Bette DavisFilmography

Christmas Throughout the Years

Memories of Hollywood

Synopsis: This fascinating program takes us on a star-studded trip down memory lane. Relive the Golden Age of Hollywood. Featuring memories of the stars from the great westerns, screen sweethearts, Shirley Temple, Bette Davis, James Stewart and many more. An added bonus is a chapter of original trailers Read More

Classic Bloopers

Wicked Stepmother

Actors: Bette Davis, Barbara Carrera, Colleen Camp, David Rasche, Lionel Stander

Synopsis: In this film, Steve (David Rasche) and Jenny's (Colleen Camp) new stepmother, Miranda (Bette Davis), is truly a witch in every sense of the word. With their father (Lionel Stander) happily deceived by his new wife, it is up to the kids to stop Miranda's dastardly plans, before it is too late. This Read More

Hollywood's Golden Era: Leading Ladies

Synopsis: This documentary highlights the careers and lives of some of the most famous actresses of early cinema. Some of the ladies featured in this video are Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, and Joan Crawford. These actresses from Hollywood's Golden Age were different in the types of films Read More

The Whales of August

Actors: Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Vincent Price, Ann Sothern, Harry Carey, Jr.

Synopsis: A once-in-a-lifetime cast of veterans performs David Berry's play about Libby Strong (Bette Davis) and Sarah Webber (Lillian Gish), widowed sisters vacationing on a Philadelphia island for their 60th consecutive summer. Libby is blind and embittered, while Sarah is healthy, supportive, and almost Read More

As Summers Die

Actors: Jamie Lee Curtis, Bette Davis, Scott Glenn

Synopsis: As Summers Die was produced as an "HBO Premiere" attraction. Set in the segregationist South of the 1950s, the film pits the wealthy but decadent members of a landed-gentry white family against a feisty old black woman, on whose property oil has been discovered. Idealistic attorney Scott Glenn Read More

The Return of Video Yesterbloop

Synopsis: This collection of bloopers and outtakes is largely from Warner Bros. films of the 1930s and 1940s. Included are such sights as Edward G. Robinson being startled when a prop gun he is holding accidentally goes off, Bette Davis falling off a stage, Ronald Reagan struggling with a pants zipper that Read More

Directed by William Wyler

Actors: William Wyler, Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier, Lillian Hellman, Gregory Peck, Terence Stamp

Synopsis: This excellent biographical documentary looks at the life and work of director William Wyler. The film is dominated by clips from many of Wyler's better-known works, such as Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, and Funny Girl. A long interview with the director himself (conducted a few days before he died) Read More

Murder with Mirrors

Actors: Dorothy Tutin, John Mills, Helen Hayes, Bette Davis, Leo McKern

Synopsis: Helen Hayes makes her second TV appearance as Agatha Christie's female sleuth Miss Marple in Murder with Mirrors. Marple has been summoned to the lavish country estate of her old friend Carrie Louise Serrocold (Bette Davis). Carrie's stepson has been killed, and she fears that his won't be the Read More

Little Gloria... Happy at Last

Actors: Lucy Gutteridge, Angela Lansbury, Christopher Plummer

Synopsis: Little Gloria...Happy at Last is the two-part TV adaptation of Barbara Goldsmith's 1980 best-seller. The film concerns the true-life custody battle over the daughter of millionaire Reggie Vanderbilt (Christopher Plummer) and his "child bride," Gloria Morgan (Lucy Gutteridge). When the Read More

Hollywood Outtakes and Rare Footage

Synopsis: Rather than a compilation of a series of hilarious bloopers, plus scenes of current stars never-before shown to the public, this collection of film clips focuses on a Hollywood of long ago. Stars from Warner Bros. in the 1930s and '40s are shown in out-takes that mainly illustrate their short Read More

Hotel

Actors: Bette Davis, Morgan Fairchild, Shirley Jones, Erin Moran, Mel Tormé

Synopsis: Arthur Hailey's novel Hotel had already served as the inspiration for a 1967 theatrical film when this TV pilot came along on September 21, 1983. Bette Davis stars as Laura Trent, the entrenched owner of the Hotel St. Gregory (moved from the novel's New Orleans to San Francisco, to allow for Read More

Right of Way

Actors: Bette Davis, James Stewart, Melinda Dillon, Priscilla Morrill, John Harkins

Synopsis: This story about an elderly couple who start a large controversy when everyone learns they plan on committing suicide stars James Stewart as the retired Teddy Dwyer, and Betty Davis is his wife Mini Dwyer. When Mini learns she is terminally ill with a blood disease, the couple decide to end their Read More

A Piano for Mrs. Cimino

Actors: Bette Davis

Synopsis: Directed by George Schaefer, this light made-for-television drama is based upon the novel of the same name by Robert Oliphant. Starring Bette Davis as Esther Cimino, a 73-year-old widow, the film traces the events following Esther's son George's (George Hearn) decision that she is no longer Read More

AFI Lifetime Achievement Awards: Frank Capra

Synopsis: Hosted by the American Film Institute, this video is a tribute to career of Frank Capra. Included are excerpts from: It's a Wonderful Life, Lost Horizon, You Can't Take It with You and It Happened One Night. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide Read More

Family Reunion

Actors: Bette Davis, J. Ashley Hyman

Synopsis: Written for television by Allan Sloane, Family Reunion stars Bette Davis as an ageing New England schoolteacher who is given an "unlimited" bus ticket as a retirement present. She uses this gift to visit the farthest-flung members of her long-estranged family. In her absence, Davis' small town Read More

