Bette Davis Collection (Blu-ray Review)
Director
William Wyler/Edmund Goulding/Michael CurtizRelease Date(s)
1938/1939/1940 (October 14, 2025)Studio(s)
Warner Bros. (Warner Archive Collection)- Film/Program Grade: See Below
- Video Grade: See Below
- Audio Grade: See Below
- Extras Grade: A-
- Overall Grade: A-
Review
Warner Archive sure seems to be cranking out these multi-film Blu-ray sets, mostly four-to-six titles previously released individually but here, collectively, for less than $10 per movie. The somewhat unimaginatively-titled Bette Davis Collection serves as a good primer with some of her best Warner Bros.-era performances and films. If you missed Jezebel (1937; first released on Blu-ray in 2019), Dark Victory (1939; first released in 2015), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939; first released in 2021), and/or The Letter (1940; first released in 2019) this is an affordable way to catch-up. Bette Davis was, of course, one of Warner Bros.’ most-acclaimed actors and one of its biggest stars of the 1930s, putting her in a better position to pick and choose her starring films. Notably, all four films collected here are adaptations of plays.
Jezebel (1937) all too obviously was prompted by the hysteria surrounding David O. Selznick’s impending and highly-publicized production of Gone with the Wind. Other than that film’s lush production values, I’m not a fan, and for similar reasons Jezebel just isn’t this reviewer’s cup of mint julep. Davis, however, is excellent, as she is in all four pictures.
Adapted (in part by John Huston) from Owen Davis Sr.’s 1933 play, Bette Davis is “high-handed and willful” southern belle Julie Marsden, who in 1852 New Orleans is engaged to banker Preston “Pres” Dillard (Henry Fonda). After he refuses to leave a critical meeting to accompany her to a ball gown fitting, she rebels by breaking local societal expectations that unmarried young women wear only virginal white to such affairs, Julie against all advice donning a scandalously red one. Both are humiliated at the ball, and Pres, disgusted by Julie’s selfish and socially rebellious ways, promptly calls off the engagement and leaves her.
Julie realizes she stepped way over the line, but in her agonizing loneliness, convinces herself that, one day, Pres will come back, crawling to her. Eventually he does return, just in time for a deadly outbreak of yellow fever threatening all of New Orleans. Further, in the midst of all this, irrepressible, unbridled Julie can’t help but cause further trouble and tragedy in her single-minded campaign to win Pres back.
The biggest problem that I have with pictures like Jezebel and Gone with the Wind is that they present the pre-Civil War “South” as a fairy tale Shangri-La that never existed, completely and offensively whitewashing, among other things, its blight of human slavery, with its black characters utterly (if often dim-wittedly) devoted to their masters, happy in their cruel bondage. Where Gone with the Wind is like a treatise, Margaret Mitchell’s novel extolling the virtuous pre-Civil War south as culturally far superior to modern (white) America, Jezebel is less delusional, and very slightly critical of the hypocrisy of some southern traditions, and it’s less the warped, rose-colored glasses nostalgia for an imagined time-gone-by than it is a vehicle for Davis to make like Scarlett O’Hara. Regardless, it’s still rather embarrassing at times.
Indeed, the entire enterprise feels like director William Wyler, Davis, and others were knowingly working beneath their abilities because of its surefire box-office potential. It is, no question, a handsome, lavish production and Wyler’s direction of all the actors is good: besides Davis, her frequent co-star and eventual off-screen lover George Brent is fine as a cocksure duelist and all-around rake; Fay Bainter is excellent as Julie’s Aunt Belle, saddened by her niece’s unstoppable self-destruction, and Richard Cromwell is fine as Pres’s younger, impetuous brother. For their part, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson and an adolescent Matthew “Stymie” Beard maintain a certain dignity as family slaves.
This and two others in this set (Dark Victory and The Letter) are presented in their original black-and-white and standard 1.37:1 format. All three of these video transfers were state-of-the-art when they were new, but high-def video transfer technology continues to improve exponentially, and while all three look just fine, one can see how Jezebel particularly might benefit a notch or two from a new remastering. This is not really a complaint; I was gobsmacked by the picture quality of Casablanca when that was released to Blu-ray in 2009, and was surprised by how, well, ordinary it appeared compared with similar early-‘40s titles released to Blu just five or six years later. The DTS-HD Master Audio mono is better, but another legacy of this era of Blu-ray-making are the ghastly English subtitles. During this period, Warner Archive did theirs in a) all-caps; b) bright yellow; and in c) extra-large font. On my projection system and large screen, these giant yellow subtitles are profoundly distracting; it’s hard to concentrate on the image.
Supplements consist of an audio commentary by film historian Jeanine Basinger; Jezebel: Legend of the South, a half-hour featurette; Melody Masters: Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra, a one-reel short from the period; the one-reel cartoon Daffy Duck in Hollywood; Ramblin’ Round the Hollywood Studios with the Candid Cameraman, featuring Davis on the set of Jezebel; and a reissue trailer.
