"Jezebel" Tackles a Pandemic: "[The 1938 movie] was fairly accurate for its day, although, in the end, paints a somewhat varnished perspective [of the yellow fever outbreak].".

AuthorGehring, Wes D.
PositionENTERTAINMENT - Movie review

IF ONE HAD WRITTEN about Bette Davis' "Jezebel" (1938) a year ago, it would have required taking an intellectual off-ramp to stop and ponder the many options. For example, this was her early Warner Bros, consolation prize for not making the Scarlett O'Hara final cut for "Gone with the Wind" (1939). However, by winning her second Best Actress Academy Award (after 1935's "Dangerous"), this offered another sweet revenge writing alternative--cementing her position as the actress of the decade.

After all, as acerbic critic David Thomson suggested of Davis--who, starting with "Jezebel," earned Best Actress Oscar nominations five years in a row--how could a "far-from-pretty" woman with those "pulsing eyes" not be a better actress if she kept winning awards from those less intense Hollywood beauties? Plus, for much of "Jezebel," she gave her largely feminine audience just what they wanted, playing a woman one loved to hate--a flute thin self-centered shrew. Indeed, her "Dangerous" Oscar was assumed to have been a makeup prize for not winning as the barbed-wire tongued whore who torments that nice Englishman (Leslie Howard) in "Of Human Bondage" (1934). Davis was not one to keep her emotions in a safety deposit box.

However, that was last year. The coronavirus can now even provide a gut-punch to "Jezebel." The story revolves around the spoiled Southern belle Julie (Davis). She is about to be married to the young successful banker Preston "Pres" Dillard (Henry Fonda). The year is 1852. Pres' work periodically takes him to New York for the railway concerns he represents, a key plot point.

The movie begins on the day of the Olympus Ball in New Orleans, the social event of the year. Unmarried women are expected to wear virginal white. When business keeps Pres from accompanying Julie on a shopping trip, she decides her revenge will be to wear a brazen red dress to the ball. During Pres' business meeting, his close friend and banking associate Dr. Livingston (Donald Crisp) expresses worry over recent yellow fever victims and a possible repeat of the large-scale outbreak of 1830. Pres supports Livingston, but their concerns are minimized by being told this is nothing to worry about. Pres' comment about cleaning up the unsanitary conditions in the city are poo-pooed as unnecessary and perhaps a product of his being up North too much.

With the business concluded, but before the Ball, it is made clear that Pres and Julie's relationship long has been...

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