The Watcher in the Woods

Actors: Bette Davis, Carroll Baker, David McCallum, Ian Bannen, Lynn-Holly Johnson

Synopsis: This Disney Studios attempt at entering the horror genre is a British production based on the chilling novel by Florence Engel Randall. An American family, headed by composer Paul Curtis (David McCallum) and his wife Helen (Carroll Baker), is renting an old mansion in England. The mansion's owner Read More

Skyward

Synopsis: Skyward is a 1980 GE Theatre presentation in the lofty tradition of TV's Golden Age. Bette Davis stars (what an inadequate word!) as a 60-year-old retired barnstorming airplane pilot. Real-life paraplegic Suzy Gilstrap portrays a wheelchair-bound team who is "tired of looking up all the time." It Read More

White Mama

Actors: Bette Davis, Ernest Harden Jr.

Synopsis: Bette Davis is White Mama in this custom-made TV movie. Ms. Davis plays a poverty-stricken widow who is too proud to go on welfare. Aware that she can receive a steady income if she takes in a foster child, Davis becomes surrogate mother to tough black teenager Ernest Harden Jr. The relationship Read More

Strangers: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter

Synopsis: The made-for-television movie Strangers: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter concerns a bitter widow (Bette Davis) who is upset about the unexpected return of her estranged daughter (Gena Rowlands). Davis won an Emmy for her performance. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

The Dark Secret of Harvest Home

Actors: Rosanna Arquette, Bette Davis

Synopsis: This vapid television production is based on Thomas Tryon's complex and suspenseful occult thriller Harvest Home, delving into the forbidden rituals of the small New England township Cornwall Combe, whose residents offer annual human sacrifices to pagan gods in return for a bountiful corn harvest. Read More

Return From Witch Mountain

Actors: Bette Davis, Christopher Lee, Kim Richards, Ike Eisenmann, Jack Soo

Synopsis: The Fury meets The Misadventures of Merlin Jones in this comic-book sequel to Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain. Reprising their roles as the psychic siblings from another world are Kim Richards as Tia and Ike Eisenmann as Tony. Their Uncle Bene (Denver Pyle) gives the kids a treat by letting them Read More

Death on the Nile

Actors: Peter Ustinov, Jane Birkin, Lois Chiles, David Niven, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury

Synopsis: Peter Ustinov began his long association with the Hercule Poirot character of murder mystery novelist Agatha Christie with this lavish but financially disappointing follow-up to the popular Murder on the Orient Express (1974). During a luxurious pleasure cruise down the Nile aboard a lavish vessel Read More

Burnt Offerings

Actors: Karen Black, Oliver Reed, Burgess Meredith, Eileen Heckart, Lee Montgomery, Bette Davis

Synopsis: Dan Curtis, director of TV's Dark Shadows series, directed this eerie haunted-house thriller about a house which draws energy from its inhabitants and selects its own "keeper" from the family of Ben and Marian Rolf (Oliver Reed & Karen Black), who rent the strangely-affordable house one fateful Read More

The Disappearance of Aimee

Synopsis: In 1926, flamboyant evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared for six weeks. At first feared drowned (she'd been vacationing on a California beach at the time she vanished), Aimee finally showed up, wandering barefoot in the Mexican desert. For the benefit of the press, Aimee related a Read More

Scream, Pretty Peggy

Actors: Bette Davis

Synopsis: Bette Davis stars in the TV movie Scream, Pretty Peggy. She isn't Peggy, but instead the secretive matriarch of a spooky household. Peggy, played by Sian Barbara Allen, is a goggle-eyed college student hired by Davis as a housekeeper. Ted Bessell plays Davis's son, a crazed sculptor; but no one Read More

Lo Scopone Scientifico

Synopsis: In this drama, a wealthy US heiress and her partner embark upon their annual journey to Rome to play scopa, an Italian card game, with a financially struggling couple. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

The Judge and Jake Wyler

Actors: Bette Davis

Synopsis: Even Bette Davis showed up in a TV-movie pilot from time to time. The Judge and Jake Wyler stars the indestructible Davis as a hypochondriac former judge who becomes a private detective. Davis puts paroled ex-con Doug McClure to work as her "leg man," searching for clues in the supposed suicide of Read More

Madame Sin

Actors: Bette Davis, Robert Wagner

Synopsis: The first appearance of Bette Davis in a made-for-television film has an evil mastermind (Davis) plotting against a CIA agent (Robert Wagner) for control of a deadly submarine. Aired in 1971, Madame Sin was the most expensive TV movie of the time. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide Read More

Connecting Rooms

Synopsis: This melodrama explores the relationship between tenants in a boarding house. Included are a street musician, an ex-school teacher, and an angry young man who brings chaos to their quiet lives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Bunny O'Hare

Actors: Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Cassidy

Synopsis: Would you believe Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine as a pair of free-spirited hippies on a crime spree? That's the premise of this unlikely comedy starring the two Oscar-winning veterans. Bunny O'Hare (Bette Davis) is an elderly woman living in New Mexico who is trying to keep herself afloat Read More

