Turner Classic Movies

[domino harvey]

I like it a lot, good clean incestual fun. I think it was in one of the Warner Bette Davis boxes?

[Matt]

Yeah , it was in the third volume of the Bette Davis Collection DVD sets. I know I’ve seen it more than once but it’s never made much of an impression. Not among the best work of anyone involved, but a fine Warner Bros. “women’s picture” of the era.

[beamish14]

I always thought it was something of a minor sophomore slump for Huston, despite it being well-received at the time.

[senseabove]

I'm a big, if usually pretty lonely—it was an orphan on my 1940s list—fan of In This Our Life. A delirious melodrama that's too twisted to be as political as it is and too political to be as twisted as it is, with Davis at her most evil. I've always wanted to know more about about when Huston left, called up to make war docs, and Walsh took over...

[Rayon Vert]

I'm with domino and senseabove. It's probably my favorite Bette Davis movie (or top 3 or so), and definitely one my top 4 (5 at the most) favorite John Huston movies. (But then I'm not the biggest Huston fan overall!)

[Fred Holywell]

With the on-going Warner Bros. Discovery shakeup at TCM, I figured the channel might "jump the shark" someday, but not quite so literally.

SpoilerShow

The idiom "jumping the shark" is pejorative and is used to argue that a creative work or outlet appears to have reached a point where it has exhausted its core ideas and is introducing new creative ideas that are discordant with its core nature.

[Matt]

Little bit of harmless cross-promotion, and a fine excuse for showing The Hustler, The Color of Money, and Mean Streets. They’ve done worse.

[guyetgenevieve]

Not sure if it's just me, but it seems as though movies have stopped being added to WatchTCM. Liztomania has been the most recent addition for awhile.

[Matt]

I noticed that last night as well. I wanted to watch the very weird Broadway Serenade, most of which I missed yesterday afternoon. Being able to catch up via Watch TCM on things I missed is a huge part of why I still pay for cable in 2023. Try as I might I can’t watch the channel 24 hours every day, sleeping only during re-airings of Bullitt.

[fiendishthingy]

Watch TCM seems to be back to normal. If I counted correctly, they've added over a hundred films more recently than Lisztomania.

[Matt]

I’m imagining they laid off the $14.50/hr person whose job it was to manually add each film to the platform after its West Coast airing. Or the hamster that turns the wheel that powers the Gateway computer that runs the DOS program that posts the movies was found dead in its cage a week after the $13.50\hr person who fed it was laid off.

Anyway, thanks to what probably necessitated a conference call with Zaslav from Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, I can now watch Broadway Serenade.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm a big, if usually pretty lonely—it was an orphan on my 1940s list—fan of In This Our Life. A delirious melodrama that's too twisted to be as political as it is and too political to be as twisted as it is, with Davis at her most evil.

Count me as another fan - I detest Davis in just about everything she's in, but this is a career-best perf (All About Eve is an all-time favorite, but for reasons mostly excluding her). This is the first film I've seen Davis in where she is the key ingredient why the movie is not just good but great, here providing the exact right levels of histrionic characteristics to elevate decent melodramatic material into the sky. The direction by Houston and Walsh is more than competent, which transforms this family systems drama into a thrill-ride, but Davis is able to issue those eye-gluing thrills during the many moments of formal stagnancy.

[FrauBlucher]

Wow TWBB. Detest... a bit strong for someone so venerable. Davis is someone who's characters have a certain convention, I hate to say one trick pony, because I like her a lot. Her characters are very strong women, almost bullying even when she tries to show a grace or goodness which comes across as a facade. But that's probably because those are the characters she chooses to play.
But the one movie I see her differently and one I really enjoy is The Man Who Came to Dinner because she has a certain vulnerability which she doesn't show a lot in many of her other roles. And All About Eve is one of my all time favorite films

[therewillbeblus]

Hey, we all have our actors who rub us the wrong way (not their characters, but their auras). In fact, we have a pretty long thread devoted to this phenomena

I'm pretty fond of Olivia de Havilland too, but her role in this was bland and kind-of a throwaway part, so it was a nice surprise to feel a reversed allegiance to the on/off screen enemies. I don't know much about their feud, but I'd probably be pretty pissed too if I got de Havilland's part over Davis' in this picture!

[Rayon Vert]

It's probably my favorite of Davis' performances as well. Jezebel and Of Human Bondage are some of the other ones that come to mind.

[hearthesilence]

It's probably my favorite of Davis' performances as well. Jezebel and Of Human Bondage are some of the other ones that come to mind.

I don't think it's a great film, but for me Of Human Bondage has the most entertaining moment in her entire filmography.

I like Bette Davis a lot. She's usually the best thing about her films, but I share her frustrations in the material Warner used to give to her.

My favorites are probably Marked Woman (the first she made after her lawsuit against Warner Bros.), The Letter, The Little Foxes (she always credited William Wyler for making her a better film actress and I think it shows), and All About Eve.

[Rayon Vert]

It's probably my favorite of Davis' performances as well. Jezebel and Of Human Bondage are some of the other ones that come to mind.

I don't think it's a great film, but for me Of Human Bondage has the most entertaining moment in her entire filmography.

Thanks for triggering a traumatic memory of a past girlfriend in my youth! Probably why I perversely like that movie.

[hearthesilence]

I once knew someone who got so angry she tried to trash a room, but it was clear that she didn't have the physicality to do that much damage. The moment where Davis heaves that plate came to mind and I just started cracking up, which didn't help.

[domino harvey]

I used to find Davis quite abrasive and unpleasant too, in large part to being introduced to her via Jezebel and associating her too deeply with that role, but I got over it. I can never really gauge her as a romantic lead because she looks like my grandmother, but otherwise I like her just fine these days

[hearthesilence]

She's also the basis of one of my favorite SNL impressions.

[Rayon Vert]

Watching that led to several Bette Davis 1980s TV show appearances on the youtube algorithm (Carson, Joan Rivers, etc.), and yes she was always wearing a hat! (and dangling a smoking cigarette)

[senseabove]

I never can remember which one but there's one very late in her life where she exclaims "If I wasn't smoking they wouldn't know who I am!" Meanwhile, this popped up on Twitter tonight just so twbb won't feel alone.

[Rayon Vert]

Wow, that's a lot of hate towards a person who passed away over three decades ago! Is this page by someone who knew her or was a relation?

Also, lots of great actors had limited "range" - did John Wayne or even Bogart have that much?

[FrauBlucher]

Hearthesilence, I watch In Human Bondage just for that.... I wipe my mouth!!! Haha

So many of the Golden Age actors had limited range. They weren't given the chance to develop. That was the product of the studio system. It was more about "stars" than the roles they were playing. That's why performances were repeated over and over again. It started changing with the Actors Studio and method acting.

Good grief, some folks have too much time on their hands to develop a page of hate for someone who's been dead for a long time and hasn't been at the highpoint of her profession for over a half of century

[therewillbeblus]

Good grief, some folks have too much time on their hands to develop a page of hate for someone who's been dead for a long time and hasn't been at the highpoint of her profession for over a half of century

Wasn't there some stupid Ryan Murphy miniseries on the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford feud? Mass TV audiences seem to inexplicably love his work, so I wouldn't be surprised if this page was comprised/concocted mostly out of hate for the fictionalized version of her rather than people who've actually seen a bunch of Betty Davis movies. It seems likely that people would be motivated to do this if given a (false) sense of investment in her narrative