter, and you've got drama. Use music as a cudgel to make your point, and you get melodrama. Use music sparingly with purpose, and you can have drama. The music by Max Steiner here is all sorts of Mickey Mouse-ing nonsense across every little dramatic moment, and it makes me want to scrub Steiner out from almost every movie he made. It's so overdone, and I estimate that Huston, based on my reading of Picture by Lillian Ross, largely left the post-production construction to those directly responsible for each element, letting Steiner run wild with his worst impulses without drawing him back.

I also have issues with how short the film is. It's edited in a way that seems to emphasize how staccato the script was written. There are scenes, especially in the early parts of the second act, that feel clipped to eliminate anything outside of the most basic of pieces of narrative information and move on. Seriously, the film is 93 minutes long. Add in a bit to let scenes breathe, just a bit.

Anyway, the story progresses with Roy and Craig discovering each other and falling in love while the son of the Timberlake household servant Parry (Ernest Anderson) goes from working in Roy's shop to Craig's law office as he preps to study for the bar. Stanley drives Peter to suicide (or does she kill him? It's never brought up, but I'm leaning towards maybe), and she comes back to Richmond to live in the house again.

The meat of the drama happens in the final act of the film where Stanley's hubris meets the people she's hurt and she can't deal with it, making a grave mistake that she tries to pin on someone else. Now, the racial angle of the film can almost feel out of left field, but I think it's really well integrated into the larger story. It's all about a young woman who has lived her life to the fullest, learning nothing about the limits of her own behavior, and wreaking havoc wherever she goes. That it ends up affecting a member of a disfavored social group and she works to weasel her way out of it, pinning a death on an innocent black man, is just in her character and reflective of the sickness in the family as a whole, the next generation of bad conduct that her uncle, William, had so endlessly shown in his life and treatment of Stanley.

I was reminded of Wyler's last film, The Liberation of L. B. Jones, as well as The Little Foxes in that In This Our Life is a story about a terrible family occasionally at each other's throats while also atop the social ladder in the Jim Crow South and were happy to use that position to get themselves out of trouble.

My problems with the film really are that it bends too far into melodrama, mostly around Steiner's music and a few moments from Davis (Havilland gives a much better performance), the clipped nature of the editing from scene to scene, and the necessary "moral" ending where the bad people get their comeuppance. The Liberation of L. B. Jones had a better ending that more easily fit with the reality of the story it was telling.

Still, as Huston's second effort, a largely forgotten film except by Bette Davis completists, it's a solid work. The acting is good, Huston's lens (managed by cinematographer Ernest Haller) is accomplished and complex, the story is multi-faceted and well-done overall. I have my issues, but I think it's a worthwhile film despite them.

I am not certain Ellen Glasgow's book is faithfully reproduced in this movie, but John Huston has brought to the screen an excellent melodrama, featuring two of Hollywood's greatest actresses (both dual Oscar winners) in Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. The story of the two sisters' relationships with each other, and their men played by two very boring actors George Brent and Dennis Morgan is very well told, with Davis having a great final scene with her uncle as depicted by Charles Coburn. The young Afro-American actor Anderson played his role extremely sensitively and possibly was the first of his race to be cast in a movie in this light. Character actors such as Lee Patrick and Hattie McDaniel certainly added to the charm of this film. I do feel that the character Roy (de Havilland) could have been better developed by the script, but as usual, she carried it off brilliantly. Billie Burke was featured in a most unusual role for her, and she did it well.

This is a favorite of my Bette Davis movies.

However it really belongs to Olivia DeHavilland. It seems that she is favored in this movie and is allowed to be harder than in her usual movies at Warner Bros. It shows what she could do in later movies such as "My Cousin Rachel" and "Hush, Hush...Sweet Charlotte ".

Olivia and Bette have a great rapport.

As usual, Ernest Haller's cinematography is terrific.

The supporting cast is excellent, from Charles Coburn to the delightful Lee Patrick.

And then there's the costume design from Orry-Kelly.

This is not a great movie but it is solid in a way that so many of Hal Wallace's productions at Warner Bros. Were at this time.