The Anniversary

Actors: Bette Davis, Sheila Hancock, Jack Hedley, James Cossins, Elaine Taylor

Synopsis: Bette Davis plays a wealthy one-eyed widow (complete with designer eye patch) who gathers her sons together once a year to celebrate the death of the husband she detested. Mama Davis couldn't be more castrating if her last name was Bobbitt: Her grown sons (it's been 10 years since daddy died) are Read More

Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Actors: Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: An unusually long pre-credits sequence establishes the roots of faded Southern belle Charlotte's (Bette Davis) insanity; she'd been witness to the dismemberment murder of her fiance (Bruce Dern) and the suicide of the murderer, her own father (Victor Buono). Years later, Charlotte remains a Read More

The Nanny

Actors: Bette Davis, Wendy Craig, Jill Bennett, James Villiers, William Dix

Synopsis: In this thriller (which represented something of a departure for Hammer Films, noted for their gothic period pieces), Joey Fane (William Dix) has returned home after two years in an institution for mentally ill children. His sister drowned, and his family believes that Joey was to blame, despite Read More

Where Love Has Gone

Actors: Susan Hayward, Bette Davis, Michael Connors, Joey Heatherton, Jane Greer

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Harold Robbins, comes this family drama from director Edward Dmytryk. Adapted for the the screen by John Michael Hayes, the film follows the events that befall Luke Miller (Michael Connors) when he discovers that his daughter, Danielle (Joey Heatherton), has been arrested for Read More

Dead Ringer

Actors: Bette Davis, Karl Malden, Peter Lawford, Philip Carey, Jean Hagen

Synopsis: Though he's most famous for his portrayal of Victor Laszlo in 1942's Casablanca, actor Paul Henreid took a few turns behind the camera as evidenced by this 1964 thriller starring Bette Davis as twins Margaret DeLorca and Edith Phillips. After landing the beau they both sought after by falsely Read More

La Noia

Actors: Bette Davis, Horst Buchholz, Catherine Spaak, Daniela Rocca, Lea Padovani

Synopsis: Horst Bucholz plays Dino, a painter who realizes he has no artistic vision and decides to move back into his wealthy mother's (Betty Davis) home. Just before he does this, however, he falls in love with beautiful and self-serving Cecilia (Catherine Spaak). Though Dino diligently attempts to Read More

Perry Mason: The Case of Constant Doyle

Synopsis: This is the first of four consecutive episodes in which Perry Mason appears only briefly, while a "guest" lawyer handles the case at hand (Raymond Burr was at the time recovering from minor surgery). No less than Bette Davis is cast as female attorney Constant Doyle, the widow of famed defense Read More

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Actors: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Marjorie Bennett, Anna Lee, Maide Norman

Synopsis: As a child, "Baby Jane" Hudson was the toast of vaudeville. As an adult, however, Baby Jane was overshadowed by her more talented sister, Blanche, who became a top movie star. Then, one night in the early '30s, came the accident, which crippled Blanche for life and which was blamed on a drunken Read More

Pocketful of Miracles

Actors: Glenn Ford, Bette Davis, Hope Lange, Arthur O'Connell, Peter Falk

Synopsis: Director Frank Capra's last feature film, Pocketful of Miracles is a Technicolor remake of his 1933 film Lady for a Day. A barely recognizable Bette Davis plays Apple Annie, the besotted, unkempt, rag-clad street vendor who controls the activities of all the beggars on Broadway. Apple Annie is the Read More

John Paul Jones

Actors: Robert Stack, Marisa Pavan, Charles Coburn, Jean-Pierre Aumont, MacDonald Carey

Synopsis: Robert Stack stars in this sea-faring historical epic as John Paul Jones, the first great hero of the American Navy. While originally a loyal soldier of the King's army, Jones in time becomes a fervent supporter of the American Revolutionaries, and he volunteers to lead the colonists' ragtag fleet Read More

The Scapegoat

Actors: Alec Guinness, Nicole Maurey, Bette Davis, Irene Worth, Pamela Brown, Peter Bull

Synopsis: In this uneven but well-acted mystery story with a few gaps in the plot here and there, Alec Guiness plays a double role. He is John Barratt, a British teacher on vacation in France who is conned into taking on another identity. The identity he assumes is that of his double, Count Jacques de Gue Read More

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Out There--Darkness

Synopsis: Bette Davis guest stars in this episode, which was directed by her former Now, Voyager co-star Paul Henreid. Davis is cast as Miss Fox, a wealthy woman living in a luxury apartment. Taking a liking to elevator operator Eddie McMahon (James Congdon), Miss Fox hires him to walk her dog. Later on Read More

Telephone Time: Stranded

Synopsis: A teacher finds her will to survive and knowledge tested when she and students are isolated by a blizzard. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

The Catered Affair

Actors: Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds, Barry Fitzgerald, Rod Taylor

Synopsis: Bette Davis goes the "kitchen sink drama" route in The Catered Affair. As the frowsy wife of Bronx cabdriver Ernest Borgnine, Davis insists that her daughter Debbie Reynolds have a high-class wedding--caterers and all. Reynolds and future hubby Rod Taylor want a simple ceremony, but Davis' mind is Read More

Storm Center

Actors: Bette Davis, Kim Hunter, Paul Kelly, Kevin Coughlin

Synopsis: Trouble brews when a widowed, small town librarian takes a stand against censorship. The trouble begins when the town fathers ask that she remove a book from the shelf because they deem it a pro-communist tract and fear it will taint susceptible young minds. She sees the idiocy of their request Read More

