I never really understood nor appreciated Davis’s greatness as an actress until I watched her performance recently in ‘Dark Victory.’

For those who’ve never seen it, ‘Dark Victory’ centers entirely around the Davis character Judith Traherne and the manner in which she copes with her certain and imminent death from a brain tumor.

To me, Davis had been a very eccentric woman more than a great artist — one who, with turned-down lips, had an eternal chip on her shoulder. At any moment, Davis might snap your head off in the most histrionic manner possible before anyone who simply happened to be present, making you feel smaller, more useless and pathetic than last year’s want ad.

I crossed paths with Davis for a very brief instant on stage in New York when she was the one to hand me my Tony Award for a performance in John Hopkins’ play, ‘Find Your Way Home.’

Perhaps that “chip” she seemed to carry was, in some way, a central part of her character. I really don’t know nor can I say that for certain about her, never having had the intimidating privilege of working with Davis. That, however, could not diminish the enormously powerful size of her acting. Like Katharine Hepburn, with whom I did work, she was larger than any corner of a so-called ordinary life.

What brought me around to being not just impressed – Davis, like Hepburn, has always been impressive – but moved by her in the film ‘Dark Victory?’

I learned, I believe, the terms Davis set for herself in life.

I have a profoundly strong hunch that Davis had a great deal to do with the shaping of that role in ‘Victory,’ both its meaning and its very dialogue. The power of that script for me came from the two main but starkly contrasting ways her character chose to deal with the unremitting and imminent presence of death in her life.

It wasn’t so much the classic denial of death for her but a raging temper tantrum at everything around herself — fury at most of humanity’s good fortune and rage over her own bad luck. No one could perform that half of the drama better than Davis!

Not even Hepburn.

The other alternative, of course, and one I hadn’t thought Davis capable of, was a profound joy and gratitude for every additional second of life she could beg, borrow or steal for herself. It was then I knew how great she had been as an artist.

It was the ecstasy with which she hurled herself into what was left of her life, sustaining its bliss until the very end — a joy in life rarely seen in a Davis film role. The moment when her character begins to go blind was beautifully written, with her initially unaware of what was happening at all, while we in the audience and Geraldine Fitzgerald are agonizingly confronted with the truth of the situation. Dramatic irony at its most powerful, this realization was one of the most powerfully bittersweet moments that I have ever seen in the theater or movies or can so swiftly and emotionally recall.

Why “sweet” as well as “bitter”? Her character’s tribute to what she thinks of as only the setting sun still leaves me savoring such moments in life through tears.

One always startling fact of great performances by both Davis and Hepburn is the oceanic momentum both could drive an entire movie with. If anything defines a great actor or actress, it is that momentum he or she establishes which can carry many audiences through the inevitably more boring parts of a drama or comedy.

One female performance that has recently reminded me of the Hepburn/Davis powerhouse size is Dianne Wiest’s “Actress” in ‘Bullets Over Broadway.’ For me, Wiest’s Helen Sinclair seemed to be a diva-sized replica of the great Stella Adler, whom I did know and love. Nothing in Wiest’s Helen Sinclair was over the top. As Stella Adler herself taught her students, “When Checkov’s Masha of Three Sisters looks at the sky and speaks of such a huge part of the Universe, it is not ‘The sky.’ It is ‘THE SKAAAAAAHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!’”

Since ‘Dark Victory’ is, indeed, a Davis tour de force, there are no boring moments. The very end of the film is a particularly Davis brand of ‘Victory.’

This is, in Shakespearean vernacular, “not for all markets.”

The now-legendary Davis pride and self-respect are boiling over in her ‘Dark Victory’ decision to let her husband run off to New York City on business when she’s certain of being close to death. In retrospect, I, as George Brent’s role of husband, would have been furious at such a selfish and vainglorious decision to die so bereft of his love and comfort.

That, however, was, at least in the eyes of Davis’s fans, a quintessentially Davis thing to do.

As I said, you took and take the likes of Hepburn, Davis, Adler and Wiest on their terms and not your own. If you can’t, find yourself a minor talent and bore us to death.

As Davis once replied to the bitter comments of a fellow actor on a television film, one starring a much younger but very well-known actress, “Her name’s above the title! She needs all the help she can get!”

It’s a truism among fans of classic movies that 1939 was the Hollywood cinema’s greatest year. But if it has become something of a cliche to say so, it’s only because it’s so undeniably true.

