By Don Stradley
It is impossible to name the single best Bette Davis movie – between 1931 and 1989 she made more than 100 of them – but the one that ignited her career was Of Human Bondage (1934).
She’d been floundering while under contract at Warner Bros., but the character of Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage seemed perfect for her. A heartless she-devil who puts a medical student through endless humiliation, Mildred was too coldblooded for other female performers. None were willing, or able, to look so damned vicious. Davis wanted the part. She wanted it badly.
The film unleashed Davis, as if Mildred’s malice freed her. With her nervous bearing and strange beauty, she dominates every frame in which she appears. More than any of the leading ladies of the 1930s, Davis embodied a different sort of young woman, edgy, scornful, just right for Mildred. Her inner piqué manifested in her bulging eyes and flailing arms, mannerisms that would launch the Davis mystique across the next five decades. Of her sluttish performance, Davis once said, “Hell, I shocked myself.”
Of Human Bondage was based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham published 19 years earlier. At its core, it is the story of a decent English lad who falls in love with a cruel woman and suffers for it. Though the story takes place in London, Mildred’s behavior must’ve struck a chord with American women now four years into the Great Depression. Did she remind them of their own bitterness and despair? Upon seeing Mildred’s painful end in a grungy rooming house, audiences in 1934 allegedly applauded, so glad were they to be rid of her. But maybe, for some, Mildred hit a nerve.
She’d run roughshod over Philip, the kindly med student (Leslie Howard). Bored with the wealthy men she meets during her afternoons as a waitress, she deigns to go out with Philip, though she taunts and belittles him. He’s already withstood a life of embarrassments because of his being born with a deformed foot, so he tolerates Mildred’s callow manner. But she not only abuses his good nature, she also proves to be unstable. The movie has a delicate look, like an old pencil sketch found in an antiques shop, making it all the more upsetting when Mildred’s guttersnipe Medusa comes to full flower.
Davis is far more realistic and watchable than most of her costars. Before she came to Hollywood, Davis had enjoyed a brief period of acting on stage. She was tiny, energetic, with a taste for the brutal. Director John Cromwell was surprised at how Davis insisted she look ugly for Mildred’s final scene. “No compromises,” Davis told him.
Recent failures had jarred her. Ex-Lady (1933), her first starring role, had been so poorly received that it was pulled from movie screens. Warners had hoped to make Davis an attraction by having her play a wife in an open marriage, and appearing semi-clad in a few scenes. The gambit failed. For Davis, the prolonged struggle to succeed was infuriating, especially as other female performers gained accolades.
The brain trust at Warners placed her in a series of gum-chewing roles, thinking she might fit as a wisecracking Joan Blondell type. Then a contest was held where fans were invited to write in and suggest Davis’ next leading man. Davis was disgusted. She responded by hunting for scripts, and contacting other studios to see about projects. She learned that RKO was planning a production of Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. The thought of playing Mildred thrilled her. Other women had refused the part, to where it appeared the movie would never be made.
Her fight to get the role became part of the Davis legend. Her boss, Jack Warner, felt the 26-year-old would jeopardize her future by playing such a despicable woman. Despite RKO wanting her, he wouldn’t allow Davis out of her contract. He also was leery of Davis working in a Maugham story since a recent novel of his had flopped as a film. Davis cajoled and pleaded with Warner for six months until he finally gave in. “Yes,” he said. “Go hang yourself.”
The role did so much for her career that Davis later claimed it earned her an Academy Award nomination, which was not true. It probably seemed that way, though, since reviewers had so loved her turn as Mildred. “Probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S, actress,” raved Time. The experience came at a cost, though. At the time she won the part, Davis learned she was pregnant. She later said her mother and husband convinced her to have an abortion to get on with the production. It’s doubtful that Davis had needed coaxing. Not even motherhood would stop her from taking this role.
Many years later Davis recalled for author Whitney Stine how her performance left people “aghast.” Visitors to the set, she explained, “looked at me in disbelief, and when I finished the takes and went to my dressing room, they followed me as if I wasn’t Bette Davis the actress, but still as if I was Mildred.” And as far as being hated, that seemed a non-issue.
“I was playing vapid blondes and silly ingénues. For audiences to hate me, they would first have to notice me. I needed a role with guts, and Mildred was it.”
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Of Human Bondage, starring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard, is now showing on Fandor.