Crack-Up

The Virgin Queen

Actors: Bette Davis, Richard Todd, Joan Collins, Jay Robinson, Herbert Marshall, Dan O'Herlihy

Synopsis: Having previously portrayed England's Queen Elizabeth I in 1939's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Bette Davis reprises the role in the Technicolor-and-Cinescope costumer The Virgin Queen. Harry Brown and Mindret Lord's screenplay proposes that Elizabeth's relationship with adventurer Sir Read More

Phone Call from a Stranger

Actors: Shelley Winters, Gary Merrill, Michael Rennie, Keenan Wynn, Bette Davis, Evelyn Varden

Synopsis: David Trask (Gary Merrill), the sole survivor of an airplane crash, takes it upon himself to contact the families of the various victims. Though he's already formed preconceived notions of his deceased fellow passengers, he's in for quite a few surprises when he meets the relatives. His first Read More

The Star

Actors: Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood, Warner Anderson, Minor Watson

Synopsis: An actress who once knew the heights of fame is forced to confronts the depths of defeat in this show business drama. Margaret Elliot (Bette Davis) was once one of Hollywood's great stars, but as she edges into her 50's, both her career and her life have reached an unfortunate crossroads. Margaret Read More

Another Man's Poison

Actors: Bette Davis, Gary Merrill, Emlyn Williams, Anthony Steel, Barbara Murray

Synopsis: Bette Davis co-stars with her then-new husband Gary Merrill in the British melodrama Another Man's Poison. Adapted from Leslie Sands' novel Deadlock, the story concerns one Janet Frobisher (Davis), a successful writer of suspense novels. Janet's life is thrown into turmoil when her disreputable Read More

Payment on Demand

Actors: Bette Davis, Barry Sullivan, Jane Cowl, Kent Taylor, Betty Lynn, Frances Dee

Synopsis: Just before filming All About Eve, Bette Davis starred in the marital melodrama Payment on Demand. Davis plays the wife of Barry Sullivan, who one fine morning demands a divorce. Most of the film is in flashback, recounting the events leading up to the marital schism. After Sullivan takes up with Frances Dee Read More

All About Eve

Actors: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill

Synopsis: Based on the story The Wisdom of Eve by Mary Orr, All About Eve is an elegantly bitchy backstage story revolving around aspiring actress Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). Tattered and forlorn, Eve shows up in the dressing room of Broadway mega-star Margo Channing (Bette Davis), weaving a melancholy Read More

Beyond the Forest

Actors: Bette Davis, Joseph Cotten, David Brian, Ruth Roman, Regis Toomey, Minor Watson

Synopsis: "What a dump!" That's the classic line delivered by Bette Davis at the halfway point of Beyond the Forest, her final Warner Bros. effort of the 1940s. Some Davis devotees feel as though this vituperative utterance is the high point of an otherwise turgid melodrama; others consider the line a Read More

Winter Meeting

Actors: Bette Davis, Jim Davis, James Davis, John Hoyt, Florence Bates

Synopsis: The most memorable aspect of Winter Meeting, and the one that stirred up the most publicity, was its teaming of two Davises: Bette Davis and Jim Davis (whose only "A"-picture starring role this was). Bette D. plays disenchanted poetess Susan Grieve, while Jim D. is cast as disillusioned war hero Read More

June Bride

Actors: Bette Davis, Robert Montgomery, Fay Bainter, Betty Lynn, Tom Tully, Barbara Bates

Synopsis: June Bride is based on Feature for June, a play by Eileen Tighe and Graeme Lorimer. Bette Davis plays the businesslike editor of a fashionable woman's magazine, who plans a feature on a "typical" midwestern marriage. She assigns her aide (and former fiance) Robert Montgomery to cover the story, a Read More

A Stolen Life

Crew: Producer

Actors: Bette Davis, Glenn Ford, Dane Clark, Walter Brennan, Charlie Ruggles

Synopsis: In this romantic melodrama, Bette Davis plays twin sisters for the first time (she would do so again in 1964's Dead Ringer). Kate Bosworth (Davis) is a sincere, demure girl and talented artist. Her twin sister Pat (also Davis) is a flamboyant, man-hungry manipulator. Orphans, the girls' guardian Read More

Deception

Actors: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, John Abbott, Benson Fong

Synopsis: Deception is an operatic rehash of the 1929 film Jealousy. Music teacher Bette Davis--who evidently has a large student pool, judging by the size of her penthouse apartment--is reunited with her cellist lover Paul Henreid, whom she believed to have been killed in the war. Henreid wants to marry Read More

The Corn Is Green

Actors: Bette Davis, Nigel Bruce, John Dall, Joan Lorring, Rhys Williams, Mildred Dunnock, Rosalind Ivan

Synopsis: In this 1945 filmization of Emlyn Williams' semi-autobiographical 1938 play The Corn is Green, Bette Davis steps into the role originated on Broadway by Ethel Barrymore. Davis plays Miss Moffat, a turn-of-the-century schoolteacher in a Welsh mining town. She has opened her own school in hopes of Read More

Hollywood Canteen

Actors: The Andrews Sisters, Robert Hutton, Joan Leslie, Jack Benny, Julie Bishop, Bette Davis, John Garfield, Betty Brodel, Sydney Greenstreet, Barbara Brown

