Dangerous (1935)

Dangerous (1935)

In director Alfred E. Green's 79-minute soapish melodrama, it was notable because Bette Davis won her first Best Actress Academy Award for her role - as a consolation because she wasn't even nominated for Of Human Bondage (1934) a year earlier. Laird Doyle's screenplay was derived from his own short story "Hard Luck Dame." The Warner Bros.' B-film romantic drama Singapore Woman (1941) was a remake, directed by Jean Negulesco and starring Brenda Marshall.

The story was about the comeback of an ex-actress whose excessive drinking had rendered her unemployable and penniless. With the aid of a male admirer who had been inspired by her acting, she acquired bankroll funding for a redemptive revival of her career, and agreed to marriage with her benefactor. He sadly broke off his engagement to his beautiful and caring fiancee. However, her secret past (an estranged husband) would complicate matters when he resisted giving his assent to a divorce. She self-destructively and suicidally attempted to kill both of them in a car crash, but then recovered, came to her senses about her deception, let her benefactor return to his ex-fiancee, found success on the stage, and began caring for her permanently-disabled husband.

[Note: The role was reportedly based on the life of Broadway stage and silent film actress Jeanne Eagels, one of Bette Davis' idols; Eagels was a self-destructive individual who was most known for playing the lead role of Sadie Thompson in the 1922 Broadway play Rain, and died young at the age of 39 of narcotics and alcohol addiction.]

• the 'dangerous' protagonist of the film was alcoholic and penniless former Broadway stage actress Joyce Heath (Bette Davis) who was first seen drinking straight gin in New York's Jerry's Joint speakeasy during Prohibition; once promising, she had vanished from public view and had become notorious for her quick downfall and 'jinxed' superstition:
  • "She was a comet which appeared suddenly, fell spectacularly, and disappeared completely...A jinx, one she put on other people...It started when her leading man was killed on her opening night. From then on, everybody associated with her was haunted by failures, divorces, suicides, scandals...At first, she laughed at the superstition, then she believed it."
• she was found in a drunken stupor by idealistic, aspiring, handsome, aristocratic architect Don Bellows (Franchot Tone), who took her to his Connecticut country house to have her sober up and possibly rehabilitate her; the next morning, Joyce demanded: "Get me a drink!"; she said she'd rather be drunk than sober; when she hinted that he might be proud of his sexual conquest over her, he said the only emotion that she aroused in him was pity; prideful, she struck back:
  • "Pity. Pity! You dare feel sorry for me. You with your fat little soul and your smug face - picking your way so cautiously through a pastel existence"
• he explained the real reason he brought her to his home for a few days - was to show "gratitude" for her past performances (he claimed he was inspired by her performance as Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet to leave Wall Street and become an architect); he was resolved to reform her: ("You could go on. Talent like yours doesn't die. You were a star once. You can be again"), although she was doubtful and warned:
  • "You'd better run for your life...Two men who loved me are dead, some financially ruined. Shows have folded."
• she prophetically claimed she would be a jinx: "Helping Joyce Heath is like shaking hands with the devil. The worst luck in the world"; even Don's housekeeper Mrs. Williams (Alison Skipworth) warned him of Joyce's tempestuous nature and curse:
  • "A woman knows an awful lot about another woman, and she's dangerous"
• later that evening, he kissed the fascinatingly-seductive Joyce during a long nighttime cloudburst as lightning struck (the screen faded to black after their clinch)
• but then the next morning over breakfast, Don admitted that he was engaged to wealthy fiancee Gail Armitage (Margaret Lindsay), and claimed he had impulsively lost his senses with her; he asked for her forgiveness, then wondered if he had hurt her; humorously shocked, she laughed at him and cruelly insulted him:
  • "Hurt me? You delight me! You have the most amazing lack of humor than anyone I've ever known! Oh, I shouldn't laugh at you, should I? But I can't help it. You were so awkward that I almost laughed in your face at first. And then it made me quite sick to think that anyone could be stupid enough to be taken in by a lot of old tricks. I thought you might at least be amusing, but you turned out to be dull, and stupid, and so afraid. Well, you needn't be. I won't hurt your Sunday school romance or your oh-so-nice career. Hurt me? Get out of here before you give me hysterics!"
• when they talked again, she apologized for her spiteful remarks, but still warned him that she was dangerous: "I'm the kind of a woman who destroys, not builds"; he concurred with her admission of destructiveness, although he was hugging her at the same time:
  • "I wish I'd never seen ya, never kissed you, never held you in my arms, 'cause every time I do I hate myself, I hate you. I could kill every emotion except for desire to hold you just once more"
• Joyce admitted her love for him and urged him to leave before it was too late and their love overpowered them:
  • "You can go now?...Then you must, because if you stay, it'll be too late. I love you. You may never love me, but you'll find you always come back to me. And each time you return, it'll cost you more and more until, well, you've spent your career, your ambitions, your dreams. Oh, I'm bad for people. I don't mean to be, but I can't help myself. So I'm being generous to you, Don. Kind, kinder than I've ever been to anybody before. Well, I can't be much longer, so go. Leave me. You can leave me, can't you?"
• in fact, she had already overpowered Bellows, and he felt compelled to save her; soon after, he hinted at his romantic indiscretions with Joyce to his beautiful and wealthy fiancee Gail Armitage:
  • "But if there were someone else, someone I didn't love that I never even see again but who had a strange exotic fascination for me and appeal I couldn't kill, would that make any difference to you?"
• Gail responded that his unspoken love for someone else would be "unendurable"; his honest confession effectively broke off their engagement when she gave back her ring (but she privately hoped that he would soon come back to her)
• Don then decided to take a risk and invest in Joyce's comeback performance in But To Die with 80,000ドル of his own funding given to producer George Sheffield (Pierre Watkin), because she was regarded as 'the jinx woman of the theatre.' Expecting it to be a great success and a career boost for her, he forced Joyce to promise to marry him, and she gladly accepted his offer:
  • "When the lights go out and that curtain goes up, oh, Don, it's being alive. I love you, I love you for bringing me back to life"
• however, Joyce was deceptively hiding the fact that she was married; she was hesitant about the subject of getting married and attempted to steer the conversation elsewhere when he insisted they marry after opening night: "Monday night or never!"
• Joyce rushed off to beg for a divorce from her weakling, ineffectual, clinging estranged husband Gordon Heath (John Eldredge); she implored him to agree to a divorce, but he still devotedly loved her, even though he had given up everything for her; their marriage had completely ruined him (he was a lowly bookkeeper in the company he once owned); he steadfastly refused to set her free to be happy: ("You'll be my wife until the day I die"); she responded by viciously berating him:
  • "Gordon, I know I've ruined your happiness, but don't ruin mine. If it's revenge you want, I'll give it to you. I'll beg, I'll crawl, I'll do anything. Anything!...Oh, you cheap, petty bookkeeper, you! Every time I think of those soft, sticky hands of yours ever touch me it makes me sick. Sick, do you hear? You're everything that's repulsive to me. Your wife! I've never been a wife to you, you poor simpering fool. If you had any pride, if you were a man instead of a drooling milk sop, you'd throw me out and be ashamed you admitted you ever married me. (She slapped him)
• to kill either one or both of them, the scheming Joyce deliberately crashed her speeding convertible into a tree, slightly hurting herself (with a mild concussion) and seriously injuring Gordon:
  • "It's either going to be your life or mine....We're coming to a tree in the middle of the road. We're taking it. If you're killed, I'll be free. If I'm killed, it really doesn't matter. If we both die, good riddance!"

