The Girl With The Betty Davis Eyes-Well Bette Herself-Bette Davis And Franchot Tone’s “Dangerous” (1935)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Dangerous, starring Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, 1935  

  

Sam Lowell hates Bette Davis, Bette with the Bette Davis eyes as he was always fond of titling his film reviews when she was in play. Hates her despite his generally positive reviews of her films in her long career. Did a paean to her growing up in working class Lowell in Massachusetts as a companion piece about another Lowell native Jack Kerouac. Called her a channeling influence on Jean Bon out along the factory town on the Merrimack River. Sam’s gripe which I don’t particularly share is that after watching together (Sam and I are longtime companions) the film under review Dangerous he yelled out “What the hell she is playing the same theme as she in Jezebel and about twelve other movies.” Playing the untamed shrew, the bitch, the catty man grabber, the coquettish schoolgirl with a heart of stone, the vampish working class slut driving poor Leslie Howard crazy in Of Human Bondage and lots of stuff along that line. Even in films where she is playing a positive role like in All About Eve (in comparison to the gatecrasher Eve) and gullible Gabby in The Petrified Forest he says you are always waiting for her to pull the trigger and walk away without the slightest qualms. So says Sam. 

I think something else is going on though. Something that has nothing to do with Bette Davis as such but everything to do with his place in the dog eat dog film criticism world. Looking over his reviews here in the archives (and those from long ago when he was a free-lancer for American Film Gazette when he was younger and had just divorced his first wife and needed some serious alimony money) he certainly has changed his tune from calling her one of the great actresses of the American cinema. Called her role as Gabby plying her Petrified Forest naivete with her break out desires and Francois Villon poetic dreams electrifying.

What gives. Well what gives is something like one-ups-man-ship among “the boys.” The fraternity of film critics-who as Seth Garth pointed out in a recent review of one of the endless James Bond 007 flicks are worse than even the back-biters in the academy who have made a science of jockeying for position, of climbing up the food chain over the literary dead bodies, who knows maybe literal too, of their colleagues. So it is about staking “turf” in that milieu of not being seen as too obliging when taking swipes at the film being reviewed- or another reviewer’s take on that same film. Add in that Sam has “retired” from the day to day grind of reviewing films and has become the occasional contributor and probably feels he needs to make each contribution stick out against the rest of the fraternity.        

As far as I can tell the whole business started when David Stein from American Film Gazette lambasted Phil Larkin for fawning over one of the Marvel Comics cinematic productions like a twelve year old. (Don’t ask me which one but I think it was one where all the Marvel characters ganged up on the bad guys.) That stiffened Phil’s back when he started doing reviews of the James Bond 007 series and came out swinging in defense of original screen Bond Sean Connery as the ultimate expression of the role. Did that in reaction to Will Bradley’s partisanship of what Phil called Pierce Brosnan’s pretty boy take. Even got staid Seth Garth who likes to think he is taking the intellectual high road in his reviews down in the mud for being wishy-washy. They are still duking it out with no holds barred.

Along that same line, and maybe something that has also egged on all these boys, is Bruce Conan’s attempts to rip up the Sherlock Holmes legend. Bruce Conan not his real name but a pseudonym since he claims that his torrid exposes have made him and his family vulnerable to some international criminal cartel called either the Kit Kat Club or the Baker Street Irregulars I am never sure which is threatening him and his which is totally dedicated to keeping Holmes memory unsullied. I can see why he feels the need of an on-line moniker since not only has he raked Holmes (whose real name is Lanny Lamont according to Bruce) and his companion Doc Watson of being total amateurs and frauds but has done the very politically incorrect thing these days of “outing” the pair as closet homosexuals. That is the kind of stuff the boys are creating gathering storms over. Who knows where it will end but more than one reputation will fall under the bus.         

But enough of that since the average reader probably now knows infinitely more than they need to know about the inner workings of the catfight aura of the profession. As I mentioned I did not, do not share Sam’s estimation of Bette Davis, certainly not in the role here which won her an Oscar, of a high-strung faded falling down drunk actress Joyce Heath who is nothing but poison to anyone she touches (stage actress of course in the days they called that the legitimate theater to distinguish it from the muck coming out of Hollywood). The victim on screen this time is Don Bellows, played by Franchot Tone, an up and coming New York architect with plenty of promise and a certain amount of naivete or need for living dangerously on the edge-take your pick. Also very engaged to a scion of a Mayfair swell family.    

After picking Joyce up from a gin mill the action that will seemingly seal his fallen fate begins as he starts to fall for her after she has used every trick in her playbook to hook him. It is always touch and go about whether she loves him or just sees him as a plaything. Most of the time it seem she has outsmarted herself and really does love him. Especially as Don is the key agent for her return to Broadway and fame in a big time role. Things get tricky though when after throwing over that Mayfair swell dame he, square guy that he is, insists that they get married right away. Monkey wrench, big monkey wrench, our Joyce is already unhappily married to a still smitten holy goof (Sam’s term). Things come to an impasse when her hubby refuses to let her go and she thereafter crashes them into a tree in a suicide attempt. They both recover but the bloom is off the rose when Don finds out what is what. Here is where I don’t get Sam’s ire. Joyce seeing that she has been selfish and self-serving accepts her fate and lets Don go (in her head, he was already gone in his, gone to his old Mayfair swell dish) and goes on to her bright stage career and caring for her husband who was severely injured in that crash. What’s wrong with that.