The Incomparable Bette Davis
Boy, do I love Bette Davis! I've seen Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? a bunch of times over the years, and there's quite a few of her movies that I've seen three to five times, like Jezebel, All About Eve and Petrified Forest. And then there's the 1930s newspaper thriller Front-Page Woman! Nobody seems to know about it, but I love it and I've seen it a bunch of times after I taped it off cable back in the 1990s!
I find her filmography to be very reliable. I always feel pretty confident when I see something listed on TCM and it has her name in the cast. They aren't all great classics, of course, and sometimes she doesn't have a very big part. But all but a handful of her movies are entertaining and worth watching, and it's amazing how many of them are classics of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
I decided to make a list of all the Bette Davis movies I've ever seen.
I find her filmography to be very reliable. I always feel pretty confident when I see something listed on TCM and it has her name in the cast. They aren't all great classics, of course, and sometimes she doesn't have a very big part. But all but a handful of her movies are entertaining and worth watching, and it's amazing how many of them are classics of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
I decided to make a list of all the Bette Davis movies I've ever seen.
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- DirectorHobart HenleyStarsConrad NagelSidney FoxBette DavisMarianne falls in love with a con artist who has a hidden agenda.Bette's first movie. It's a fun little romp if you like early 1930s movies. Bette is not the bad sister. She's the good sister. And she's adorable. The cast includes Humphrey Bogart, ZaSu Pitts and Bert Roach.
- DirectorJames WhaleStarsMae ClarkeDouglass MontgomeryDoris LloydA prostitute's self-loathing makes her reluctant to marry an idealistic soldier during World War I.
- DirectorMervyn LeRoyStarsJoan BlondellAnn DvorakBette DavisAlthough Vivian Revere is seemingly the most successful of a trio of reunited schoolmates, she throws it away by descending into a life of debauchery and drugs.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsWarren WilliamBette DavisGuy KibbeeJailbird is hired to lead a dimwitted candidate's campaign for governor.
- DirectorWilliam A. WellmanStarsBarbara StanwyckGeorge BrentDickie MooreAfter Selina's father dies, she's offered a job as a teacher in a small town and a new chapter of her life begins.
- DirectorMichael CurtizStarsSpencer TracyBette DavisArthur ByronBrash hoodlum Tom Connors enters Sing Sing cocksure of himself and disrespectful toward authority, but his tough but compassionate warden changes him.
- DirectorMichael CurtizStarsRichard BarthelmessBette DavisDorothy JordanA tenant farmer's son is caught in the middle of owner-tenant disputes when he falls for the plantation owner's seductive daughter.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsRuth ChattertonGeorge BrentBette DavisA socialite gets a divorce but can't keep out of her ex-husband's life.Bette Davis makes the most of her small part in this comedy of ill manners.
- DirectorHoward HigginStarsBette DavisPat O'BrienJunior DurkinJimmy idolizes bootlegger Matt, and when he refuses to implicate his friend, he is sent to reform school. He befriends Shorty, a boy with a heart condition, and escapes to let the world know about the brutal conditions.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsDouglas Fairbanks Jr.Bette DavisFrank McHughTo share expenses, unemployed Alabama moves in with also unemployed Bill and Toodles. Bill is hired by a gangster's mistress and ultimately becomes the gangster's bodyguard. Alabama unknowingly applies for a stenographer's job at Mr. Weber's (the gangster's) business. Bill is forced to fly a plane carrying narcotics into the U.S. but fights back.
- DirectorJohn G. AdolfiStarsGeorge ArlissBette DavisViolet HemingAfter losing his hearing, a musician uses lip-reading to help others.
- DirectorRoy Del RuthStarsBette DavisLewis StonePat O'BrienA sweet blonde goes to the police looking for her missing husband. When it turns out her husband is both a murder victim and a bachelor - and that the blonde is suspect #1, tough cop Butch Saunders comes up with a scheme to crack the case.
- DirectorRobert FloreyStarsBette DavisGene RaymondFrank McHughAlthough free spirit Helen Bauer does not believe in marriage, she consents to marry Don, but his infidelities cause her to also take on a lover.