• subsequently, the show was prevented from opening because of the scandal; tabloid headlines read: "TRIANGLE INVOLVING ACTRESS AND SOCIALITE REVEALED BY ACCIDENT! Joyce Heath and Don Bellows Estranged by Rendezvous with Husband"; Don's 10-year architectural project also failed and he was ruined when the doomed show closed (partially due to Joyce's own injuries) after providing and wasting 80,000ドル of his own funds
• in her hospital room where Joyce was recuperating, Don blamed her for deceptively lying to him and not revealing her marriage, and broke off any involvement with her; he accused her of being a rotten, selfish, and deceptive jinx:
  • "If you're ever gonna be anything but a jinx, you'd better start paying off, because you're in debt for the rest of your life!"
• afterwards, Joyce briefly contemplated suicide by stabbing herself; however, she instead decided to beg producer George Sheffield to resume the show - she vowed to pay off Don's debt, and to support her injured-for-life husband; she claimed she had found a way to break her jinx; she was ready to start rehearsing again - on the next Monday
• Joyce spoke one more time to Don and was "frank and honest" and truthful for once -- she coldly admitted that he was no longer important to her; she urged him to return to his ex-fiancee; Don's accusation was true - that he had been "just a means to an end" to her; she added: "I'm rather expensive. Remember what it cost you."
• eleven weeks later, the show had been revitalized and was successful, Don married Gail, and Joyce took flowers to her crippled-for-life husband in Mercy Hospital to try and rebuild and salvage her marriage