Dark Victory
Tags: tragedy, romantic, melodrama

Plot synopsis:
Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) is a young, carefree, hedonistic Long Island socialite and heiress with a passion for horses, fast cars, and too much smoking and drinking. She initially ignores severe headaches and brief episodes of dizziness and double vision, but when she uncharacteristically takes a spill while riding, and then tumbles down a flight of stairs, her secretary and best friend Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald) insists she see the family doctor, who refers her to a specialist.
Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent) is in the midst of closing his New York City office in preparation of a move to Brattleboro, Vermont, where he plans to devote his time to brain cell research and scientific study on their growth. He reluctantly agrees to see Judith, who is cold and openly antagonistic toward him. She shows signs of short-term memory loss, but dismisses her symptoms. Steele convinces her the ailments she is experiencing are serious and potentially life-threatening, and puts his career plans on hold to tend to her.
When diagnostic tests confirm his suspicions, Judith agrees to surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor. Steele discovers the tumor cannot be completely removed, and realizes she has less than a year to live. The end will be painless but swift—shortly after experiencing total blindness, Judith will die.
In order to allow her a few more months of happiness, Steele opts to lie to Judith and Ann and assures them the surgery was a success. As a poor liar, Ann is suspicious and confronts Steele, who admits the truth. Steele tells Ann, "she must never know" she is going to die soon. She agrees to remain silent and continue the lie.
Judith and Steele become involved romantically and eventually engaged. While helping his assistant pack the office prior to their departure for Vermont, Judith discovers her case history file containing letters from several doctors, all of them confirming Steele's prognosis. Assuming Steele was marrying her out of pity, Judith breaks off the engagement and reverts to her former lifestyle. One day, her stablemaster Michael O'Leary (Humphrey Bogart), who for years has loved her from afar, confronts her about her unruly behavior and she confesses she is dying. Their conversation convinces her she should spend her final months happy, dignified, and with the man she loves. She apologizes to Steele, she and Steele marry, and move to Vermont. (Throughout the film Judith and O'Leary engage in arguments about the prospects of a colt, Challenger. O'Leary insists Challenger will never make a racehorse while Judith sees him as a future champion, and just before her death O'Leary admits she was correct.)
Three months later, Ann comes to visit. She and Judith are in the garden planting bulbs when Judith comments on how odd it is she still feels the heat of the sun under the rapidly darkening skies. She realizes she actually is losing her vision and approaching the end. Steele is scheduled to present his most recent medical findings – which hold out the long-term prospect of a cure for this type of cancer – in New York, and Judith, making an excuse to remain home, helps him pack and sends him off. Then, after bidding Ann, her housekeeper Martha (Virginia Brissac), and her dogs farewell, she climbs the stairs and enters her bedroom. She kneels briefly at the side of her bed, apparently praying, then lies down on the bed. Martha, who has followed her, drapes a blanket over her. Judith asks to be left alone, and Martha withdraws. The camera focuses on the motionless Judith as the screen becomes blurry, fades to black, and the film ends.

Review: Judith is a wealthy Long Island society girl given to a dizzy lifestyle Self-assured of her affluence and her faculty over men, she is unprepared for tragedy, which strikes in the form of a brain tumor The underlying bravery and courage with which she faces this physical suffering eventually demonstrates the woman of substance that she isAmong her friends is Ann King (Fitzgerald), her secretary, and handsome young Alex Hamm (Reagan), who directs her toward brain specialist Dr. Frederick Steele (Brent).
The doctor diagnoses her illness as one which will end her life within a year Judith falls in love with him and accepts his proposal of marriage When she discovers that her tumor is calamitous, she rejects the doctor's proposal considering it an act with compassion Davis provides scene after scene with the special magic only she was able of bringing vividly Swept into the current of events was Bogart playing an Irish horse trainer, who fails in an attempt to make love to her, yet encourages her to enjoy her time with her true love, George Brent The film was remade in 1963 as "Stolen Hours" with Susan Hayward, and as a 1976 TV movie under its original title with Elizabeth Montgomery.
Ably supported by a wonderful cast (including a somewhat mis-matched Humphrey Bogart as an Irish-brogued horse trainer), it is still difficult to watch the film and not be constantly anticipating Bette's appearance in any scene she isn't in.
Forty years later, I still cry every time I see "Dark Victory." It remains one of my favorite films for sheer use of Kleenex and my favorite Bette Davis movie, "All About Eve" being right up there with it.
