Bette Davis as Twins Times Two! Tonight on TCM

Great Carol Burnett spoof, "A Swiped Life":

There's a DVD edition of "Dead Ringers" with hilarious commentary from Charles Busch, but unfortunately he's constantly interrupted by the pedantic and dreary Boze Hadleigh.

It's still worth listening to just to hear Busch break up when Bette sings "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," and again when she grasps the red-hot poker to prevent her from being able to sign checks and yowls in pain.

For those "Baby Jane" people, there's this, up first at 8 pm.

I wish Joan had done a movie playing twins.

If she had we would still be watching and quoting from it to this day.

Thanks OP - added them to my DVR.

I read DEAD RINGER was originally intended to star Lana Turner. It’s one of the few roles I’d have liked to have seen her in.

The original DEAD RINGER was made in Mexico in 1946, starring two Dolores Del Rios. And it is FABULOUSLY stylish.

LA OTRA in a restored (and subtitled) print on rarefilmm.com

Thanks, OP. A Stolen Life is one of my favorite one of her movies.

Joan was never loved as much by gay men as Bette was while they were working.

Joan had some great campy roles, like Crystal in "The Women" and the title role in "Mildred Pierce." But it was recognized by pretty much everyone during their lifetimes (except Joan herself) that Bette was much the better actress, and Davis's intensely mannered style made her more of a gay favorite.

Um, is this the one with Olivia deHavilland as twins? I love the scene where she interprets the ink blots. It’s

[quote] Um, is this the one with Olivia deHavilland as twins?

No, honey: that's "Dark Mirror."

Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland are actually two different people. Their different names should have provided you with a clue.

I rewatched Bette on Dick Cavett last night on YouTube. She's a riot. Her speech and mannerisms were very affected in real life too. It wasn't just her acting style.

Egg ranch?!???

Del Rio's La Otra is on YouTube. She's quite good in it and looks gorgeous.

The wig Bette wore in Dead Ringer was absolutely hideous, and she also wore it in her private life for some time afterward. It was so ugly.

I always called it the Dutch Boy wig and it was quite ugly...

Olivia is such a limited actress that she had to wear name tags for The Dark Mirror to differentiate the sisters.

"From OUTAH SPACE!"

"Yoah not Margaret — you're EDIE!"

And Peter Lawford wrestling with the terrible fake dog head that's attacking him is high camp.

Didn't I play twinsies?...

"A Stolen Life," on the other hand, is a romantic comfort soap. Bette looks great and Glenn is young and hot!

[quote] Bette looks great and Glenn is young and hot!

Well, I knew Glenn was old, but I didn't know just [italic]how[/italic] old until now.

Watched 'Dead Ringer' last night, after recording it on my DVR. WOW - what a movie. Really enjoyed it. It would be great if Hollywood kept making movies like this instead of the Superhero and crappy RomComs they've been flooding the theaters with for the past 25 years.

Hollywood doesn't do camp anymore.

^^No, because camp is high art and requires intelligence.

Paul Henreid acted with Davis twice in the 40s before directing her in "Dead Ringer." They were both born in 1908, were heavy smokers, and Henreid died of a stroke just a couple of years after her.

I don’t know anyone who didn’t want to live in the Cape Cottage on A Stolen Life.

Dane Clark AKA Bernhardt Zanvilevitz was a hot Brooklyn born Jew who graduated from Cornell and St. Johns law, and passed the bar! Yet he worked all kinds of manly-man jobs and is sexy as fuck in this movie.

Henreid's daughter played the maid in DR. She's not very good.

Although Bette praised Walter Brennan in ASL, he was a John Bircher. Can't stand to watch him anymore. Also her previous costar from In This Our Life, Charles Coburn was a racist.

Originally, around 1947 Bette was supposed to be in The African Queen opposite James Mason. She worked briefly with John Huston in ITOL before he was called off to war. She hated location work, and that would have done it for her.

Studios often had actors who somewhat resembled their stars that they could use as "threats", i.e. if you don't do this picture, we'll give to so-and-so". Was Dane Clark a threat to John Garfield?

Dane Clark was the type of male Warners liked who I find obnoxious. The same as John Garfield and James Cagney.

R28, he was a friend of Garfield, and was that from-the-streets-of-New-York type that was very Warners.

[quote]Henreid's daughter played the maid in DR. She's not very good.

I agree 100%. Every scene she was in, she became a distraction. She didn't really act, she stood (usually holding something in her hands) and read off the cue cards (or so it seems). No emotion, no interaction with Davis' character. Rather dull performance.

At least Bette's daughter BD wasn't cast in anymore of Davis' films!

There's a DVD edition of "Dead Ringers" with hilarious commentary from Charles Busch, but unfortunately he's constantly interrupted by the pedantic and dreary Boze Hadleigh.

