Ranking Bette Davis's Performances

In honor of the release of a restored version of Now,Voyager, The Guardian ranked 20 of Bette's best performances. 

1.  All About Eve
2. Now, Voyager
3. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
4. Dark Victory 
5. The Little Foxes
6. Marked Woman
7. Jezebel
8. Dead Ringer     
9. The Letter
10. Dangerous
11. Mr. Skeffington
12. Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte
13. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
14. Of Human Bondage
15. The Man Who Came to Dinner
16. All This, and Heaven Too
17. Juarez
18. The Scapegoat
19. The Star
20. Death on the Nile

Here is my list.

1. The Letter
2. All About Eve
3. Now, Voyager
4. The Little Foxes
5. Jezebel
6. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
7. Dark Victory 
8. Of Human Bondage
9. Juarez
10. The Petrified Forest
11. Marked Woman
12. Dangerous
13. Mr. Skeffington
14. All This, and Heaven Too
15. Bordertown 
16. Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte
17. The Star
18. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
19. The Man Who Came to Dinner
20. The Cabin in the Cotton

Selecting my top 20 wasn't too difficult, but ranking them was. I was surprised at how low Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian ranked The Letter (#9 compared to my #1.) I also favor earlier films (The Petrified Forest, Bordertown, and The Cabin in the Cotton) while Bradshaw prefers later films (Dead Ringer, The Scapegoat, and Death on the Nile.) We both selected the same seven films in the Top 10. 

We can both agree that Bette Davis is a wonderful actress. 

8-2-21 Edited to add: I think I was wrong to exclude The Old Maid  from this list. We see Bette as a young woman in love, a mother hiding her illegitimate child away, a bitter spinster aunt, and a woman touched by a lovely gesture from the daughter who doesn't know their relationship.

My new 20: 

1. The Letter
2. All About Eve
3. Now, Voyager
4. The Little Foxes
5. Jezebel
6. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
7. Dark Victory 
8. Of Human Bondage
9. Juarez
10. The Petrified Forest
11. Marked Woman
12. Dangerous
13. Mr. Skeffington
14. All This, and Heaven Too
15. Bordertown 
16. Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte
17. The Star
18. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
19. The Old Maid
20. The Man Who Came to Dinner

I bumped The Cabin in the Cotton  out of the Top 20, added The Old Maid, and moved The Man Who Came to Dinner to #20.

TCM Neo-Noir: Body Heat 1981

Last Sunday, Jeff and I watched Body Heat. I think I saw it when it first came out. I definitely recorded it from a cable showing, but I haven't seen it in years. 

When I first saw it, I wasn't as interested  in or as knowledgeable about noir as I am now. I saw the film as a worthy successor to the great noir classic Double Indemnity. The plot outlines are similar. A femme fatale ensnares a man to kill her husband. 

Both women are confident enough in their sexuality to seduce a man to murder for them. Kathleen Turner's Matty Walker is even more evil than Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity. Phyllis was quick to spot Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) as a sap and use him to get rid of her husband. All it took was "a honey of an anklet." Matty actually seeks out Ned Racine (William Hurt) for his mediocre legal skills. 

I also saw a few similarities to The Letter in Body Heat: specifically a masterful use of music, heat, shadows, and wind chimes. 

A strong supporting cast rounds out the film. I especially liked Ted Danson as Ned's dancing friend and assistant deputy prosecutor. 

Body Heat could do something that Double Indemnity could not: its femme fatale succeeded. The last shot of the film shows Matty achieving her ambition: to be rich and live in an exotic land. Hollywood's Production Code ensured that Phyllis had to be punished. 

An Evening of Stories

Tonight I participated in a zoom reading of stories with some of the writers from my class. It was fun to listen to the stories (for me a second or third time.) We had 43 attendees. The reading lasted about 75 minutes. 

We didn't have any glitches. A few minutes after I finished reading, a helicopter flew to and landed at Norwalk Hospital. It got quite loud for about two minutes, and then Lola started barking. I was so relieved that it didn't happen while I was reading!

We have a talented group of writers in our class. It was nice to share our work. 

A Thunderstorm

We've had a lot of rain this month.  Lola doesn't do well with thunderstorms, like many dogs. One evening last week, we cuddled on the couch during a period of thunder and lightning.

Last night I was reading in bed and saw that Lola seemed agitated. She heard the thunder before we did. I lifted her onto the bed, she jumped off, went into her cubbyhole (a nice wooden crate with the door removed) came out again. After I turned off the light, I felt her nose on my arm, and placed her on the bed again. 

By then, it was raining harder, with thunder and lightning, and she was shaking. She snuggled close to me, and I pet her until she calmed down. 

It reminded me of the thunderstorm that happened a few days after she came here. We were glad that she sensed we would be there for her. 

We always will be. 

My Three

Some say that bad things come in threes. When Jeff and I headed out to the gym this morning, I turned to him and said, "I'm not driving; I have a flat tire." 

A few hours later, I pulled up the stem to close the drain in the half bath. Well, it closed the drain but disconnected the stem from the stopper. So the drained is closed, for now. I wish I were handy.

When I went outside to meet the AAA rep to change my tire, I broke my flip flop. 

Annoying, but I'm glad it wasn't three worse things. 

A Summer Saturday

We've had a few beautiful days after several days of heat and humidity. I suggested we go to Cisco Brewers in Stamford--it has a dog-friendly outdoor area. First we made a stop at Oyster Shell Park for Lola. 