It’s really rather amazing to consider how many classic or transcendentally classic films were released during that annus mirabilis. Among the most highly praised then and in the ensuring years were the following:

• Gone with the Wind
• The Wizard of Oz
• Stagecoach
• Beau Geste
• Goodbye, Mr. Chips
• Gunga Din
• The Women
• Wuthering Heights
• The Roaring Twenties
• Love Affair

Those would be enough for a great year in itself, but there was so much more–such as Ninotchka, Only Angels Have Wings, Drums Along the Mohawk, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Allegheny Uprising, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Stanley and Livingston, The Man in the Iron Mask, Dark Victory, Of Mice and Men,Young Mr. Lincoln, The Rains Came, Midnight, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Union Pacific, Babes in Arms, The Little Princess, Another Thin Man, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, The Hardys Ride High, Golden Boy, Dodge City, Gulliver’s Travels, The Light That Failed, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Old Maid, Son of Frankenstein, Destry Rides Again, and many, many others of like quality.

And from overseas: The Rules of the Game, The Four Feathers, The Stars Look Down, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, and others.

And perhaps even more impressive is the high quality of even the year’s lower-budget films, such as Code of the Secret Service and Secret Service of the Air, both starring Ronald Reagan. What all the Hollywood films mentioned here shared was the industry’s ability at the time to alternate scenes of grandeur and intimacy with consummate skill and confidence.

The Hollywood movie factories had been perfected by the mid-1930s, and the studios were amazingly adept at turning out greatly entertaining movies that reflected and reinforced the values of their audience. Although the stars and other filmmaking principals were paid amazing sums of money then as they are now, the industry did not then reflect the elitism now rampant in Hollywood.

The studio moguls, who were largely self-made and from humble origins, enthusiastically accepted the nation’s founding values and made sure that their product reflected those notions.They did so both for patriotic reasons and because they knew that was the best way for them to make money.

Thus while MGM head Louis B. Mayer was a staunch Republican and the Warner Bros. were supporters of FDR, all shared a strong patriotic love for their nation and shared their audience’s values.

Also important was the more conservative social values that arose during the Depression 1930s after the social excesses of the Roaring Twenties. Audiences preferred movies to reflect values such as personal responsibility, long-term thinking, the value of hard work, personal sacrifice for the good of others, modesty, and the like. Hollywood was voluntarily under the authority of the Production Code, which set moral standards for the industry and protected the studios from a race to the moral bottom and an unbridled pursuit of sensationalism.

The Production Code was clearly not a straitjacket on creativity, given the impressive films made while it was in place during the 1930s through the 1950s. Contrary to the claims of many critics (and the Wikipedia entry cited here), the Production Code Administration was willing and in fact eager to work with producers to ensure that films could be as creative as possible without undermining the nation’s morals.

Refraining from undermining people’s morals may seem rather a quaint notion to many people today, but it indicates a sense of honor, decency, and humility that is sorely lacking among all to many purveyors of cultural products today.

Of course, there’s no sense in hoping for a return of the Production Code, but a greater sense of responsibility on filmmakers’ part would certainly be welcome. It would benefit the movies both morally and esthetically.

5pm PST - Dark Victory (1939) – A flighty heiress discovers inner strength when she develops a brain tumor. Cast: Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald Dir: Edmund Goulding BW-104 mins, TV-PG

Classic Bette Davis melodrama filled with too many story twists to count, a miscast Humphrey Bogart and perfectly cast Ronald Reagan as a playboy drunk all too aware of his own shallowness. Davis puts all she has into her role (one she fought for) as a rich socialite thrown on an emotional rollercoaster after receiving a death sentence due to one of those movie tumors which allows for maximum dramatic impact and the all important ticking clock.

George Brent’s both strong and sympathetic as the doctor who treats Davis, falls in love with her, and ultimately helps the spoiled party girl discover the simple pleasure of life and what real happiness means.

The last ten minutes will have the logical half of your brain rolling your eyes, but there will be tears in them eyes because Davis is all movie star and makes you buy completely into the sweet, bitter, ridiculous, melodramatic, wonderful sadness of it all.

Also, be sure to catch Edward G. Robinson in “Dr. Erlich’s Magic Bullet” at 3pm, an outstanding biopic, one of my personal favorites, that I look forward to writing more about the next time it doesn’t air on the same day as an epic Davis weepie.