Synopsis: The West Coast's answer to Broadway's Stage Door Canteen, the Hollywood Canteen was created as a GI morale-booster by film stars Bette Davis and John Garfield. The Canteen was established so that Our Boys on leave in Tinseltown could have a good time with good food and good dancing -- and, as a Read More

Mr. Skeffington

Actors: Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, Richard Waring, George Coulouris, Jerome Cowan

Synopsis: From a novel of the same name by "Elizabeth", the film begins in 1914, with Bette Davis cast as vain, flighty society woman Fanny Trellis. Informed by Jewish-American financier Job Skeffington (Claude Rains) that her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) has stolen money to pay his gambling debts, Fanny Read More

Old Acquaintance

Actors: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, Gig Young, John Loder, Dolores Moran

Synopsis: After the box office success of The Old Maid, Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins were reunited for this catty drama. Kitty Marlowe (Davis) is a well-respected author who returns to the small town of her birth, where she becomes reacquainted with her childhood friend Millie Drake (Hopkins). While Read More

Thank Your Lucky Stars

Actors: Eddie Cantor, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Joan Leslie, Dennis Morgan, Humphrey Bogart, Olivia de Havilland, Edward Everett Horton

Synopsis: Practically everybody on the Warner Bros. lot shows up in the wartime morale-boosting musical extravaganza Thank Your Lucky Stars. Believe it or not, this one has a wisp of a plot. A pair of enterprising producers, played by S.Z. Sakall and Edward Everett Horton, want to hire singer Dinah Shore Read More

Watch on the Rhine

Actors: Bette Davis, Paul Lukas, Donald Woods, Geraldine Fitzgerald, George Coulouris, Lucile Watson, Beulah Bondi

Synopsis: An expansion of, and improvement upon, Lillian Hellman's stage play of the same name, Watch on the Rhine stars Paul Lukas, recreating his Broadway role of tireless anti-fascist crusader Kurt Muller. As the clouds of war gather in Europe in the late 1930s, Muller arrives in Washington DC Read More

Show Business at War

In This Our Life

Actors: Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, George Brent, Dennis Morgan, Charles Coburn

Synopsis: In This Our Life is not a "for the ages" classic of the Golden Age of Cinema, but as a highly effective and entertaining melodrama, it more than fits the bill. Howard Koch's screenplay is a trifle predictable, but it's well structured and provides the requisite juicy roles for its pair of female Read More

Now, Voyager

Actors: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Bonita Granville, Gladys Cooper, Ilka Chase

Synopsis: Olive Higgins Prouty's popular novel was transformed into nearly two hours of high-grade soap opera by several masters of the trade: Warner Bros., Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, director Irving Rapper, and screenwriter Casey Robinson. Davis plays repressed Charlotte Vale, dying on the vine thanks to Read More

The Great Lie

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Mary Astor, Hattie McDaniel, Lucile Watson, Grant Mitchell

Synopsis: The Great Lie is Soap Opera Deluxe from Bette Davis' peak period at Warner Bros. Davis plays a socialite who is madly in love with playboy aviator George Brent. Brilliant but bitchy concert pianist Mary Astor (who won a well-deserved Academy Award for her chain-smoking histrionics) is also in love Read More

The Little Foxes

Actors: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, Richard Carlson, Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle

Synopsis: Playwright Lillian Hellman first wrote of the horrible Hubbard family in her 1939 play The Little Foxes. In this lavish 1941 film version, Bette Davis takes over for Broadway's Tallulah Bankhead in the role of conniving turn-of-the-century Southern aristocrat Regina Hubbard Giddens. Regina's Read More

The Man Who Came to Dinner

Actors: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley, Billie Burke, Jimmy Durante, Richard Travis

Synopsis: The George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart Broadway hit The Man Who Came to Dinner was inspired by the authors' mutual friend, waspish critic/author Alexander Woollcott. Generously bearded ex-Yale professor Monty Woolley, no mean curmudgeon himself, plays the Woollcott character, here rechristened Sheridan Read More

Shining Victory

Actors: James Stephenson, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Donald Crisp, Barbara O'Neil, Montagu Love

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a loyal research psychologist escapes from Budapest after the nature of his work is discovered. He resettles in Scotland and soon resumes his work. His benefactors provide him a female assistant, and at first the stubborn scientist is not pleased. Eventually the two fall in Read More

The Bride Came C.O.D.

Actors: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Stuart Erwin, Jack Carson, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Neither James Cagney nor Bette Davis were particularly pleased with the outdated screwball comedy The Bride Came C.O.D., but both performers behaved with thorough professionalism, doing a lot more for the film than the film did for them. Davis stars as flighty heiress Joan Winfield, whose Read More

All This and Heaven Too

Actors: Bette Davis, Charles Boyer, Jeffrey Lynn, Barbara O'Neil, Virginia Weidler

Synopsis: An incredibly long but never dull adaptation of the Rachel Field best-seller, All This and Heaven Too was based on a once-notorious European scandal. Star Bette Davis, playing Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, is first seen as a French schoolteacher in a 19th century American seminary. When her Read More

The Letter

Actors: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard, Sen Yung

Synopsis: William Wyler's dark and poisonous melodrama, based on the W. Somerset Maugham novel, features Bette Davis in one of her nastiest roles. The story begins in the shimmering moonlight on a tropical Malayan rubber plantation. Shots ring out and a wounded man, Geoffrey Hammond (David Newell) staggers Read More

