Mr. Skeffington (1944)

Displays the talents of two heavyweight actors Bette Davis and Claude Rains who both received Academy Award nominations for their lead roles in this film. Davis plays a vain woman named Fanny Trellis who marries a successful investment broker and business owner (appropriately named) Job Skeffington (Rains in the title role) to protect her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) from going to jail for embezzlement. However she continues to entertain her former suitors (including Jerome Cowan John Alexander & Bill Kennedy) to feed her selfish ego. As they age she discards them while she maintains a youthful appeal attracting new younger hangers on into her forties. Her brother who resents her for what she did goes off to war where he is killed. So Fanny discards Job then sends their daughter to Europe to live with him (the father) allowing her to remain “queen bee”. Directed by Vincent Sherman with a screenplay by Julius and Philip Epstein (Casablanca (1942)) that was based on the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim.

*** SPOILERS ***

Davis’s character will come to pay for her past sins and vanity when diphtheria causes her to look her age. However there is redemption for her when after being released from a concentration camp her husband returns to her. Blind he is the only one who still loves her with the added bonus that he’ll always remember her beauty as it was. Walter Abel who plays a friend of the family (and Fanny’s brother?) through the years and George Coulouris as Doctor Byles (among others) provide support.

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