There are three central performances in DARK VICTORY that deserve praise for their sincerity and complete believability--BETTE DAVIS as the spoiled heiress, GEORGE BRENT as the doctor who falls in love with her and GERALDINE FITZGERALD as the conscience of the story, feeling pity and love for her dearest friend.
Humphrey Bogart has been criticized for his Irish accent, but he's at least acceptable in a minor role as a horse trainer.But the three central performances are what hold the film together--and make what is essentially a sob story work so beautifully.Trivia: George Brent is very effective in the doctor role that was first offered to Basil Rathbone, but then withdrew after a very bad screen test in the part convinced the studio (and Rathbone) that he was all wrong for the role..
While I was watching my VHS copy of Dark Victory this afternoon, there was a quote from Bette Davis that her role of Judith Traherne was her most personal and that it was 98% of me.It certainly is one of her most moving performances on celluloid.
This is definitely a tear-jerker involving a young socialite Judith Traherne, (Betty Davis) who is full of life and an only child who gets her own way all the time, but is well liked by everyone.
The movie is helped by the fine score of Max Steiner.As Judith Treherne, Bette Davis shows us why she was a great actress.
Bette Davis' range was enormous.George Brent, as the medical specialist who tries to help Judith, and falls in love with her in the process, is also quite good as Dr. Steele.
"Dark Victory" features a superb performance by Bette Davis, portraying Judy Traherne, a socialite struggling to come to terms with terminal brain cancer, a diagnosis that ironically brings her the greatest joy of her life, as she falls in love with and marries the doctor who diagnosed her, also superbly played by George Brent.There's nothing really to dislike in this movie.
Irish-accented Humphrey Bogart (as Michael O'Leary) is amusing.******** Dark Victory (4/20/39) Edmund Goulding ~ Bette Davis, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Humphrey Bogart.
George Brent and Geraldine Fitzgerald are also give wonderful performances in supporting roles, and they are supportive roles because this film has one star and that star is Bette Davis..
Geraldine Fitzgerald is believable as Judith's friend, and George Brent does a good job in a role that, while almost a stock character, is important to the story.
The supporting cast is made up of some odd personalities: Geraldine Fitzgerald's dedicated girlfriend seems to have no life outside of Judith's world (and performs her gal-pal duties with a curious severity); Humphrey Bogart is an Irish stable-hand with a secret crush on Judith (she's tempted, but ultimately conveys to him the old 'don't touch' message); Ronald Reagan is a country club type, always in a tuxedo and at the bar; George Brent is the brilliant surgeon who loves Judith (but he's faster with his fists than he is with words).
George Brent probably gave one of his better jobs in this as well, but I found Ronald Reagan to be a tad too amateurish playing a drunken playboy.Despite a strong cast of characters, Bette owns her part and brands the movie with her unique style.
George Brent is quite solid, though, and Geraldine Fitzgerald is fairly good in an unfortunately low-key role as best friend Miss Anne (and, personally, I find her much more attractive than Davis ever was).
I can just imagine a young Ross Hunter sitting in a darkened movie palace in 1939, basking in the glow of the projector's light , watching DARK VICTORY unfold on the big screen.This Warner Brothers melodrama , a star vehicle for Bette Davis , no doubt highly influenced the enterprising nineteen year old future film producer who dominated the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties with lavish tearjerkers such as "Magnificent Obsession" and "Imitation of Life", among others.Movie soap operas have always been a sturdy Hollywood staple.
But when she decided to suffer nobly, she could suffer with the best of them.In "Dark Victory," Davis plays a woman dying from the deadliest of deadly diseases---the vague, unnamed illness that beautiful actresses died of in movies from the 1930s.
Dark Victory (1939) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Warner tear-jerker about a socialite (Bette Davis) who falls in love with her surgeon (George Brent) not knowing that she's dying from a brain tumor.
Helping her in this were all the ingredients, a fantastic script, a great score by Max Steiner, her cavaliers George Brent, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan (always drunk and silly, he is the only one in the film to get socked,) and Geraldine Fitzgerald as the most important supporting actress with her display of a high level of sensitivity.
This is brought out in them all, George Brent as her doctor of great psychological insight, Humphrey Bogart as the faithful stable groom, (the most intense love scene is actually in the stables between him and Bette,) and perhaps most of all in Geraldine Fitzgerald as her closest friend.But Bette Davis is the marvel above all.
If Bette Davis wasn't such an outstanding actress, this movie would only be a sentimental thing, filled with cliche (the doctor who falls in love with his patient, finding sense in simple things..) Even though the message of the film might be true - I don't really like the way it is pointed at.
