Mr. Skeffington (1944) gave Bette Davis a role that spanned decades, as Fanny Trellis, a beautiful woman who marries for money and learns, too late, what love is worth.
Fanny is vain and selfish, yet Davis played her with a full understanding of why she behaves as she does. Opposite Claude Rains as the devoted Job Skeffington, Davis charted Fanny’s life from youth to ageing, including the loss of her beauty after illness.
The performance is notable for its range. Davis did not flinch from showing Fanny’s cruelty, nor from showing her final, painful remorse. It is a portrait of a woman who discovers too late that the people she used were the ones who truly cared.
Image: Bette Davis in Photoplay, June 1938, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bette_Davis_-_Photoplay,_June_1938.jpg