The Bad Sister *** (1931, Sidney Fox, Conrad Nagel, Humphrey Bogart, Zasu Pitts, Bette Davis, Charles Winninger. Slim Summerville) – Classic Movie Review 2693

Director Hobart Henley’s 1931 drama is fondly recalled as the moment Bette Davis makes her movie début, aged 23, as the good, shy younger sister Laura Madison in this second remake of Booth Tarkington’s 1913 novel The Flirt, previously filmed as silent movies in in 1916 and 1922.

Sidney Fox (aged 19) also makes her film début, and makes a greater impression than Davis, but then she has the far more flamboyant and much larger bad girl part as older sister Marianne, the daughter of local businessman Mr Madison (Charles Winninger).

There’s an early role too for Humphrey Bogart as Valentine Corliss, the con man who arrives in the sisters’ small town looking for fresh victims to swindle. Valentine targets Marianne but abandons her after their wedding night in a sleazy hotel and she returns home to beg forgiveness from her jilted fiancé Dr Dick Lindley (Conrad Nagel). Seeing Marianne for who she really is, Dr Dick turns his attentions to her sister Laura.

Even with these actors on the way up and this interesting history, the movie is just a well-crafted but routine Universal studio product drama of the day with a good cast working hard and a screenplay (by Raymond L Schrock, Tom Reed and Edwin Knopf) still in need of a bit of fixing.

Though no great shakes, the film itself is entirely watchable and amusing in its short running time of 68 minutes. It’s fascinating to see the young Davis and Bogart, and interesting to see Fox.

Of course it turned out that the two actresses would have been perfect in each others’ roles. The obvious solution to the film’s and the studio’s problems was immediately under the executives’ eyes. But could they see it? No. They would not trust Davis as a star.

Also in the cast are Emma Dunn, Bert Roach and David Durand.

Davis consulted with studio makeup chief Jack Pierce, who told her: ‘Your eyelashes are too short, hair’s a nondescript colour, and mouth’s too small. A fat little Dutch girl’s face, and a neck that’s too long.’ He suggested different lipstick and using eye shadow.

Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, had considered terminating Davis’s employment with the studio, but The Bad Sister’s cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had ‘lovely eyes’ and would be suitable for the film.

Davis’s nerves worsened when she overheard Carl Laemmle Jr, the Chief of Production, say to another executive that she had ‘about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville’, one of her male co-stars in the film, which turned out not to be a success. After the film was shot, Laemmle Jr said: ‘Can you imagine some poor guy going through hell and high water and ending up with her at the fade-out?’

Davis cried all the way home after attending a preview of the film in San Bernardino with her mother.

Nevertheless, four years later Davis’s film career was taking off and Fox’s had already finished. Fox died at the age of 30 in 1942 of an overdose of sleeping pills, though her death was officially ruled an accident.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2693

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