In Dangerous (1935), Bette Davis played Joyce Heath, a gifted actress whose self-destruction threatens to undo everyone around her, and she won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for the role.
The story follows Joyce after a car accident, as she is taken in by the architect Don Bellows, played by Franchot Tone. Joyce’s talent is real, but so is her recklessness, and Davis gave the character a restless energy that made her both fascinating and dangerous to know.
Davis had already shown her power in Of Human Bondage the previous year. Dangerous confirmed that she was not a one-performance wonder. She could build a whole character from contradictions: charm and cruelty, confidence and self-pity, tenderness and a refusal to be saved.
Seen today, the film is a reminder of how quickly Davis moved from promising player to leading actress. She does not ask the audience to excuse Joyce. She asks it to watch her closely, and that attention is the performance.
Image: Bette Davis in Photoplay, June 1938, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bette_Davis_-_Photoplay,_June_1938.jpg