DARK VICTORY.
Tribute to one of the great films of the late thirties.
This is a tribute to my favorite movie, "Dark Victory", starring Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ronald Reagan, 1939.
This is an animation of photographs taken from Google, where I want to highlight a forgotten song written by Elsie Janis and performed by the "Queen of Radio": Vera Van.
"Dark Victory" (1939) is a sentimental, tragic and moving melodrama "weepie" or "woman's picture") from Warner Bros. studios - made in Hollywood's most famous and competitive year.
The film contains an electrifying, compelling, tour de force, tear-jerking performance from its major star Bette Davis. It was a bit of a risk for the movie studio to make and publicize an intense film about a terminally-ill patient with "prognosis negative."
The protagonist is a young socialite-heiress named Judith Traherne (Davis), who suffers from a brain tumor and ultimately falls in love with her supportive and dedicated doctor Frederick Steele (Brent). In the midst of her deadly illness, she comforts her best friend Ann King (Fitzgerald), and courageously meets her fate when her eyesight dims. She climbs her stairs for the last time - accompanied by Max Steiner's swelling score in the film's finale. A title from a film trailer proclaimed: "The love story no woman will ever forget!"
The film's screenplay by Casey Robinson was based on the brief and unsuccessful (due to its morbid subject matter) mid-30s Broadway play (starring Tallulah Bankhead) of the same name by George Emerson Brewer, Jr., and Bertram Bloch. David Selznick had originally purchased film rights, but gave up production plans for the property - and Warner Bros. picked up film
rights.
The adult drama was nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Picture, Best Actress (for two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis), and Best Original Score by Max Steiner, but lost in all categories. [This was Davis' third Oscar nomination in five years, and her second of five consecutive nominations.] Gone with the Wind (1939) took the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Actress (Vivien Leigh). Dark Victory was the second of Davis' four films with director
Edmund Goulding - the others were That Certain Woman (1937), The Old Maid (1939), and The Great Lie (1941). Humphrey Bogart was completely miscast in a minor role as Michael O'Leary - an Irish stable groom/trainer, although Ronald Reagan as Alec Hamin, a bar-hopping, slightly decadent playboy, was effectively believable. The film was remade as Stolen Hours
(1963) and as a made-for-TV movie in 1976 with Elizabeth Montgomery.
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Credit:
FILMSITE (Writed and edited by Tim Dirks)
Google Images
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"OH, GIVE ME TIME FOR TENDERNESS"
(uncredited)
Music by Edmund Goulding
Lyrics by Elsie Janis(1889-1956)
Sung by Vera Van (1908-2009)
I will never ask for more than you can give,
Yet when you say, 'Be gay today and live,'
My heart answers cautiously, 'Today will soon be gone,'
Why rush to meet our destiny?
Why must we hurry on?
REFRAIN:
Oh! Give me time for tenderness,
One little hour from each big day,
Oh! Give me time - to stop and bless
The golden sunset of a summer day...
...Let my heart be still and listen to one song of love,
Let me feel the thrill of quiet we know nothing of.
Oh! Give me time for tenderness
To hold your hand - and understand
Oh! Give me time.
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Thanks for your feedback!
lsiabala66@yahoo.com
22 авг 2024
