8/7/2023 0 Comments A stolen life movie![]() ![]() A Stolen Life came about directly after the war’s conclusion when she was once again seeking control of her career. Those years were not the best of her career albeit two standout roles made up for the poor ones –Regina in The Little Foxes (1941, Wyler) in which her ambiguity belied her perceived evil in the Hellman adaptation and in Old Acquaintance (1943, Goulding), a raucous delight, she played again on the potential of her duality in a John Van Druten tragicomedy that pitched her against that most histrionic of actresses, the brilliant Miriam Hopkins, in what was a comment on their pre-war hit, The Old Maid (1939, Goulding). It was a situation that created a little romance as well. The role that Warners played in this reading of star as author is therefore primary and one of the melodramatic heavy variety.īy the end of World War 2 Davis had set herself up as the people’s actress – she helped put together the Hollywood Canteen, where film stars served food to and danced with servicemen and offered them succour from tours of duty. Her strategy to accomplish the roles she desired carried great penalties for her, personal and financial. It seemed that the camera was a little more in love with her as a brunette (her natural hair colour) and now the audience was getting further into her psyche even as her body’s actions seemed to be pushing them a little further back. Her retreat into more obviously mannered performances took place at the end of the 1930s when her characteristic tics become more evident in women’s melodramas and her brittle movements were more focussed and she is shot even closer than before, bug eyes declaring a strangeness that beguiled and fascinated. Despite her position as the Queen of the Warners lot, it was the first year she obtained star billing. She won her first Academy Award for Dangerous (1935) in the dazzling role of a theatre actress who was maintaining a double life as an addict, allegedly based on the tragic Jeanne Eagels and subsequently for Jezebel (1938, Wyler), a showy part that served as a placebo for losing the role of Scarlett O’Hara and in which she again played a dichotomous character of an outrageous Southern belle. She would successfully interpret Maugham again in The Letter (1940, Wyler). ![]() Two years later she consolidated that with glittery blonde eroticism as she played her first controversial Maugham heroine in Of Human Bondage (1934, Cromwell). ![]() A trained theatre actress, she initially worked at Universal Studios but soon became a staple at Warner Bros., where she achieved stardom in The Man Who Played God (1932) opposite George Arliss, after she was initially marketed as a comedy coquette and then as a result of the studio strategy of ‘off casting’ became a vamp, then alternated that with ‘good’ roles intended to deploy her abilities beyond the readily differentiated image (Klaprat in Balio, 1985: 356 372-375). Davis’ career, which lasted from 1931 until 1989, maps across the major developments in the sound era, from its commencement to its demise. A Stolen Life was her sole production venture and as such warrants analysis. Her feisty persona became authenticated through her performances and she was always associated with the role of the independent woman. She fearlessly went on suspension many times in order to achieve the roles she wanted and won two Academy Awards. Her loss (legal and financial) was famous but it paved the way for future production successes amongst actors. A sojourn in England during which she lost her expensive case encouraged Warners to re-hire her under apparently more favourable conditions although she still found herself in demeaning roles. in the 1930s and set a precedent amongst actors fighting the restrictions (and payment) of their studio contracts. She had had a very public legal spat with Warner Bros. A Stolen Life (1946, Bernhardt) occupies a very special place in the Davis canon: it was the only one of her films that Davis herself produced under B.D. ![]() Bette Davis was a star of the first order with a duality about her persona which was serially and successfully exploited by writers and directors throughout her long career. ![]()
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