Watch Mr. Skeffington For Free

the audience applauded

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

. . . the U.S. War Department Film Censors of the World War Two Era, nor could it survive the Extreme Vetting that Leader Trump's ICE men will be able to do once his tie-breaker U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch (whom he trumped away from Barack Hussein Obama) overrules all of the latter's lowly so-called judges. MR. SKEVINZSKAVA confesses to American Intelligence Operative "Fanny Trellis" that he's assumed the name of "Skeffington" at 37:40. Bette Davis' "Fanny" then goes undercover (literally) to sleep with this MR. SKEVINZSKAVA (who is later reported to be one of Hitler's U.S. Fifth Columnist Minions), not unlike Ingrid Bergman's fate in NOTORIOUS. Bette goes Ingrid one better, getting knocked up with MR. SKEVINZSKAVA's child. The heroic Bette--then between her own Real Life abortions #5 and #6, according to her Trivia Page on this site--goes through a ROSEMARY'S BABY-type ordeal, in which this DEMONSEED makes her "all puffy and swollen and ugly" (58:30). Soon Bette, just 36 in Real Life, convinces us that she's a 50-year-old Fanny, pushing 97. Sadly, Bette's lizard-faced condition froze on her for the remainder of her career on the Big Screen, illustrating the sort of irreversible damage that can be done to our All-American Gene Pool if Homeland Security allows the MR. SKEVINZSKAVAs of this world to sow their Wild Oats--spreading STD's such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and diphtheria--among our delicate Fanny's.

This is one of the best classical movies I've seen! Bette Davis is my favorite movie star! Love her! Claude Raines is also exceptionally great! It is so true to life about women aging a accepting it gracefully, especially women that were once very beautiful. I guess I saw myself in it somewhat, but not as vain as Bette Davis' character. Interesting how Johnny Mitchell fell instantly in love with her daughter & had just been professing his love to Bette. Later her daughter kinda told her off for the way she treated her all of her life, but in a nice, firm, tactful way! Still I loved it. It earned my 10 stars

A heartbreaking story of vanity, greed, and love. It would have been an ever richer experience had it not been censored by the War Department during WW II. The original script was also a commentary about anti-Semitism. Skeffington is a Jew. His beautiful wife,as well as her pre-marital suitors, humiliate Skeffington as the suitors continue to court her, unabated, even after the wedding. Undoubtedly, the anti-Semitism of the era was an element of the disrespect so many of the other characters show toward Skeffington. Yet the War Dept. required that aspect of the plot to be cut, since much of our public publicity campaign against the Nazis was based on their anti-Semitism, and the censors determined that showing anti-Semitism in the US would undercut the message the War Department was conveying about the Third Reich. Despite this, it's a well-crafted film, funny in places, heartbreaking in others. Rains' greatest performance. Not Bette Davis's best, but her grudging transformation from vain beauty to an ugly hag with no friends who finally recognizes real love is a real tear jerker--in the best sense.

No doubt about it, Fanny Trellis Skeffington is a despicable character. She's the kind of person who in real life would be the kind you love to hate, totally self centered and unabashedly out for herself. It's the kind of role an actress like Bette Davis can work wonders with, and in this one, she's remarkable. Perhaps as much as the acting, I was also struck by the competence of the makeup department in aging her character, along with those family members and suitors who endured the story arc throughout the decades. The striking thing however as I think about it now, is how the concept of 'old' has been redefined from the 1940's to the present. Fanny and her contemporaries considered themselves old at fifty (maybe even older at half a century). To my mind, the fifty year old Fanny looked like she could have been seventy, and even then, not looking nearly as good as someone like say, Raquel Welch who turns seventy this year.Being the insufferable snob that she was, Fanny does get her comeuppance in sufficient doses, though too late in life to have made her remorse meaningful. Dr. Byles is dead on when he orders Fanny to "Sit down, I haven't earned my fee yet". You know, that kind of honesty might be grounds for a lawsuit today for making the patient feel bad. But for sheer brutal honesty, there's namesake daughter Fanny (Marjorie Riordan) who cuttingly remarks "Have I a mother"?, excoriating Davis's character for her inability to be beautiful AND a mom.Claude Rains turns in another superb performance; he earned my admiration a long time ago for that great turn in "Casablanca" as Captain Renault. Funny, but he looked older and heavier here than in the Casablance gig, but then again, I go back to my earlier statement about how the actors wore their characters.Fans of Davis and Rains should be reasonably pleased by their work here, each manages a fair amount of screen time and displays their craft well. One of the things I found interesting was the way the picture employed the device, one might consider it a maguffin, of the character frequently mentioned but never seen, Miss Fanny's oft dismissed luncheon companion Janie Clarkson.