Indulge and enjoy it.

Wonderful performances by all concerned. And one of the very few films from the 40's that shows a black man who is actually not lazy or stupid--but just a man! Very interesting plot also. I would recommend!!

I can't say this one's a winner, but neither is it a total loss. Any movie with so many famous faces (Bette Davis as Stankey, Olivia de Havilland as Roy, Dennis Morgan as Peter, George Brent as Craig, Binnie Barnes as Lavinia, Charles Coburn as William, and Hattie McDaniel as Minerva) can at least be assured of great acting performances, and that's true here. It's not their fault they had a rather peculiar storyline to work with.

This film is a soap opera story with an undertone of both incest and racial bigotry. There's a weak, spineless father, a flip-flopping mother, torn between her brother and her husband, the nice, sensible elder sister, the wild, bad girl younger sister, the nice guy she's engaged to, the foolish guy (who happens to be her sister's husband) she dumps him for, the uncle whose feelings for her are far from avuncular, the housekeeper who's worth a thousand of them, and the housekeeper's son, who wants to rise above the racism that tries to keep him down and make something worthwhile out of his life.

There's adversity, betrayal, duplicity, tragedy, and a well-deserved karma at the end. But the best part of the film is when the young black man, Perry, (played by the talented Ernest Anderson, whom Bette discovered while he waited tables) declares he's going to law school and get his degree, so he'll have something no one can take away. They may not treat him right or want to hire him because of his skin color, but whatever they do or don't do, that degree is his.

I would have liked a sequel just about him.

There are lots of similarly titled melodramas from the mid-1940s, and I often get them confused. In This Our Life, To Each His Own, Hold Back the Dawn - don't they all sound like the same movie? The former in that list stars both Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland, so you can imagine the competition in scenes as to who can be more dramatic.

Bette and Olivia play sisters, and as is often the case in Bette Davis movies, one of them runs off with the other's man. No, this isn't The Old Maid, and this isn't Old Acquaintance. See what I mean; they all run together! In this one, Bette is impulsive and selfish, and even though she's engaged to her favorite leading man, George Brent, she steals Olivia's husband, Dennis Morgan. Olivia and George are left to pick up the pieces, along with parents Billie Burke and Frank Craven. Charles Coburn, the uncle, is particularly devastated, because Bette was always his favorite niece and he indulged her behavior more than once.

This movie marks the only time Hattie McDaniel was given an opportunity to show off some dramatic acting. I'm not discounting the couple of tearful scenes from Gone With the Wind, but for the majority of that movie, she's the same sassy maid she was to Mae West in 1933. In this movie, she still plays a maid, but her son, Ernest Anderson, is arrested for a crime he didn't commit and seeks help from George Brent, a lawyer. In This Our Life features a rare, sympathetic portrayal of African-American characters. Ernest is accused by a rich, white woman, and it's seen as unjust - not what audiences were used to seeing in 1942. It's no surprise Bette Davis, a racial pioneer in real life, wanted to be in this movie. Both she and Hattie McDaniel entertained the troops (of all colors) during this time, so I'm sure this movie meant a lot to them.

I've seen this one a couple of times, and while it's not my favorite classic, it's always enjoyable. Check out this black-and-white melodrama if you haven't yet seen it. You won't like Bette Davis, though, so have a movie on hand where she's more likable, like Dark Victory.

When I recuperate from this hectic emotional brawl, I'll check out Glasgow's novel and see what sort of story she meant to tell. The manipulative, predatory female role of Stanley (Bette Davis) is so blatantly drawn that the story is spoiled. There is no balance in the cinematic telling. Quite simply, this girl Godzilla wants what she wants, and gets it at any price. The final scene between Uncle William (Charles Coburn) and Stanley is sort of like T-Rex in Jurassic Park coming upon a fear-frozen victim. The overall effect of dripping self-pity in two styles--the doormat sister(Olivia de Haviland as Roy) and the manipulative one (our Stanley): what a cheery way to spend an hour and a half. Bring two hankies. Certainly distracting from the headlines and real personal tragedies of 1942.