JEZEBEL (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): B/A-/A
In many respects the ultimate “weepie” of the Classical Hollywood era, Dark Victory is very dated and even corny—Ikiru it isn’t—but the conviction Bette Davis brings to her terminally-ill young socialite, Judy Traherne impresses: its raw, emotional if heightened authenticity, sells its creaky melodrama. Absurd as so much of it is, I confess her performance unexpectedly had this ready-to-sneer critic a little choked-up at the end. An heiress with a passion for fast cars, horses, drinking and smoking—especially smoking—Judy can no longer ignore her double-vision and crippling headaches, finally agreeing to family doctor Parsons (Henry Travers) pleas to visit specialist Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent). Steele immediately assumes the worst, but waits until brain surgery and letters to other specialists before concluding Judy is a “prognosis negative,” that her glioma brain tumor—the word “cancer” is never uttered—is terminal.
This verdict, known only to Steele and Judy’s best friend, secretary Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald), is initially kept from Judy, but when she finds out Judy more or less goes through the five stages of grief, terrified and angry being cut down in her prime, all the while falling in love with Dr. Steele and he with her.
The picture has many amusing elements, including the near-constant smoking, by all the doctors, by everyone, and even by Judy from her hospital bed. In the Production Code Hollywood of 1939, graphic depictions of illness were scrupulously avoided; one was no more likely to see realistic suffering or hear the term “cancer” than see heads explode a la Scanners or have stars use explicit profanity. So, in Dark Victory, an idealized and perfectly-timed demise, with Judy urged to “meet death beautifully and finely,” is conveniently arranged. She may have ten months, tops, but free of any physical and mental diminishment, just blindness three hours before the final curtain.
It all sounds like a set-up for a classic Carol Burnett sketch (and probably was), yet Davis grounds this heaping mound of syrupy scripting with a heightened emotional reality that, even after decades of scores of “disease-of-the-week” TV movies since, still connects with audiences, who feel great empathy for its spoiled, indulged, yet singularly brave character, a dying young woman to be, ultimately, admired.
Likewise, George Brent, saddled with the clichéd, if not highly unethical doctor in love with his patient, creates a surprisingly subtle characterization. For me Brent was usually colorless, a hole in the screen, but here and in Jezebel he really shows what he’s capable of; both performances are memorable. The film is notable also for supporting parts given to Humphrey Bogart (as Judy’s Irish stable master, also in love/lust with her) and Ronald Reagan, as a frivolous, alcoholic hanger-on. Reagan’s part is too small to make much of an impression, and Bogie seems both miscast and the character unnecessarily shoehorned into the story.
(Note: This title has DTS-HD Master Audio at 1.0 mono, requiring a big boost in volume.)
Supplements consist of an audio commentary by James Ursini and Paul Clinton; a “Warner Night at the Movies” option that includes a trailer for The Roaring Twenties; a newsreel (excerpt); Old Hickory, a two-reel short about Andrew Jackson; and the cartoon Robin Hood Makes Good. There’s also a nine-minute featurette, 1939: Tough Competition for Dark Victory, a Lux Radio Theater adaptation with Davis and Spencer Tracy, and a trailer for Dark Victory itself.
DARK VICTORY (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A-/A-/B+
The high-def restoration of the Technicolor The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) received glowing reviews, but even those didn’t prepare this reviewer for the staggeringly superlative video transfer. Warner Archive particularly has done outstanding work using the original three-strip black-and-white camera negatives, resulting in perfectly-aligned, brilliantly-hued Technicolor in presentations doubtlessly superior even to original nitrate theatrical prints, but this is truly exceptional.
The movie is also a surprise. The 2005 television miniseries Elizabeth I, starring Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I of England, may be the gold standard as far as historical accuracy is concerned, but The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex is far more than a frothy royal romance, with political intrigue comparable to the later miniseries, and surprising complexity to the torn emotions of Queen Elizabeth (Davis) and the Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn).
From Maxwell Anderson’s 1930 play Elizabeth the Queen, the ambitious Earl’s popularity with the hoi polloi and her feelings of love toward him threaten the future of the monarchy, developments nervously monitored by, among others, Francis Bacon (Donald Crisp), Sir Walter Raleigh (Vincent Price), and Sir Robert Cecil (Henry Daniell), equally ambitious and determined not to allow Essex to diminish their own influence with Her Majesty.
Davis, her already huge round eyes appearing even larger peering from an accentuated, egg-like visage (Davis even shaved her hairline back, to better resemble the historical Elizabeth), her small frame suffocated under heavy period costumes, is a wonder. She jerks about like a malfunctioning robot, as if animated by forces other than her own. When contemplative and repine, she brings Elizabeth alive with those expressive eyes and mouth and subtle hand movements. It’s a startlingly good performance.
