Performance, Pathos, and “The Old Maid” (1939)

The classic Bette Davis film is a master class in the power of performance.

It’s no secret that 1939 was something of a golden year for classical Hollywood. This was the year, after all, that saw the release of such iconic films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and The Women. It also was the year that saw the release of what I personally think is one of Bette Davis’s finest films, The Old Maid.

The film is pure 1930s maternal melodrama. Bette Davis stars as Charlotte, a young woman hopelessly smitten with Clem (played by Davis’ frequent co-star George Brent), who has been left brokenhearted by Charlotte’s cousin Delia (Miriam Hopkins), who has married another man. After “comforting” Clem on the eve of his departure to fight in the Civil War, Charlotte gives birth to a daughter, Tina. Ultimately, Delia (seemingly motivated by compassion and altruism) brings Tina and Charlotte to live in her own home, where Tina grows up thinking that Charlotte is her aunt. Charlotte, desperate to keep the truth from her daughter, adopts a persona of a stern old maid, often verging on cruel. All the while, she’s tortured by the knowledge that she can never really be the mother that she so desperately yearns to be.