Happy Mother's Day, readers! Here's new contributor Angelica Jade Bastién returning to talk Bette Davis, tell all bios, and a 1940s classic. - Editor
When I introduce friends to Bette Davis for the first time I tend to show them Now, Voyager. Yes, the film gives us one of Davis' best performances but my love for it is deeply personal. Whenever I watch Now, Voyager I see my emotional landscape on the screen. As a teenager struggling with mental illness and a caring yet controlling mother who didn’t quite know how to handle it the film was a revelation. It gave me hope that I could become the woman I always dreamed of. Ultimately, my obsession with the film centers upon the multiple ways it explores motherhood.
Now, Voyager is essentially about the transformation of Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) from spinster aunt figure to badass, emotionally realized womanhood. The film begins with Charlotte teetering at the edge of a nervous breakdown brought upon by the multitude of ways her mother, Mrs. Vale, controls her...
Charlotte is depressed, repressed, and yearning for a sense of identity outside of the golden cage her mother has built for her... Thankfully, she's introduced to Dr. Jacquith (Claude Rains) and spends time in a very upscale sanitarium giving her the ability to bloom beyond her mother's control. The real drama of the story is what happens after Charlotte's transformation as she falls in love with Jerry (Paul Henreid). While the love affair between Charlotte and Jerry is incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking, it is her relationship with the women in her orbit that make Now, Voyager the greatest women's picture.
Mrs. Vale controls Charlotte by curtailing any sense of identity and sexuality. Basically, she makes sure Charlotte looks like the saddest spinster aunt in existence from the "sensible" shoes to the unmanicured eyebrows. In Mrs. Vale's mind, her daughter owes her loyalty in return she Charlotte may be rich as hell and carries the last name of a powerful Boston family but she really has no power of her own.
Gladys Cooper plays Mrs. Vale with a steely reserve. She barely has to raise her voice for us to understand just how much control she has over her daughter. Once Charlotte returns to the family home we begin to see cracks and fissures in Mrs. Vale. She is losing control over her daughter. This being a women's picture means the battlefield between Mrs. Vale and Charlotte often center upon clothing. It isn't a coincidence that Mrs. Vale kept Charlotte looking like a school marm and was hellbent on getting her back to her old manner of dress.
before her transformation.
...and after her transformation. looking fabulous and ignoring her mother's stern gaze.
So, what's a dictatorial mother to do? Purposely fall down the stairs and injure herself, of course! This is the kind of emotional manipulation she's willing to do to shame her daughter into becoming an obedient, loyal servant once more. But it doesn't work.
The relationship between these two very different women deals with a lot of questions I have often asked myself. What does a mother owe her child beyond the essentials? Does a daughter owe her mother loyalty even in the face of emotional toxicity? Do all daughters really become their mothers or is it possible not to inherent their sins?
In Tina, Charlotte sees a lot of herself. Tina has self-destructive cries for help and yearns to be seen as beautiful (and hence worthy) to those around her. Charlotte has already learned that looking for that kind of self worth in the eyes of others can be quite disasterous. In many ways Charlotte is righting the wrongs of her own mother in how she treats Tina.
Some of the most tender scenes Davis ever played are in this film as her character grapples with the implications of her affair and her role in Tina's life. I have often imagined Davis as a spiritual mentor of sorts turning to her films and memoirs for guidance.
Of course, Davis' own daughter, B.D. Hyman, has very different thoughts on the matter. I have always found it fascinating studying the biographies of actors written by their children. None are more scathing than those written by the daughters of old Hollywood actresses.
Charlotte and Tina.
Mommie Dearest completely reworked the public’s image of Joan Crawford. She’s Medusa turned mother. The film only finishes the job so when I mention Crawford to most people “no wire hangers” isn’t far behind. For Marlene Dietrich her daughters hefty biography isn't a broad hatchet job on her mother's image. Instead it makes the cinematic goddess seem more human and more complicated with details I imagine Dietrich wouldn't want the world to see. Crawford had been dead for a year when Mommie Dearest was released. Dietrich died the same here her daughter released Marlene. But Davis had no such luck. She was very much alive when B.D. Hyman released My Mother's Keeper.
While B.D. holds a lot of contempt toward her famous mother apparently that wasn't enough for her to turn down the money Davis provided. A lot of My Mother's Keeper centers upon Davis being an overbearing alcoholic and emotionally abusive. What makes the whole situation sad is that Davis was contending with immense health issues during the publication of the book. Not content to give anyone the last word, Davis included a letter to her daughter in her 1987 memoir This 'n' That. One of the most interesting parts of the letter is,
Many of the scenes in your book I have played on the screen. It could be you have confused the “me” on the screen with “me” who is your mother.
Davis quibbles with what her daughter says about her career and how she took for granted her very priveleged lifestyle, unintentionally echoing the dynamic between Mrs. Vale and Charlotte decades after the film was released.
Bette Davis with her daughter, B.D. Hyman.
The most hilarious parts of the letter deals with who would play Davis if a film was made based on My Mother's Keeper.
In one of your many interviews while publicising your book, you said if you sell your book to TV you feel Glenda Jackson should play me. I would hope you would be courteous enough to ask me to play myself.
Unsurprisingly, Davis disinhereted her daughter leaving her estate to her adopted son, Michael Merrill, and her assistant, Kathy. What was surprising was seeing who exactly defended Davis from her daughter's claims, namely her ex-husband Gary Merrill. Despite their bitter divorce he publicly defended Davis saying B.D. was motivated by "cruelty and greed". The fact that Davis was dealing with health issues and a public fight with her own daughter seems like such an awful end note for such a magnificent actress.
Things ended a bit simpler for Charlotte Vale with her mother dying just after an argument. She's able to process her emotions and come to a bittersweet understanding with Jerry and Tina. Finally in control of her own life she negotiates her own desires. But when has life ever been as simple as fiction?
If there is anything I know from being the daughter of a rather complicated yet loving woman and the older sister to a brother estranged from us both, is that the truth of familial resentment can prove to be quite elusive. I don’t quite trust B.D.’s recollections of her famous mother. Just labeling Davis “difficult” (a polite code word for women society would rather call a bitch) flattens how dynamic she is on and off the screen. I prefer to keep the image of her transformation in Now, Voyager most readily in mind. The way she negotiates territory quite familiar to me, finding an identity and a sense of autonomy within the shadow of a controlling mother.
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