The Old Maid

A soap opera from 1939 starring Bette Davis & Miriam Hopkins. In the lead up to the Civil War, one of a pair female cousins is about to marry when her old beau shows up. Davis, the loyal one (who also carries a torch for the jilted suitor), rushes to the train station to break the bad news to him. When the war breaks out, Davis feeling the now available man is fair game starts to see him & as he leaves to the war & tragically dies there, we find out she was pregnant by him & decides to mask the potentially scandalous offspring among a throng of war orphans which she is in charge of. Hopkins, the other cousin, discovers this & fearing her kin may become a social pariah decides to take her daughter as her own to raise along w/her brood (her husband has passed on since the end of the war) making her think Davis is an aunt rather than her own mother. Davis, ever the selfless one (I guess self crucifixion was considered taboo in those days), agrees to the ruse & has to bite her tongue as she has to see her child raised by her scheming cousin only letting out the occasion outburst when she finds any fault in her 'niece's' deportment. There's a lot of suffering for suffering's sake occurring when all Davis had to do was probably move away w/her child rather than endure such an unspeakable act of betrayal but she agreed to it & to a certain extent, we the audience have as well as we swallow this foulness whole all for the sake of shedding some precious tears.

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?"

With Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner himself in charge of the production, "The Old Maid" is a fine example of what that studio's "stock company" was able to produce in the late '30s and early '40s. Here is Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, assisted by George Brent and Donald Crisp acting up a storm a very soapy piece of melodrama, and making it all very engrossing. Based on Zoe Akins' Pulitzer Prize play and Edith Wharton's novel, this drama of sacrifice, deception, and raging emotions is given a superlative treatment by this impressive company. The film even has the services of Max Steiner's score, underlying every scene with original and adapted source material. Edmund Goulding's direction is sure-footed and he has managed to curb histrionic accesses of the two stars nicely; their acting is quite restrained, yet powerful. Whatever sparks flew between the two ladies off-screen may be justified by what on-screen legacy is left for all to appreciate. Further, the drama depicts the limited and restrictive social/class mores of the period, undoubtedly imported from strict European values.

Bette Davis vies with Miriam Hopkins for the affection of George Brent in this film version of Edith Wharton's 'The Old Maid'. As hard as Hopkins tries, she can't steal the film from Bette -- nor Bette's daughter (Jane Bryan), the love child being brought up by Delia (Hopkins). Basically the story of Bette being unable to tell her daughter that she's her real mother.

There are some odd peculiarities about the film itself. George Brent makes a few brief appearances early in the film and then is suddenly killed off after going to fight in the Civil War. A montage shows the passage of time and suddenly we're given an abrupt change of scene and events before still another time transition. The continuity is choppy and leaves an unsatisfying impression of the film as a whole. It's as if events that should have been shown are compressed because of time constraints.

Bette Davis gives one of her more restrained portrayals, aging rather realistically, showing the loneliness of the embittered woman who is cheated out of marrying another man when her cousin Delia (Miriam Hopkins) discovers that she bore Brent's child.

The soap suds are pretty thick, all of them backed by a nice Max Steiner score and handsome sets and period costumes. Miriam Hopkins plays the selfish bitch with her customary skill and makes Davis seem even more sympathetic by comparison. I have seen this movie praised to the skies by some who consider it a work of art--but there are too many flaws, including a false and abrupt ending involving Bette Davis and daughter Jane Bryan, and time changes that seem more like a case of bad editing.

There are fine performances in supporting roles by Donald Crisp, James Stephenson, William Lundigan and Jerome Cowan under Edmund Goulding's tasteful direction.

A tear-jerker, 1930s style--but one that doesn't date too well.

One of Bette Davis' best films and a great weepie; an unashamed Victorian melodrama but made with great panache and played with all the stops out. When Miriam Hopkins jilts her financee George Brent, cousin Bette gives herself to him and gets pregnant. When Brent goes off and gets himself killed Davis disappears out West so she can have the baby, raise her as an orphan and save what vestige of honour she has left. Years later, when Hopkins discovers the truth, she takes the child to be raised as her own while Davis lurks on the sidelines as old maid Aunt Charlotte. (This is the movie in which Davis gets to utter the immortal lines on her daughter's wedding night, 'Tonight she belongs to me. Tonight I want her to call ME mother!'). The film has a good pedigree. The original play won the Pulitzer Prize and was based in turn on an Edith Wharton novel. Tosh it may well be, but it is irresistible.