Cisco has a seat yourself, get your own food and drink thing. I got confused because they had drink tickets--I didn't realize you could just pay cash. I created an online account but it stalled. Hours later, I realized that I had gotten an email and had to confirm my account from there. D'oh. Jeff figured out we could use cash so we went on from there. We ate a lobster roll, a pulled pork sandwich, and chicken tacos. The best part was a live band who played a variety of songs. The highlights for us were Johnny B. Goode and The Weight. 

On the way home, we stopped at Tilley Pond Park in Darien. We took a short walk and I saw these young geese.

Not the best picture, but it reminded me of the last time the three of us were there.

Starring Barbara Stanwyck

TCM showed a series of old (early to mid 1930's) Barbara Stanwyck movies last week. Here's a summary.

Illicit 1931: Ann (Barbara Stanwyck) and Dick (James Rennie) are in love, but Barbara is afraid marriage will kill their romance. But people are starting to talk--they were seen weekending in Connecticut! Dick's father convinces them to marry and they become bored with each other. Ultimately love prevails. Watching a scene where Dick sneaks in late after being seen with an old flame, I suddenly realized that this was an earlier version of the Bette Davis film Ex-Lady. I didn't like either film: both suffer from a weak male lead. It's hard to understand why Barbara and Bette are so in love. 

Baby Face 1933: This is the best of the four movies I watched. Lily Powers is working in her father's speakeasy, harassed by a bunch of drunks. The only decent customer Cragg lends her a book by Nietzsche and tells her to use men, not let them use her. Stanwyck is brilliant in this scene; you see the exact moment when she understands and decides what to do. The cast is good: John Wayne appears as one of Lily's many conquests. Theresa Harris has one of her best parts as Lily's friend who later acts as her maid. 

The Secret Bride 1934: I wanted to watch this film to see Stanwyck working with Warren William. She is the governor's daughter and he is the attorney general. When the governor is accused of taking a bribe, they have to keep their marriage a secret while they try to exonerate the governor. It's just an okay film but has a good cast of Warners Brothers regulars. 

The Woman in Red 1935: First a quibble with the title. In the appropriate scenes Stanwyck is the mysterious girl in the red coat, not the woman in red. Stanwyck's shocking behavior in this film includes riding horses for a living and going on a yacht with an old friend without her husband's knowledge (but only because she couldn't reach him.) The film's synopsis focuses on a murder trial, but the film takes too long to get there and gets bogged down in gossip and romantic rivalries. I enjoyed Genevieve Tobin as a gossipy rival. 

Needless to say, Barbara is the best part of all of these films. 

Book 15: Ubik by Philip K. Dick

This was my favorite novel in the book: Four Novels of the 1960s. (The novels are The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? and Ubik. 

Ubik is set in a world of corporate psychic espionage. Joe Chip the main character tests potential inertials--people who can negate the powers of psychics for Runciter Associates. On an assignment on the moon with 11 inertials, the group is attacked and Runcitor is seemingly killed. Everyone else escapes, seemingly unaffected. But are they really?

There's an intriguing plotline concerning cyrogenics. Runciter consults his wife who is in half-life, a kind of  hibernation. I also liked how people had coin-operated apartment doors, showers, refrigerator doors, and the refrigerator contents. Joe Chip is low on money and wouldn't even be able to get out of his apartment without help (and coins) of his associates. 

It can be hard to describe Dick's plots as well as his themes of what it means to be human and what is reality.

Book 14: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the third of four novels in the book I purchased at a library sale. 

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter of escaped androids in the post-apocalyptic San Francisco area. Deckard uses various empathy tests to distinguish androids from humans. His latest assignment will be a tough one: retiring six escaped Nexus-6 model androids who hospitalized his colleague. 

I was fascinated by the use of animals as status symbols: real animals are best, but electronic ones will do in a pinch. People pretend the electronic animals are real to preserve their higher status. The religion--Mercerism--is based around a TV personality. That part doesn't seem as far-fetched as other elements in the novel.

Egrets

I enjoy watching the egrets at Oyster Shell Park and taking photos when I can. Here are some photos I took about two weeks ago. 

As you can see in the second picture, this bird has a different color bill. 

Apparently, the egrets I usually see (at least two at Oyster Shell Park) are snowy egrets. The egret above is a great egret. 

Here are some ways to compare them. I rarely see the birds' feet because they are usually wading, but I will keep my eyes open. 

Lola and I saw this great egret at Bruce Park on Monday. 

What's Going On

I woke this morning to the sound of rain--the remnants of Hurricane Elsa. I suddenly realized the sound wasn't just from rainfall. We have a ceiling leak. This time, it's no fault of our upstairs neighbor. It's a leak from outside. Luckily, someone is already scheduled to fix a similar problem in one of the other condo buildings, so the outside should be repaired this week. 

Nine days since my last post; I had written 22 posts in June, so it's a bit of a surprise. We've been through two heat waves (official--three days long and unofficial--two days long.) Heat waves are good times to get household things done. When Jeff was doing in-home physical therapy, I had rolled up a rug and moved some furniture. I finally put (most) things back where they belong. I also re-hung pictures in the bathroom: I had to remove them when we had the bathroom repainted after the ceiling was repaired. 

On the Fourth, we had my brother over for lunch and went to a barbecue at a friend's house. The next day we went to Sedona Taphouse for its charity steak night. 

It's been three weeks since our last DPF. We missed a week because Lola was sick. It rained the last two weeks. Today doesn't look good, but we may be able to eek out an hour or so. Rain also made us miss out on Yappy Hours at MoCA. The first was rescheduled; yesterday's was allegedly held rain or shine, but we didn't go. Maybe August 1 will be the charm. 

I'm very disappointed with my writing--rather my lack of writing. I only wrote about 1200 words in my novel in about four weeks. My class restarts on Monday. I wish I had more to show. I've got to make some changes.