The film is held together by a commendable cast of sensitive supporting performers, including George Brent as Dr. Frederick Steele, who falls in love with his patient and shatters every medical ethics code in the book, and especially Geraldine Fitzgerald, shortly after her arrival in Hollywood, as Judith's best friend and confidant.
In other words: the form is a product of its time while the content is ahead of it.Based on a 1934 play, "Dark Victory" is about a young, carefree and free-spirited socialite played by Bette Davis (at the epitome of her youthful beauty) who's diagnosed with a brain condition that expresses itself through dizziness, blurred vision and whose first dramatic signal is a spill during horse-riding.
I loved George Brent's devotion to the clinical case until the man replaced the doctor and ends up admiring that soul whose will didn't match the health (once again, there's a great chemistry between George Brent and Bette Davis).My feelings also went for Humphrey Bogart who was still relegated to forgettable character-actor roles but who had only two years to go before becoming undeniable, and Ronald Reagan who wouldn't make it as a Hollywood legend but whose destiny had other plans for him.
Davis plays a young, free-spirited New York socialite Judith Traherne, who has been assailed by headaches for months until her vision is also impaired, after the check-up of Dr. Steele (Brent), an operation is exercised to remove the tumor in her brain, but it is the "prognosis negative" result that sounds the death knell to her, merely 23 years old, she has only less than one year to live, before blindness and then quietus catches on with her sequentially.
What the narrative makes great play of is a one-two step of secrecy-keeping decision, starting with Dr. Steele, whose growing affection of Judith convinces him that he should keep a lid on the bad tidings so that a newborn Judith would at least enjoy the most of her precious remaining time, then, as a maladroit liar, he is blindsided by a perceptive Ann (a stalwart Fitzgerald credibly actualizing her dramatic chops), Judith's bestie-cum-secretary, to whom he lets on the truth and finds himself a partner-in-crime in contiguity with Judith, the latter eventually alights on the hammer blow that cruelly dashes her high-spirited prospect of a new lease on life (including marrying Steele and starting their nuptial life in Vermont), and reverts to her carpe diem intemperance and horse-riding, only to be struck by an epiphany when she frolics with her stable hand Michael O'Leary (Bogart, still paying his dues in subservient roles, but manages to seal a kiss with his leading lady, a boon is not bestowed to Brent, who was in fact engaging an affair with Davis at then), ergo, a right decision takes her on the right track and finally, she finds courage and peace towards her imminent fate, with dignity intact and its fallout minimized to the one she loves, which constitutes the second keeping-mum plot device that amply builds up the climax.
It is one of Davis' most spellbinding performance which potently attests her sweeping acting mutability, in the beginning, she is a defensive self-denier, more or less congruent with her sharp-tongued, faintly priggish persona, but not exactly descends into an overbearing prima donna, in no time, her defense is thwarted by Dr. Steele's suave solicitation, yet, what really hits the mark is during those tender moments, where her facet of repentance and earnestness overtakes the screen as we are compelled to invest our empathy to a young woman whose entitlement of living being unfairly cut short, still, she is able to come to terms with it in the most affective fashion that categorically elevates the film above the not so uncharacteristic sugar-the-pill treatment, which the Hollywood assembly line habitually implements on its unsavory subject matter, that is what one calls a legitimately tickets-selling one-woman-show!.
George Brent gives solid support, as does Geraldine Fitzgerald who plays the best friend of Davis in the film.
For example, her character discovers, as does happen sometimes (or only most of the time) in such dramas, about what her condition really is by doing just a little bit of digging - her file is on the desk that Dr. Steele happened to leave behind while things are being packed away - and she sees "Prognosis Negative." Just in case we don't notice that enough, the director helpfully takes those words and blows them up.She has a confrontation with Dr. Steele, who she's growing to like a lot before this and he may be falling in love with her too, but it's not an immediate "How could you!?" type of scene; she's out for a night at the club with Steele (Brent) and her friend Ann (Fitzgerald), and she's being a bit uncharacteristically nasty in front of them.
It's everything behind Davis's FORCE as an actress that does it in that and other scenes here.What's also good about Dark Victory is that Davis gets to show vulnerabilities as well, mostly in the last section as her condition starts to worsen (come on, I don't think I'm giving anything away as far as the plot goes, what's to discover here is the emotional range of things), and her strange going-blind-in-one/both-eyes-brain-falling-apart disease makes her rely on others, but she's not doing it so much that it becomes maudlin.
