The Old Maid

Get out your handkerchiefs! Bette Davis, the queen of black-and-white tearjerkers, outdoes herself in The Old Maid. I dare anyone to make it through this classic without bawling. Bette Davis starts the movie in love with her cousin's fiancé, George Brent. Her frivolous cousin, Miriam Hopkins, got tired of waiting for George to come home from the war, so she marries someone else. When George comes back and finds out, he's devastated but gets comforted by Bette. He was her favorite leading man, after all.

Years later, George has died in battle and Bette never remarried. She runs an orphanage for children whose fathers died in the war, in order to hide her own illegitimate daughter from George. When Miriam, now a widow as well, comes with her own little girl and lives with Bette, a bedroom ritual starts. Miriam's daughter says, "Goodnight Mummy. Goodnight Aunt Charlotte," to Bette. Bette's daughter starts saying it, too. It pains Bette terribly to hear her child call Miriam "Mummy", let alone to be called "Aunt Charlotte." I'm sure you can imagine the tearjerker scenes that follow.

I always said it was a tragedy that Bette didn't win her Oscar for this movie. At the Hot Toasty Rag, she was the one and only person to gain a triple nomination in the same category. In 1939, she was nominated for Dark Victory, The Old Maid, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, winning the Rag for the latter. While she absolutely deserved a Rag for playing Aunt Charlotte, her performance as Queen Elizabeth was remarkable.

If you like sacrificing mother stories like Stella Dallas, you'll love this one. You'll get to see some beautiful costumes, great age makeup on the leading ladies as the story travels through the decades, and you'll go through at least one box of Kleenexes as Bette tears up your heart. And if you like the dynamic of Bette and Miriam fighting over the same man, check out their follow-up Old Acquaintance.

Superb soap opera takes place from the 1860s to the 1880s. Miriam Hopkins spurns long-time fiancee George Brent to marry another man. Her cousin, Bette Davis, also loves Brent and "comforts" him before he goes off to war. He dies in the war and leaves her pregnant. She secretly has the baby and tells nobody except Hopkins. Hopkins, now a rich widow, convinces Davis to let her adopt the child so she will have a name. She does and watches her child grow up treating Hopkins like her mother and Davis with contempt as an old maid.

The story is very sudsy but the script has wonderful, literate dialogue and the picture is very elaborately made. But what really puts the picture across is the superb acting by Hopkins and Davis. They both hated each other passionately off screen but you'd never know it on screen. The scenes when they're friends or rivals are just great--every single line rings true and they play their roles to the hilt. A real surprise is seeing Hopkins play a sweet woman at the end--she certainly wasn't like that in real life! And the very last scene in the movie will bring a tear to your eye--just Bette Davis' reaction to something really hits.

A great film--don't miss it! A must if you're a Bette Davis fan.

This film would be just another period melodrama: over-scored,sugar-coated, and glossy-slick (especially for a Warners' film) -- except for two things: Bette Davis and Bette Davis.

Bette is truly a revelation in this film, which required her to age twenty years in the flesh but many more than that in spirit - as she turned from a fresh, extremely sympathetic young girl to an "old maid" of forty or so, a bitter, intimidating woman.

Her ability to integrate completely disparate human traits into one cohesive character is amazing - a must see.

Here is a classic film which I have never seen. According to lore, Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins detested each other during the filming of this. Both actresses were forces of nature to be reckoned with, and, if anything, Miriam was even more of an upstager than Bette was. Both actresses however overcome their dislike for each other to turn in thoroughly terrific performances. Bette Davis is marvelous as the initially lovely and later repressed woman with a secret. Bette never turned in a bad performance, so it's natural to expect and get one here. Miriam Hopkins is, these days little-known to contemporary audiences and that's a shame, since she was really a terrific actress. The two stars spar subtly and not so subtly like two dogs circling each other for a fight. There is a satisfying ending which will bring a tear to your eye. The glossy Warner Bros. production has a marvelous Max Steiner score which dosn't hurt one bit. Two great actresses for the price of one, 23 years before "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Everyone who is a fan of Davis' knows that William Wyler (director of Jezebel, the Letter, and the Little Foxes) was Davis' "best" director because he could put her in her place and control her, forcing her to not over-act and use too many bits of business and gestures, etc to distract. Davis did not need mannerisms to get emotion across on screen and Wyler seemed to be able to tell her how to control that; she learned from him, for after Jezebel in 1938, she very rarely acted in a manner displaying lack of control that matched her pre-Jezebel career.

The Old Maid was directed by Edmund Goulding; I don't know much about him except that was considered a "women's film" director and was respected as a talented one. In any event, the Old Maid is the best of Davis' four 1939 films. which include Dark Victory, Juarez, and the Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.

In the Old Maid, Davis with the help of Mr Goulding delivers a restrained yet compellingly provocative performance; the film spans a twenty year time period, beginning in 1861 or so with a young Davis ministering to her cousin Delia (played by the talented but very difficult Miriam Hopkins.) Although Miriam does her best to steal each scene from Davis, she never succeeds. Bette Davis is superb in this film; so much so that it really remains one of the few undated movies from the 1930s. True star quality is related to being able to connect with an audience over years and years of time. Ms. Davis certainly has this ability - never better displayed than in the Old Maid.

Favorite scenes: Charlotte (Davis' character) wedding preparation and Delia's subsequent lie - along with the next scene that takes place when Davis realizes that Hopkins' character has lied and ruined her life - watch Davis' face as she utters "it was wicked of you" to Hopkins- (who, by the way delivers a disappointing response.) Now that's star-quality acting!