The Old Maid (1939)

I've seen enough late-'30s and early-'40s dramas about the love lives of class-conscious 19th-century women to conclude that it was a fad. This one debuted in between Jezebel and Gone with the Wind and had at least three of the former's actors.

Charlotte (Bette Davis, 3 years before her turn as Charlotte in Now, Voyager and 25 before starring in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte) develops an interest in Clem (George Brent), an old flame of her married cousin Delia (Miriam Hopkins). Clem dies in the Civil War (the Union side, FWIW), and Charlotte opens an orphanage for children of war casualties, with a special fondness for one child, Tina (Marlene Burnett) -- short for Clementina, which should tell you why. Delia also finds out why and jealously talks Charlotte's rich fiance (Jerome Cowan) into calling it off -- with a lie about Charlotte's health, just in case he would've accepted her anyway. Unable to sustain the orphanage, Charlotte allows Delia to adopt Tina unofficially. After being widowed, Delia allows Charlotte to move in as well. By this time, Tina sees Delia as her mom and Charlotte as her aunt. This spells tension between the sisters.

It's rather curious how Charlotte reacts to the unfair scenario. True to the title, she never tries for a husband again. In the second half of the movie, set mostly 15 years later, she has made no attempt to set the record straight to Tina (now played by Jane Bryan), hoping that Delia will eventually have the heart to do so. Indeed, Charlotte doesn't even show Tina, let alone anyone else, affection. She has cultivated a strict persona, well-meaning but hard to love, as if half-wanting Tina never to have any inkling of her parentage.

This is the kind of role Davis was born to play. It helps that her big eyes going baggy really sells how bitter she's become in middle age. Further research tells me that Hopkins had a few reasons to resent Davis, and the studio naturally played up their antagonism. The character dynamics aren't What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? nasty, but they do get pretty interesting.

I was not surprised to learn that Edmund Goulding also directed The Razor's Edge, because I thought about it while watching TOM. Delia must have reminded me of Isabel. Mercifully, this is not as much of a melodrama, and Delia is more redeemable. Sure, she shouldn't have resented her sister taking the man she turned down for a marriage of convenience, and there's no excuse for scheming, but I don't blame her for being reluctant to spill the beans to Tina after all that time.

From the box office and the high marks on IMDb and, to a lesser extent, Rotten Tomatoes, I did not anticipate mixed contemporary reviews, erring on the negative side. I can see their reasoning, though: Apart from two good female leads playing off each other, there isn't much to impress us. The play on which the film is based is too obscure for more than a four-sentence Wikipedia article, and the book on which the play is based doesn't even get that much, which may tell you something about the writing. And everyone involved whom I heard of before has done better.

TOM isn't likely to make someone a Davis or Hopkins fan, but neither will it lower your opinion of them. If you generally like this kind of story, you won't mind this 95-minute investment, but it is quite optional.