Mr. Skeffington

Bette Davis stars as a beautiful but vain society woman who, to pay her brother's gambling debts, marries a financier she does not love--Mr.Skeffington. The marriage does not last, and the former Mrs.Skeffington flits from beau to beau casually leaving a trail of broken hearts. But when she contracts a near-fatal case of diphtheria, her beauty is destroyed by the terrible scars left by the disease. Now middle-aged, scarred and unable to win men's hearts with her beauty, she finally finds love with the now-blind man she had wed years before--Mr.Skeffington.

Mr. Skeffington is a vintage Warner Bros. workout for Davis, who never shied away from playing unsympathetic or physically unappealing roles. (Her main worry here was looking pretty enough in the early reels to justify Fanny's reputation.) Her theatrical performance and Rains's impeccable work carry the handsomely dressed story through its many melodramatic shifts. The dialogue by Julius and Philip Epstein (who were doing Casablanca around this time) has the sprung rhythm of screwball comedy, although director Vincent Sherman and the cast don't always seem to have noticed this. There's also the growing issue of anti-Semitism--a subject rare in Hollywood prior to this--especially as it concerns Fanny and Job's daughter. But mostly the film has Bette Davis, who strides headfirst into the gray areas (her indifferent treatment of her daughter is especially unappetizing), a fearless attitude that looks like the polar opposite of Fanny Skeffington's vanity. --Robert Horton