The Old Maid (Edmund Goulding, 1939)

Bette Davis in The Old Maid

Cast: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan, Louise Fazenda, James Stephenson, Jerome Cowan, William Lundigan. Screenplay: Casey Robinson, based on a play by Zoe Akins and a novel by Edith Wharton. Cinematography: Tony Gaudio. Art direction: Robert M. Haas. Film editing: George Amy. Music: Max Steiner.

The Old Maid is the kind of melodrama that never really made much sense, except in the original version, the novel by Edith Wharton, where the social taboos and psychological hangups could be dealt with more convincingly. And given that filmmakers under the Production Code had to tiptoe around topics like having a child without being married, the evasions of such key issues became even more ludicrous and artificial. Still, though the movie is fun to watch today because the evasions are so glaring, and because troupers like Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins knew how to make them entertaining. The making of the film is notorious because Davis and Hopkins were constantly feuding over old wrong: The one losing a coveted role to the other who was also suspected of sleeping with her husband, and so on. Davis is more fun when she's scheming and trying to get even in her movies than when she's suffering and self-sacrificing, so The Old Maid is not one of her juicier films.