- DirectorWilliam DieterleStarsBette DavisDonald WoodsMargaret LindsayThe lifestyles of Arlene and Valkyr Bradford, half-sisters from a respected San Francisco family, diverge markedly as Arlene takes up with criminals.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsGeorge BrentBette DavisAnn DvorakNan Reynolds encourages her copywriter husband Bill to open his own agency. Nearly out of business, he finally gets a client. Former girlfriend Patricia Berkeley writes a very successful commercial for the client and heats up their old romance. Wife and girlfriend battle over Bill.
- DirectorMichael CurtizStarsJames CagneyBette DavisAllen JenkinsAn unpolished racketeer, whose racket is finding heirs for unclaimed fortunes, affects ethics and tea-drinking manners to win back the sweetheart who now works for his seemingly upright competitor.
- DirectorWilliam DieterleStarsWilliam PowellBette DavisFrank McHughWhen the Manhattan investment firm of Sherwood Nash goes broke, he joins forces with his partner Snap and fashion designer Lynn Mason to provide discount shops with cheap copies of Paris couture dresses.
- DirectorJohn CromwellStarsBette DavisLeslie HowardFrances DeeA young man finds himself attracted to a cold, unfeeling waitress who might ultimately destroy them both.Bette Davis's Cockney accent is supposedly so bad that it makes many people hate this movie. I didn't even notice it. Maybe it's not authentic (it sounds fine to me) but she is simultaneously great and awful in this movie. And Frances Dee is adorable.
- DirectorMichael CurtizStarsBette DavisGeorge BrentRoscoe KarnsA woman reporter tries to prove she's just as good as any man, but runs into trouble along the way.This is so great! My third favorite Bette Davis movie after Whatever Happened to Baby Jane! and Jezebel. (All About Eve is pretty good too.)
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsBette DavisFranchot ToneMargaret LindsayAn alcoholic actress who is considered a dangerous jinx is rehabilitated, but she then shows that she's as dangerous as ever.I can see why she won the Oscar for Best Actress! And you get to see Bette Davis recite "Romeo and Juliet" before collapsing in a dive bar.
- DirectorWilliam KeighleyStarsBette DavisGeorge BrentRicardo CortezNewspaperman Bill Bradford becomes a special agent for the tax service trying to end the career of racketeer Alexander Carston. Julie Gardner is Carston's bookkeeper. Bradford enters Carston's organization and Julie cooperates with him to land Carston in jail. An informer squeals on them. Julie is kidnapped by Carston's henchmen as she is about to testify.Bette Davis plays a mob accountant!
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsBette DavisIan HunterColin CliveA lawyer impulsively marries a stranger after his fiancée dumps him.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsBette DavisGeorge BrentEugene PalletteIt's the Florida party season for heiresses, with both Oklahoma oil heiress Hortense Burke-Meyers and New York face cream heiress Daisy Appleby in the state. And where the single American heiresses are, the European bachelor set wanting their hand in marriage are close at hand. While nouveau riche, uncouth Hortense courts the attention, the excitement and the European bachelors clamoring after her, Daisy is more reclusive, wanting to stay out of the party scene and limelight by hiding aboard her yacht. Daisy desperately wants to marry for love, and not marry because it makes good print (and thus sell more face cream for her father), especially as she knows those European men are only after her money. So Daisy offers a proposition to Johnny Jones, a Florida Star newspaper reporter she befriends: marry her out of convenience. What she wants is that marriage license to dissuade all those European suitors while she quietly searches for that true love, a man with simple, American values. In turn, she knows that Johnny doesn't want her money or a society life, all he wanting is a quiet place to write his novel and a small stipend equal to his meager newspaper wage just to live on his own terms. In entering into this agreement, Daisy doesn't count on her father's PR man Jorgenson trying to make Johnny into a society man he doesn't want to be. Daisy is also hiding two secrets from Johnny, one of those secrets being that she has found the man she truly loves: him. She is afraid that if she reveals the other bigger secret, she may never get the opportunity to make him fall in love with her.
- DirectorArchie MayoStarsLeslie HowardHumphrey BogartBette DavisA waitress, a hobo and a bank robber get mixed up at a lonely diner in the desert.
- DirectorWilliam DieterleStarsBette DavisWarren WilliamAlison SkipworthA double-crossing woman, the two-timing P.I. she hired, the corpulent "empress of crime", and a gentleman thief are all after a legendary priceless eighth-century ram's horn.