Errol Flynn is surprising, too. Though not in Davis’s class even she in later years admitted just how effective he is. In this telling of the story, Elizabeth denies herself womanly pleasures much as she longs for them, for uneasy lies the head that wears the crown; her duty to England supersedes all. Essex, mortal, is full of ambition and perhaps even unable to completely grasp her intractability, nevertheless loves Elizabeth as a woman as well as what she represents, though probably not sexually, an unusual relationship for a 1930s Hollywood film.
The film is generally excellent production-wise, with impressive if not architecturally accurate set design by Anton Grot. Though somewhat stage bound, Michael Curtiz’s direction and the screenplay open it up with several lavish exterior set pieces. Only Southern California’s terminally brown terrain fails to convince us we’re in England. Even Bette Davis’s accent is good.
The supporting cast is great, particularly Crisp as the cautious but shrewd Francis Bacon, and in their brief scenes, Henry Daniell and a young Vincent Price. Olivia de Havilland is rather wasted as the fictional Lady Penelope Gray, who also loves the Earl of Essex, a smallish, inconsequential role, though Nanette Fabray is a real surprise when she turns up in her first adult role, as Mistress Margaret, in love with a doomed soldier fighting in Ireland.
Supplements abound. There’s another “Warner Night at the Movies,” consisting of an Introduction by Leonard Maltin; a trailer for Dark Victory; a newsreel excerpt; the cartoon Old Glory and a two-reel short subject, The Royal Rodeo. Also included is a trailer and the featurette Elizabeth & Essex: Battle Royale, which runs 10 minutes.
THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A-/A/A
William Wyler’s direction of The Letter is nearly as prominent as Davis’s performance and markedly different from a Warner contract director like, say, Vincent Sherman. The film definitely has Warner’s house style, but at times it also resembles one of Josef von Sternberg’s films for Marlene Dietrich at Paramount, and at other times it’s a little like the artful horror films produced by Val Lewton over at RKO.
From W. Somerset Maugham’s 1927 play, previously filmed in 1929 with Jeanne Eagles, the Wyler film set in the East Indies of Singapore, opens with one of the most famous shots of Davis’s entire filmography. In an unbroken two-minute take, the camera surveys the exterior of the home of rubber plantation owner Robert Crosbie. As the camera reaches the front door, Robert’s wife, Leslie (Davis) shoots dead Geoffrey Hammond, emptying a revolver of its six bullet, she emotionless and still firing after he’s waylaid. One is hard-pressed to think of a more violent killing of the 1940s, Production Code era.
Robert (Hebert Marshall), attorney friend Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), and young district officer John Withers (Bruce Lester), rush to her side. Too calmly and precisely she claims to be the victim of an attempted rape (though, of course, this term is never used), and everyone believes her story and admires her courage and stamina, especially after Leslie is told she’ll still have to stand trial for murder, a mere formality with a guaranteed acquittal.
However, Joyce learns through his clerk, Ong Chi Seng (Victor Sen Yung) of a hand-written letter from Leslie in the possession of Hammond’s Eurasian widow (Gale Sondergaard), imploring Hammond to see her the very night of the shooting. With Ong acting as an intermediary, it’s suggested Joyce might buy the letter on Robert’s behalf for $10,000, a violation of colonial law that could get Joyce disbarred, but the manipulative Leslie persuades him to arrange to purchase the letter anyway, lest it land in the hands of the prosecution, and for which she might ultimately hang.
For first-time viewers, The Letter has an appeal unusual for a classical Hollywood studio picture: while we see Leslie shoot Hammond at the start, the reasons for the killing and Leslie’s moral culpability are at first unclear, its unpredictable story forcing its audience to try to anticipate the facts of the case, and later to grapple with its moral complications. In Leslie’s fearlessness, Bette Davis is very good at conveying her character’s ambiguities and contradictions. James Stephenson, playing a character uneasily violating his ethical code, is also good, though I was drawn particularly to Herbert Marshall’s wonderful performance as the heartsick husband, certain of Leslie’s complete innocence, terrified she’s be wrongly convicted, loyal and loving. But when the truth comes out he’s emotionally destroyed in a manner rarely shown by men in old Hollywood movies. It’s a memorable performance.
Partly to satisfy Production Code demands, the last reel of The Letter appears to have gone through multiple rewrites and reshootings. Cecil Kellaway, prominently billed, is seen as veritable extra during these last ten minutes yet doesn’t utter a single line of dialogue; he’s mostly seen dancing and socializing in the background of several wide-angle shots.
Supplements here consist of a rather frustrating Alternate Ending Sequence, actually an entire last reel, but except for a couple of alternate insert shots, it’s virtually identical to the theatrical cut. Also included are two Lux Radio Theater adaptations, both with Davis and Herbert Marshall. A trailer rounds out the extras.
THE LETTER (FILM/VIDEO/AUDIO): A-/A-/A
If you don’t have these already, this is a much less pricey way to acquire them, and while I didn’t care much for Jezebel, I’m glad to have finally seen it after all these decades, and Bette Davis gives exceptional, diverse performances in all four pictures. Highly Recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV