Robert Dance, the author of “Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood” (2024), introduced the classic Bette Davis film “Now, Voyager” (1942) at the Norfolk Library on Friday, November 22.
Now Voyager plays the dowdy youngest daughter of a wealthy Boston family meant to stay behind the walls of her family’s Boston mansion caring for an elderly mother.
During her nearly six-decade career, Davis was nominated for eleven Oscars and won two (each of the films shown in Norfolk were Oscar nominated). Wildly popular, especially during the 1930s and 40s, Davis continues to be highly respected.
“She wasn’t a herald of fashion like her great rival Joan Crawford, but she represented the archetypal upper middle class American woman as presented by Hollywood (in her case by Warner Brothers). Davis defied glamor and beauty with her extraordinary screen talent, although in the end she could portray a sort of crisp glamor perhaps more in keeping with the pages of Vogue than Hollywood fan magazines,” Dance said.
Davis’s films are continually shown on TCM. She was even the subject of a song, “Bette Davis Eyes,” that was number one on the billboard chart for several weeks in the 1980s:
“Her hair is Harlow gold
Her lips a sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll turn her music on you
You won’t have to think twice
She’s pure as New York snow
She got Bette Davis eyes”
“The ‘Harlow’ is Jean Harlow, the movie’s original blond sex goddess back in the 1930s. She died at age 26 in 1937 but was one of the greatest stars of Hollywood’s golden age. Who remembers her now? Maybe we need a Jean Harlow series in Norfolk,” Dance said.
As a young student living in Manhattan, Dance went to see movies frequently, absorbing silents, musicals, classic German films. These outings solidified his love of movies and the celluloid heroes of yesteryear.
“Something like half of all Americans went to the movies every week from the 1920s to the 50s (when television changed entertainment). Cinema is one of the last century’s great technological and entertainment inventions, so it seemed necessary to become fluent in this culture. What is exciting today is that I am continually discovering something new made a century ago. Kino and the Criterion collection are among the invaluable services that discover little known works and return them to the public,” Dance explained.
Today, Davis seems to have slipped away in popular culture, while Joan Crawford remains popular with websites devoted to her, and Instagram has more than a hundred dedicated Crawford sites. But Davis continues to be revered by older generations.
“Davis survives because of an astonishing body of screen work. ‘Now Voyager’ is one of her best, although for some it might seem old-fashioned. Still, it has it all: perfect performances from the entire cast, a compelling story, superb direction. The American Film Institute’s rank of actresses lists her number two overall. ‘Now Voyager’ ranks high among dramas,” Dance says.
“Maybe Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd – see it if you haven’t) was right: “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
