In The Little Foxes (1941), Bette Davis played Regina Giddens, a woman in the turn-of-the-century American South who will stop at nothing to secure wealth and power for herself.
Based on Lillian Hellman’s play, the film follows Regina and her brothers as they scheme to build a cotton mill, with Regina determined not to be left behind by the men around her. Davis gave Regina a cold, calculating intelligence, and the famous scene in which she refuses to help her dying husband became one of her most chilling moments.
Regina is not a sympathetic character, and Davis never tried to make her one. That was her gift. She understood that a villain who believes in her own rightness is far more compelling than a villain who simply sneers.
Image: Bette Davis in Photoplay, June 1938, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bette_Davis_-_Photoplay,_June_1938.jpg