Blast from the Past
In 1932, Hungarian-born director Michael Curtiz showed John Cromwell a print of his recent film, The Cabin in the Cotton as the latter was interested in casting its lead man, Richard Barthelmess, in a new project he was making, Of Human Bondage.
Instead of Barthelmess, Cromwell’s attention was drawn to Bette Davis, whose portrayal of the lead role brought to mind the slatternly waitress Mildred in W. Somerset Maugham’s 1915 novel “Of Human Bondage”
How Bette Davis Was Cast
Cromwell knew that producer Pandro S. Berman had purchased the rights to Maugham’s story for Leslie Howard and when he suggested Bette Davis would be the perfect co-star, Berman agreed.
Maugham also supported Davis being cast in the role.
Screenwriter Wilson Mizner brought a copy of the Maugham novel to Davis, who was shooting a minor feature, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. After reading it and learning that RKO held the screen rights, she implored Jack L. Warner to lend her to the rival studio.
At the time, however, Warner Brothers had other plans for me. They thought they needed me desperately for such immortal classics as Fashions of 1934, The Big Shakedown, and Jimmy the Gent.” She filmed those as well as Fog Over Frisco but continued to harass Warner, who continued to object because he felt the role of Mildred would destroy her glamorous image, the same reason Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Ann Harding had declined the role.
“An evil heroine such as Mildred was really unheard of in that day. He could not possibly understand any actress who would want to play such a part”, Davis said.
Trading Actresses
Warner finally relented only because Mervyn LeRoy wanted RKO contract player Irene Dunne for Sweet Adeline, the screen adaptation of the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical, and the two studios agreed to trade actresses.
In order to prepare for the role, Davis hired an English housekeeper, who “had just the right amount of cockney in her speech for Mildred. I never told her she was teaching me cockney–fearing she would exaggerate her own accent.”
Leslie Howard: Reluctant Co-Star
But Davis’ efforts failed to impress Leslie Howard who, along with other Britishers, was upse that an American would be cast in the role. “I really couldn’t blame them,” Davis stated.
But Howard’s behavior on the set was distressing: “He would read a book off-stage, all the while throwing me his lines during my close-ups. He became a little less detached when he was informed that the kid was walking away with the picture.”
Ultimately, Howard, in the “gentlemanly understatement” of his performance, served as a counter-balance to Davis’s frequent domination of her less-talented male co-stars.
Production Code: From Syphilis to Tuberculosis
Davis designed her own make-up for the final stages of the doomed Mildred’s illness,.
The cause was changed from syphilis to tuberculosis in order to satisfy the demands of the Hays Production Code.
Under Joseph Breen, it was beginning to expand and rigidly enforce an all-encompassing Production Code. On July 1, 1934, three days after the film was released, the upgraded system of censorship was announced.
“I made it very clear that Mildred was not going to die of a dread disease looking as if a deb had missed her noon nap. The last stages of consumption, poverty, and neglect are not pretty, and I intended to be convincing-looking. We pulled no punches, and Mildred emerged as starkly real as a pestilence.”
Davis said of her performance, “My understanding of Mildred’s vileness–not compassion but empathy– gave me pause. I was still innocent, And yet I understood Mildred’s machinations when in playing her. I was often ashamed of this; no amount of rationalization can change the fact that we are all made up of good and evil.”
Cast
Leslie Howard as Philip Carey
Bette Davis as Mildred Rogers
Frances Dee as Sally Athelny
Kay Johnson as Norah
Reginald Denny as Harry Griffiths
Alan Hale as Emil Miller
Reginald Sheffield as Cyril Dunsford
Reginald Owen as Thorpe Athelny
Desmond Roberts as Dr. Jacobs
Tempe Pigott as Agnes Hollet, Philip’s landlady (uncredited)
