LIFE IS A VALE OF TEARS, THIS IS THE GREATEST MELODRAMA OF ALL TIME, DON’T @ ME, IT’S JUST BETTE DAVIS DYING NOBLY AND THEN RECKLESSLY AND THEN NOBLY AGAIN FOR TWO SOLID HOURS
LIFE IS A VALE OF TEARS, THIS IS THE GREATEST MELODRAMA OF ALL TIME, DON’T @ ME, IT’S JUST BETTE DAVIS DYING NOBLY AND THEN RECKLESSLY AND THEN NOBLY AGAIN FOR TWO SOLID HOURS
I would challenge this assessment by offering up Charlotte Vale in Now, Voyager!
Spinsters, demented mothers, fancy hats that inspired Rose’s reveal in Titanic, sexy cigarettes… It has it all!
This movie is just a template of how to live and die your best life, right?
I’m disturbed by how attractive I find Young Ronald Reagan.
You are NOT ALONE, alas.
But young Bogart, though!
He never did it for me. Too goofy looking.
Fair enough. I’ve always had a thing for slightly funny-looking dudes, of the Javier Bardem genus.
Young Ronald Reagan as Drunk Gay Best Friend would be the best part of any movie that didn’t have Bette Davis in it.
Late to this party BUT
My great-grandmother got some of that hot young Reagan action in the thirties when they were both in radio together. I just like reminding myself of that every now and then. One of my foremothers boned a future president. May I too leave such a legacy.
Oh, to be a fascinating new discovery!
My sister has a mystery malady that her doctors call “fascinating”. She says it sucks. Mind you, none of her doctors are handsome charming men in love with her 😉
If ever there was a moment to seek a second opinion….
You’re right and oh my God, now I’m wondering if there WAS a treatment and he just didn’t tell her because he wanted to marry her and then inherit her fortune when she died. And her best friend found out and also didn’t tell her because she wanted to marry him after Bette died.
But then he fell in love with her for real, and wanted to get her the treatment, but if he did, the best friend would blackmail him and he would lose her either way. And it’s better to lose her to Death for Eternity than to see her Cured and In The Arms of Another Man.
Like Stockton’s The Lady or the Tiger. Then when she died he didn’t want to marry the best friend, but she blackmailed him into that too.
Props to Bette Davis but it drove me bananas that her doctor and best friend took it upon themselves to not TELL HER she was dying. Loving someone means respecting them enough to tell the truth! She was a better person than I to forgive them for that.
(I have no future as a romance writer, do I?)
Or you have a future as a writer of a better class of romances, in which nobody conceals important medical information from people.
OMG, yes, this. I had also read “You Never Promised Me a Rose Garden” not too long before watching this, and my mother and I were all, “What? No! You don’t lie to your patients!”
That was the standard of medical practice back then, sadly. (And I hear it’s still very common in some parts of the world, e.g., Japan).
I used to volunteer at a hospital in Hawaii (which is about 70% Japanese), and one day, an older woman was being sent home with hospice due to terminal cancer. She didn’t know–her kids and grandkids told the doctors and nurses not to tell her. I was horrified and asked one of the nurses how they could live with that? She basically said, “That woman knows perfectly well that she is dying. She knows exactly why she is going home with her children. Just because we don’t say it out loud to her doesn’t mean she doesn’t know.” Which made me really rethink how I judged them–just because it isn’t the way we do things doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.
Literally cackled when I saw Reagan in the credits.
It’s so strange to watch one of her early films like Three on a Match and realize that this is what she grew up to do. And by strange, I mean kind of amazing.
Oh, we can laugh – and I do, too – but… that ending. However many times you see it, it still brings a tear. “I can stll feel the sun on my hands….”
What. I need to see this right now!
Yes! I could watch Now, Voyager a thousand times and never get bored. This may also have been where my crush on Claude Rains began.
I think I have watched "Now, Voyager" a thousand times. And spent hours telling my therapist about it. (She said she'd heard good things about Dr. Jaquith from other shrinks.)
Speaking of Old Hollywood, everyone’s seen this VF article on the Olivia de Havilland/Joan Fontaine sibling rivalry, yes?
I’m an aging gay man who has never seen this movie.
I NEED IT, GODDAM IT!
(Falls down in a swoon)