Dark Victory

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ronald Reagan

Synopsis: Bette Davis earned an Oscar nomination for her role in this classic four-hanky tearjerker. Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) is a very wealthy Long Island heiress whose life is a constant whirl of cocktails, parties, and wild living. Despite her hedonistic lifestyle, Judith derives little pleasure Read More

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

Actors: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Vincent Price, Donald Crisp, Alan Hale

Synopsis: It is no secret that Bette Davis and Errol Flynn were at each other's throats throughout the filming of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Boiled down to essentials: Davis felt that Flynn was unprofessional, while Flynn thought that Davis took herself too damned seriously. Besides, Davis Read More

The Old Maid

Actors: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan

Synopsis: When Zoë Akins' play The Old Maid (based on a novel by Edith Wharton) won the 1934-1935 Pulitzer Prize, the selection was roundly condemned by critics, who felt that Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour was more deserving, but had lost because of its lesbian theme. Certainly, Akins' story of the Read More

Land of Liberty

Synopsis: Originally designed for exhibition at the 1939 World's Fair, Land of Liberty is a 137-minute compendium of filmclips from past American historical epics. The project was sponsored by the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc. and supervised by Cecil B. DeMille, who also edited Read More

Juarez

Actors: Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains, John Garfield

Synopsis: Juarez was originally designed to concentrate almost exclusively on the tragedy of Hapsburg Emperor Maximillian, whose attempts to establish a puppet government in Mexico on behalf of Napoleon III ended in disaster and death. But when Paul Muni decided that he wanted to play Read More

Jezebel

Actors: Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent, Margaret Lindsay, Donald Crisp, Fay Bainter

Synopsis: In 1938, Jezebel was widely regarded as Warner Bros.' "compensation" to Bette Davis for her losing the opportunity to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind. Resemblances between the two properties are inescapable: Jezebel heroine Julie Marsden (Davis) is a headstrong Southern belle not unlike Read More

The Sisters

Actors: Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Anita Louise, Ian Hunter, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: The 1938 filmization of Myron Brinig's novel The Sisters stars Bette Davis, Jane Bryan and Anita Louise as Louise, Grace and Helen Elliot. The daughters of turn-of-the-century druggist Henry Travers and his wife Beulah Bondi, the Elliot girls all meet their future husbands at a 1904 ball in honor Read More

That Certain Woman

Actors: Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, Ian Hunter, Anita Louise, Donald Crisp

Synopsis: Edmund Goulding directed this remake of his own 1929 The Trespasser, which starred Gloria Swanson. Here Bette Davis assumes the lead role of Mary Donnell, a young innocent married to a bootlegger. When her husband is killed, she decides to pursue a better life and gets a job as a secretary to Read More

Kid Galahad

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Wayne Morris, Jane Bryan

Synopsis: Fight manager Nick Donati (Edward G. Robinson) has just lost his best fighter to crooked promoter Turkey Morgan (Humphrey Bogart). During a party at Donati's apartment, a bellhop (Wayne Morris) kayos Morgan's boxer, who has insulted the honor of Donati's girlfriend, Louise "Fluff" Phillips (Bette Davis Read More

Marked Woman

Actors: Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Isabel Jewell, Eduardo Ciannelli, Lola Lane, Rosalind Marquis

Synopsis: Bette Davis' famous walk-out from her home studio of Warner Bros. may have hurt her financially, but in the long run it paid off with bigger parts in better films. Like many Warners films of the period, Marked Woman was "torn from today's headlines." Specifically, it was inspired by the recent Read More

It's Love I'm After

Actors: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Patric Knowles, Eric Blore

Synopsis: Bette Davis and Leslie Howard play an egotistical Broadway acting team famous for their romantic scenes. In truth, Davis and Howard are crazy about each other, but they spend so much time bickering that they never get around to marriage. The relationship is complicated by young heiress Olivia De Havilland Read More

The Golden Arrow

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Eugene Pallette, Dick Foran, Carolyn Hughes

Synopsis: Bette Davis plays a facial cream heiress in this middling comedy, which Warner Bros. filmed partially in Florida. Mistaking George Brent for a fellow socialite, Bette quickly marries him only to discover that he is a penniless reporter searching for peace and quiet to finish the great American Read More

The Petrified Forest

Actors: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Genevieve Tobin

Synopsis: Burned-out British intellectual Alan Squier (Leslie Howard) wanders into the desert service station/restaurant owned by Jason Maple (Porter Hall). Alan finds himself an object of fascination for Jason's starry-eyed daughter, Gabrielle Bette Davis, who dreams of moving to France and establishing Read More

Satan Met a Lady

Actors: Bette Davis, Warren William, Alison Skipworth, Arthur Treacher, Winifred Shaw

Synopsis: While John Huston's screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is widely regarded as a screen classic, it wasn't the first time Hammett's novel had been brought to the screen, and this comedy drama offers a decidedly different spin on the same story. Detective Ted Shayne (Warren William Read More

Special Agent

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Ricardo Cortez, Jack LaRue, Henry O'Neill

Synopsis: The agent of the title is George Brent, a journalist sent by the Government to get the goods on a crime syndicate. Brent befriends Bette Davis, bookkeeper for suspected crime boss Ricardo Cortez. Bette's cooperation nearly costs her life, but both she and Brent manage a tricky escape during a Read More

The Girl From Tenth Avenue

Actors: Bette Davis, Ian Hunter, Colin Clive, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge

Synopsis: The fourth screen version of Hubert Henry Davies' 1914 play Outcast, this comedy-drama stars Bette Davis as Miriam Brady, a shop girl offered 100 dollars to keep drunken socialite Geoffrey Sherwood (Ian Hunter) out of trouble. The next morning, alas, Miriam discovers that she has become Mrs. Read More

Front Page Woman

Actors: Bette Davis, George Brent, Roscoe Karns, June Martel, Dorothy Dare, Joseph Crehan, Walter Walker, Winifred Shaw

Synopsis: Front Page Woman was one of those bread-and-butter vehicles that forced Bette Davis to go on strike against Warner Bros., demanding more worthwhile scripts. On its own terms, the film is a briskly entertaining newspaper yarn about two warring reporters (Davis and George Brent). In their efforts to Read More

Bordertown

Actors: Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Margaret Lindsay, Eugene Pallette, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: Paul Muni stars in this drama about a romantic triangle that leads to madness and murder. Overly enthusiastic Mexican attorney Johnny Ramirez (Muni) is disbarred after his first trial for his flagrant disregard of courtroom etiquette. In desperate need of work, he takes a job as a bouncer in a Read More

Dangerous

Actors: Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, Margaret Lindsay, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge

Synopsis: Not even considered a good film back in 1935, Dangerous is held together by the mesmerizing performance of Bette Davis. The star is cast as alcoholic, self-destructive stage actress Joyce Heath, a character obviously based on Jeanne Eagels. Wealthy architect Don Bellows (Franchot Tone) becomes Read More

Jimmy the Gent

Actors: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Alice White, Allen Jenkins, Alan Dinehart, Arthur Hohl

Synopsis: James Cagney runs a shady missing-heir tracing service, occasionally providing phony heirs in order to collect his fee. He suffers a tinge of jealousy when he takes a gander at the offices of a legitimate tracing firm, where his former girlfriend (Bette Davis) has taken a job. Jimmy soon learns Read More

Fog over Frisco

Actors: Bette Davis, Donald Woods, Margaret Lindsay, Lyle Talbot, Hugh Herbert

Synopsis: Cited by film historian William K. Everson as one of the fastest-moving crime melodramas of the 1930s (if not the fastest) Fog Over Frisco still manages to leave viewers breathless. Top-billed Bette Davis plays giddy heiress Arlene Bradford, whose perverse fascination with gangsters gets her mixed Read More

Of Human Bondage

Actors: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Frances Dee, Kay Johnson, Reginald Denny

Synopsis: The first of three film versions of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage stars Leslie Howard as sensitive, clubfooted artist-cum-med student Philip Carey. Despite his yearnings for the finer things in life, Carey cannot extricate himself from a mutually destructive relationship with sluttish Read More

Fashions of 1934

Actors: Bette Davis, William Powell, Veree Teasdale, Reginald Owen, Hugh Herbert, Frank McHugh

Synopsis: Now known simply as Fashions, the lavish Warner Bros. musical Fashions of 1934 stars the unlikely but copacetic team of William Powell and Bette Davis. It all begins when genial con artist Sherwood Nash (Powell) transfers his base of operations from New York to Paris. Sensing that the fashion Read More

The Big Shakedown

Actors: Charles Farrell, Bette Davis, Ricardo Cortez, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: An idealistic but naive pharmacist believes the mobsters who claim they want him to manufacture illegal medicine to help out the poor. That the deal will pad his own pockets with much-needed cash only sweetens the arrangement. This melodrama chronicles the tragic results of his actions. He wants Read More

Housewife

Actors: George Brent, Bette Davis, Ann Dvorak, John Halliday, Ruth Donnelly

Synopsis: A pre-stardom Bette Davis struggles mightily as the "other woman" in this rather obvious divorce court drama from Warner Bros. George Brent stars as William Reynolds, a hardworking but markedly unmotivated office manager whose wife, Nan (Ann Dvorak), manages to make ends meet with the little she's Read More

The Working Man

Actors: George Arliss, Bette Davis, Hardie Albright, John Farrell MacDonald, Theodore Newton

Synopsis: In this comedy drama, a wealthy shoe magnate is bored with his life. The trouble really begins when his chief rival dies. His company was on the brink of financial ruin and now the bored shoemaker finds himself without even the joy of competition to motivate him. The fellow decides to take a Read More

Ex-Lady

Actors: Bette Davis, Gene Raymond, Frank McHugh, Monroe Owsley, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: In this romantic sex-comedy from director Robert Florey, Bette Davis stars as Helen Bauer, a free-spirited, self-sufficient feminist who would rather pursue her career as a graphic artist than settle down and marry Don Peterson (Gene Raymond), the advertising writer she loves, out of fear that Read More

Parachute Jumper

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Leo Carrillo, Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd

Synopsis: Grounded daredevil pilot Douglas Fairbanks Jr. secures a job protecting shady Leo Carrillo from his many enemies. Carrillo takes a liking to the young man and promotes him to a flying job--smuggling narcotics into the United States. Fairbanks eventually redeems himself with the help of good girl Bette Davis Read More

Bureau of Missing Persons

Actors: Bette Davis, Lewis Stone, Pat O'Brien, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins

