Davis and Bogart Take The Field

Crowded Bills For Jubilee Week at These RKO Theatres. Which Show Would You Choose?

Bad Sister (1931) Gives Glimpse Of Later Legends

This was the infamous one during which production a neophyte Bette Davis heard Carl Laemmle, Jr. remark that she had as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville, BD demoralized for months after. Maybe Junior had a point though, what with Davis' severe dress, thick and dark brows, not to mention a mousey, underdeveloped part (not her fault, obviously). The character ends up looking like dry run for pre-transformation Charlotte Vale in eleven years later Now, Voyager. Bad Sister is one we'd call "rare." I don't know where there's been legit run on TV, certainly none in my memory. The boot I acquired was plenty passable, Bad Sister worth many years' wait to watch. Did I mention that it also features Humphrey Bogart in a very early appearance?

Bogie and BD are admittedly best reasons to watch, but there's also Sidney Fox, plus comic stylings of ZaSu Pitts and Slim Summerville, these definite evidence that it's a Universal pic we're seeing. Aforementioned Carl, Jr. was sweet for Sidney, affianced with her at one point they say, so was free with plum parts whatever her qualification (or lack) to play them. I might have done the same, as Fox was just that, cute as a button and no doubt irresistible to a boy exec not necessarily suited to the job (then explain how he guided so many classic horror films for U). Sidney is more petulant than "bad" as title character, though she does wreak considerable family havoc. Bad Sister's story came from a Booth Tarkington novel, The Flirt, written in 1913. It had been done silent a couple of times, so the situation, if not specifics, were known to viewership. Small town travails could weigh hard on Tarkington folk --- he knew how easily roofs could cave on families barely treading water, the device working even better now that there was Depression afoot. Fictional setting was "Crescent City, Ohio," which doesn't exist, although there is a Crescent, Ohio, and a Crescent City, Florida. Was it safer for movies to weave their small town settings out of whole cloth?

Comedy on tap was Pitts/Summerville. They'd become Universal's notion of Gable and Crawford for hick trade, and were probably better loved than G&C among that constituency. Easy to forget after eighty years how meaningful ZaSu/Slim's names were to ones who liked laughing, their faces a common clay many could mould as if before a mirror. Conrad Nagel is the straight arrow both sisters want. He observed, talked about later, Universal's curt discharging of Davis and Bogart, saying neither had prospects and might as well go back east, such judgment under heading of colossal boner(s). We can in a way sympathize. Neither show particular aptitude for legend status both would attain. Crystal balls weren't issued in any more quantity then than now. Bogart bios tend to skip or glaze over Bad Sister, which makes me suspect authors never saw it. Actually, he's very good in it, not so restless with hands, and relaxed as a "live wire" who turns out to be a confidence heel, scoring an illicit night with Sidney Fox from which she flees into marital embrace with Bert Roach(!). Any Bogart is worth a trackdown, it arguable that Bad Sister was the best, or at least high up, among beginning parts he had.