Mr. Skeffington

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Mr. Skeffington
title card from the film's promotional trailer
Directed by	Vincent Sherman
Produced by	Julius J. Epstein Philip G. Epstein Jack L. Warner
Written by	Elizabeth von Arnim Julius J. Epstein Philip G. Epstein
Starring	Bette Davis Claude Rains
Music by	Franz Waxman Paul Dessau
Cinematography	Ernest Haller
Editing by	Ralph Dawson
Distributed by	Warner Brothers
Release date(s)	1944
Running time	145 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
IMDb profile

Mr. Skeffington is a 1944 film which portrays a woman whose many love affairs cost her the love of her husband and her daughter. It stars Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, George Coulouris and Richard Waring. The movie was adapted by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein from the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim. The movie was directed by Vincent Sherman.

1 Plot
2 Behind the scenes
3 Awards
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Davis as Fanny

In the early 1900s, spoiled Fanny Trellis (Bette Davis) is a renowned beauty, with many suitors. She loves her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) and would do anything to help him. When Fanny learns that Trippy has embezzled money from his stockbroker employer Job Skeffington (Claude Rains), she marries the lovestruck businessman in order to save her brother.

The plot centers around their loveless marriage and Fanny's aging. Skeffington loves Fanny, though she all but ignores him. She enjoys playing the wealthy socialite, stringing along a series of unsuitable and much younger lovers. Lonely, Skeffington finds solace with his secretaries. When Fanny finds out, she divorces him, conveniently ignoring her own behavior. Her daughter, also called Fanny (Marjorie Riordan), prefers her father and begs him to take her with him to Europe. When he agrees, Fanny is relieved to be free of the encumbrance. Fanny has a series of affairs, spending the extremely generous settlement Job has left her and neglecting her daughter, whom she does bother to see for years.

She retains her beauty as she grows older (much to the envy of her women acquaintances), but when she catches diphtheria, it ravages her appearance. In denial, she invites her old lovers (and their wives) to a party. The men are shocked (and the women relieved) by how much Fanny has changed, leaving her distraught. Ironically, her latest young suitor Johnny Mitchell (Johnny Mitchell) falls in love with her plainer, but infinitely kinder daughter, who has returned from Europe because of the rise of the Nazis. They marry and leave Fanny alone.

Skeffington is imprisoned in a German concentration camp for being Jewish, where he is blinded. He survives the war, but is left penniless. However, when he visits Fanny, he is unable to see the effects of old age on her and still sees her as the beauty she once was. This suits a wiser, more compassionate Fanny very well. Job once told Fanny that, "No woman is beautiful until she is loved." Their life-long friend, and Fanny's cousin, George Trellis (Walter Abel) tells Fanny that, at that moment, she has never been more beautiful. And at long last, she realizes the truth of it.

[edit] Behind the scenes

According to the 1989 book Bette & Joan: The Divine Feud by Shaun Considine, Davis was going through incredible personal torments at this time, which was reflected in her treatment of co-stars on this film, and several others at the time, culminating in a vicious personal attack: apparently, while Davis was away from her dressing room, the eyewash she always used after filming the day's scenes, had been poisoned, causing Davis to scream out in pain. Director Vincent Sherman, with whom Davis had once been romantically involved, admitted to the detectives investigating the incident, "If you asked everyone on the set who would have committed such a thing, everyone would raise their hand!" Even Bette Davis herself is quoted as saying, "Only a mother could have loved me at this point in my life."