We also come to believe the romance between the two and not simply in that 'you're dying, I'll care for you, etc' sort of way from the doctor, though that's there; I can sense the connection between the actors (Brent I think was a typical contract player for the time, and really this is Davis's show so everyone else are just that, including Bogart and Reagan), and they have good chemistry.Does it get melodramatic?
It's all about Davis though, at least for the most part.And yet, I don't know if it's entirely a *great* movie unto itself, even as Davis surely is; Bogart plays the "Irish Brogue" and his accent goes in and out, so while he tries he's kind of a weak spot in the story for me, as the stable hand who may have feelings for Judith as well; Regan may actually be okay here since he's just playing a drunk playboy, but even at that he's not terribly convincing; there are some scenes here and there in the first half where it could use a little tightening, and it's really halfway through where the writing gets tighter still.
In truth DARK VICTORY has a soggy story of the impending death of Judith Traherne (Bette Davis), an energetic socialite diagnosed with an incurable brain disease.
Her drunk sequence in an upmarket restaurant reminds us of her memorable performance as Margo Channing in ALL ABOUT EVE: no one, not least Dr. Steele and her best friend Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald) can stand in her way.At length, however, Judith comes to accept her fate and enjoy her last days in peace.
She had the support of the rest of the excellent team led by George Brent as Dr. Frederick Steele, Geraldine Fitzgerald as Ann King and Humphrey Bogart as Michael O'Leary.Dark Victory is literally a film about the victory, the only real and true victory, perhaps the most important elemental things of the essence - and this is the victory of man over the fear of death.
This story depended on facing blindness by making great work in there life to attack any failure or shock in the life and the pure point for any tired person to be fine is (love) the symbol of happiness and optimistic.Bette Davis Was the title of hard role which made an increasing step for her history in cinema.George Bentt was the double of Davis that they were made a Harmony together in many films and he was a spirit of love and good in the scene.Hamphery Bogart played small role as a base of being co-star in the future and as a best actor in the 20th century..
Reagan does not make much of an impact, but Bogart is sorely miscast as Michael to the point of being distracting as Davis blows him off the screen, in particular, a late-night failed seduction scene when she dismissively half-asks him, "You're making love to me, aren't you?"However, it is Judith's steady best friend Ann and especially the stalwart brain-cell specialist Dr. Steele who help Judith in her true victory over the dark.
As Miss Judith Traherne, Davis exhibits a wide range of emotion in her role, helping establish her reputation as one of film's finest actresses.Along the way, Davis is supported by an unusually strong contingent of Warner contract players, most notably George Brent as the doctor turned husband, Frederick Steele.
The twenty-three years old wealthy sportswoman Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) has painful headaches and double-vision, and the family doctor, Dr. Parsons (Henry Travers), convinces her to go with her best friend Ann King (Geraldine Fitzgerald) to a consultation with a famous specialist.
Later, she realizes that she should spend the last moments of her life with her love."Dark Victory" is a wonderful sentimental movie with three nominations to the Oscar: Best Lead Actress (Beth Davies), Best Music Score (Max Steiner) and Best Picture (David Lewis).
Bette Davis is amazing in the lead role, very well supported by Geraldine Fitzgerald and George Brent.
George Brent (her brain-surgeon), Humphrey Bogart (???) her horse-trainer, Geraldine Fitzgerald (well-played role of best friend) and a very handsome Ronald Reagan (drunken playboy) were only a part of the settings, because - whether she was good or bad - no other player could even stand close to her and gain attentionAlthough Orson Welles let everyone know he THOUGHT he was the greatest at everything, and completely ruined almost everything he did, Ms. Davis KNEW she was the best, because she gave it to every role.
Well, 'Dark Victory' expands on this premise by going so far as to add a third dimension to this belief system: Not only was it made in the gargantuan holy movie year of 1939, not only did it flag down nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress, it can also boast of starring two of Hollywood's biggest and most respected actors, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart.
The title is taken from a speech in which Judith declares that if she can face death with courage this will represent a "victory over the dark".It is said that Bette Davis considered this her best performance, although I would respectfully disagree; I found her better in some of her other films from around this period, such as "Jezebel" or "The Letter".
This love also wins over other substitutes, represented namely here by Michael (played by Humphrey Bogart).Bette Davis and George Brent are simply excellent in their scenes.
"Dark Victory" is a wonderful film and Bette Davis' performance is memorable.
This is a very good movie for Bette Davis(Judith Traherne)as the follow up to Jezebel, which she won the Oscar for Best Actress on.