Synopsis: Although claiming to be based on actual cases, this mild crime drama appears to have been derived more from a screenwriter's manual than a police blotter. Newly transferred from robbery to missing persons, glib Butch Saunders (Pat O'Brien) is like the proverbial bull in a china shop at first, but Read More

20,000 Years in Sing-Sing

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Bette Davis, Arthur Byron, Lyle Talbot, Sheila Terry, Warren Hymer, Edward McNamara

Synopsis: Sent to Sing Sing prison, influential crook Spencer Tracy is unregenerate and refuses to adhere to the rules. While in solitary confinement, Tracy reconsiders his attitude. Thanks to the correctional facility's compassionate warden (Arthur Byron), Tracy becomes a model prisoner, even refusing to Read More

The Dark Horse

Actors: Warren William, Bette Davis, Guy Kibbee, Frank McHugh, Vivienne Osborne

Synopsis: Alfred E. Green directs the political satire The Dark Horse, starring Bette Davis early in her career. The progressive party nominates moronic candidate Zachary Hicks (Guy Kibbee) for governor. Party secretary Kay Russell (Davis) wants to hire her sweetheart, Hal Blake (Warren William), for Read More

The Rich Are Always with Us

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Adrienne Dore, Bette Davis, John Miljan

Synopsis: A talented cast does its best with a nonsensical script in The Rich are Always With Us. Ruth Chatterton stars as a witty socialite saddled with caddish husband John Miljan. Upon learning that Miljan has been fooling around with Adrienne Dore, Chatterton divorces him, whereupon his brokerage firm Read More

The Man Who Played God

Actors: George Arliss, Violet Heming, Ivan Simpson, Louise Closser Hale, Bette Davis

Synopsis: George Arliss is a world-renowned pianist, engaged to a young woman (Bette Davis) much younger than himself. An explosion renders Arliss completely deaf, but he soon becomes an expert lip-reader. To practice this skill, he looks out his window through binoculars, reading the lips of those who pass Read More

Way Back Home

Actors: Mrs. Phillips Lord, Effie L. Palmer, Bennett Kilpack, Raymond Hunter

Synopsis: The bucolic tearjerker Way Back Home is a spin-off of the popular radio series Seth Parker, with Phillips H. Lord, creator-star of the radio original, repeating his role as backwoods philosopher Parker. The plot centers on the romantic tribulations of Mary Lucy (Bette Davis, who received the Read More

The Menace

Hell's House

Actors: Charles Grapewin, Junior Coughlan, Junior Durkin, Pat O'Brien

Synopsis: Bette Davis was on loan from Universal when she appeared in this little juvenile delinquent melodrama from independent producer B.F. Zeidman. Although Davis earned above-title billing (along with Pat O'Brien), Junior Durkin is the real star, a teenager who is sent to juvenile prison after being Read More

So Big

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Dickie Moore, Bette Davis, Mae Madison

Synopsis: This second of three film versions of Edna Ferber's novel So Big stars Barbara Stanwyck as Ferber's resilient heroine Selena Dejong Peake. Widowed early in the proceedings, Chicago truck farmer Selena sacrifices everything for her son Dirk (Dickie Moore as a child, Hardie Albright as a grown-up) Read More

The Cabin in the Cotton

Actors: Richard Barthelmess, Dorothy Jordan, Bette Davis, Henry B. Walthall, Walter Percival, Berton Churchill

Synopsis: Henry Harrison Kroll's novel Cabin in the Cotton was an attack on wealthy southern landowners who exploited their sharecroppers. While the landowners still don't come off too well in Warner Bros.' film version of Kroll's novel, the film tries to avoid stepping on powerful toes, even composing an Read More

Three on a Match

Actors: Joan Blondell, Warren William, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis, Buster Phelps

Synopsis: Three on a Match covers approximately 13 years in the lives of girlhood chums Mary Keaton (Joan Blondell), Ruth Wescott (Bette Davis) and Vivian Deverse (Ann Dvorak). Having graduated from grammar school together in 1919, the girls stage a reunion ten years later. Hard-boiled Mary is now a chorus Read More

Waterloo Bridge

Actors: Mae Clarke, Kent Douglass, Doris Lloyd, Ethel Griffies, Enid Bennett

Synopsis: Mae Clarke had the best role of her career as the heroine of Waterloo Bridge, the first of three filmizations of Robert L. Sherwood's play. Douglass Montgomery (here credited as Kent Douglass) plays a young American soldier who, while on leave from World War I, meets Myra (Clarke) during an air Read More

Bad Sister

Actors: Conrad Nagel, Bette Davis, ZaSu Pitts, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: A naive, wealthy small-town girl, bored with her routine life, falls for a dashing con artist who has come looking for fresh marks to swindle. He soon charms her into faking her prominent father's name on a letter of endorsement, which he presents to the other local merchants. They willingly give Read More

Seed

Actors: John Boles, Genevieve Tobin, Lois Wilson, Raymond Hackett, Bette Davis

Synopsis: In this three-hanky melodrama, an aspiring writer abandons his wife and five children to work more closely with a beautiful woman who works for a prominent publishing company. Ten years pass and the writer has become extremely popular despite the fact that his work is consistently trashed by Read More

The Big Breakdowns: Hollywood Bloopers of the 1930's

Synopsis: Warner Brothers was one of the big studios of the 30s and had many talented performers under contract. See some of their most outrageous mistakes, as well as previously unseen shots. ~ All Movie Guide Read More