Dark Victory

Bette Davis earned an Oscar nomination for her role in this classic four-hanky tearjerker. Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) is a very wealthy Long Island heiress whose life is a constant whirl of cocktails, parties, and wild living. Despite her hedonistic lifestyle, Judith derives little pleasure from ...more

Adapted by Casey Robinson from a short-lived Broadway play starring Tallulah Bankhead, Dark Victory (1939) is one of Bette Davis's most affecting melodramas. Davis's superb performance taps a range of emotions, as her Judith Traherne transforms from a flippant playgirl into a spiritually redeemed terminal cancer patient, complete with a multiple hankie death scene rendered all the more poignant and moving by Davis's dramatic restraint. Fresh from her Oscar for Jezebel (1938), Davis is surrounded ...more