Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1944

The Contenders:

Barbara Stanwyck: Double Indemnity
Ingrid Bergman: Gaslight (winner)
Bette Davis: Mr. Skeffington
Greer Garson: Mrs. Parkington
Claudette Colbert: Since You Went Away

Jezebel, Part Two

Film: Mr. Skeffington
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’m always curious and a little excited when I locate a piece of Bette Davis’s filmography that I haven’t seen. Sometimes you get Now, Voyager or Jezebel. Then again, sometimes you get Mr. Skeffington. I chose those two films to mention here in comparison with Mr. Skeffington with reason. I bring up the brilliant Now, Voyager because, like today’s film, it co-stars the great Claude Rains. I referred to Jezebel because the character played by Bette Davis in that has a lot of resonance with the character she plays here. The problem is that both of those films are vastly better than this one.

Fanny Trellis (Davis) is the socialite to end all socialites. As the film starts, she is hosting a dinner party to which a group of suitors individually show up early in the hopes of some alone time with her. The only person she’s really interested in seeing is her cousin George (Walter Abel). The person she is not expecting is Job Skeffington (Claude Rains), who happens to be the boss of her brother, Trippy (yes, he goes by Trippy, and is played by Richard Waring). It seems that Trippy has not only burned through the Trellis family fortune in a matter of a couple of years, he’s also managed to embezzle some $24,000 from Skeffington, which is a large chunk of change, especially a hundred years ago, when this takes place.