. . . 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 really is bad. Very bad. Fanny Skeffington (Davis) is considered the greatest beauty of her era. Once you stop laughing at that you will probably love the rest. It just gets worse and worse. The ending feels like a cross between Sunset Blvd and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Davis' high pitched monotone is her excuse for acting this time. Hey, Scarlett O'Hara was a horrible bitch, too but she was at least an interesting and sometimes lovable one. Fanny Skeffington is a bore. At the same time, every moment Rains has on screen is memorable. He had to see that his style of acting would steal this movie from a diva. At the same time, this long and rather slow moving movie is not boring. And it just keeps shocking us with its awfulness that we are on the edge of our seats to see what next horror awaits. It is definitely a freak show.

This one is all Bette Davis' movie. As good a role as Claude Rains plays, he's the anchor of the film, he's secondary to Davis' performance.A lady back in the first world war, in her mid 20's, thinks she's the bee's knees. All the men come to court her but she has no interest in their affections. She just likes the attention. Her brother gets in trouble with stocks selling/buying and she proceeds to bail him out by marrying his rich boss...Mr. Skeffington.From their what you get is a woman who cares very little for the love her husband gives her, its just what he can give her and their stature in society. Problem is that he's a real nice guy and genuinely cares for her. Her main concern, her vanity.Time takes it toll through the years and her vanity and their marriage fails and she begins to see what she was really about throughout her life...her looks/appearance.This is not even close to my favorite Bette Davis film but she does give a winner of a performance. She's as "Bette Davis" in this film as she is in any other of her films. For a long melodrama, you can't go wrong with this one.

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.