R2 - Charles told me they were not recorded together. I said he should have shot Boze in the head the way Bette did her sister.

How true about Boze! While Charles Busch is indeed a delight!

I'll tell you who I can't stand talking about classic movies and stars... that shrieking Mario Cantone when he guests on TCM. The worst.

His commentary on The Bad Seed is quite funny too. He does it with Patty McCormack.

I love A Stolen Life. Dane Clarke appears as a sort of poor man’s John Garfield as an artist.

Hey Rick - Have you seen Stolen Face with Lizabeth Scott and Paul Henreid? It is not in your Lizabeth titles and is a dual character role for her. Paul is a plastic surgeon who copies the face of his lost love Lizabeth onto a career criminal lady.

R35 That’s true about Cantone on TCM. And it’s too bad because he’s pretty knowledgeable about the films he programs, but too performative in his commentary. At times, you feel a little sorry for Ben Mankiewicz, who looks like he enjoys Cantone but winces when the conversation turns into longer passages of schtick.

Reply 38, I have not seen "A Stolen Face," but I see it's on Tubi. Will check it out.

Finally watched A Stolen Life. Didn't like it as much as Dead Ringer.

At one time post-war, Jack Warner gave a few people a chance to do their own productions, released through WB. They were given a budget and the ability to hire, within that budget, outside talent. Michael Curtiz had several movies like this (including Romance on the High Seas, and The Unsuspected). He also gave Bette this opportunity (if you look closely at the credits of A Stolen Life, it says "A B. D. production" in small type.

Bette hired as outside talent, Charlie Ruggles, for example, to play her uncle. And Glenn Ford, as her love interest. And Walter Brennan. She originally wanted Henry Fonda, I don't remember why he couldn't do it. She also wanted WB's John Garfield, but settled for Dane Clark.

I think it's interesting that something with much more creative input by Bette was her biggest hit of that WB era.

It's very interesting to hear Bette do A Stolen Life on the Lux Radio Theater playing both twins, live, in front of an audience. She has to act with herself. Since she didn't do different voices for the twin sisters, it's very interesting to hear how she differentiated between the two.

R28 Wasn't it John Mills, not James Mason?

[quote]Finally watched A Stolen Life. Didn't like it as much as Dead Ringer.

I also saw it for the first time on TCM recently. It's played for sincerity and genuine emotion, so it isn't nearly the high-camp hootenanny that "Dead Ringer" is.

1940s actors and their role as producer:

After the U.S. entered WWII, the tax rate was jacked way up to support the war effort. If you made over $250,000, your salary was in the 90% bracket. By producing you could make the income capital gains and pay 75%. Bette claimed what she did for ASL was nothing like being a real producer. It is only my suspicion that the added production duties were too much for an already high-strung person.

Dead Ringer indeed was a Lana Turner reject. Joan Crawford took over Strait-Jacket from Joan Blondell, who had cut herself by falling through a glass partition in her home. A lot of older actresses were offered horror vehicles after the success of Baby Jane.

Favorite line from DR:

"Father died.

A.

wino."

Actually Bette throws the line away. She should have said each word separately, as she sometimes did.

More distracting than her Dutch Boy wig are the Lucille Ball-hidden bands holding up her face. And one area where Crawford was better is that she wore makeup on her neck. Bette's unmade-up neck sticks out too much.

Time magazine:

"Exuberantly uncorseted, her torso looks like a gunnysack full of galoshes. Coarsely cosmeticked, her face looks like a U-2 photograph of Utah."

It's amazing how much OLDER the classic movie stars looked when they were middle-aged compared to movie stars today. In Dead Ringer, Bette Davis was 56, looked 70 and was playing 40!

Background on Davis's production company at Warner Bros.

Nice to see from this article that Davis and Ford sort of made up in the end (Bette wasn't happy about how she was treated by him on Pocketful of Miracles and as I recall, called him a "shitheel").

By the way, my dad told me he remembered seeing A Stolen Life when it came out, he remembered the drowning scene where one sister tries to save the other, and the ring comes off in her hand. My dad was 20 or 21 at the time, and he never went to Bette Davis pictures. But after the war movies were doing great business, and my dad had just come out of the Navy. Everyone was seeing this one, for some reason.

You could count the clean living stars of Hollywood's golden era on one hand! Stars worked harder and played harder back then. Chain smoking, booze and dope, all helped stars work 6 days a week, showing up for makeup and hair at 5 a.m., several films a year, not one. Extra aging points if the star was a sun worshiper.

r50 the stars today still drink and smoke and do drugs. They just try to hide it.

It's kind of shocking how many actors and actresses are smokers. If you've ever been at an awards show, party etc. you see them sneak off to an enclosed outdoor area to puff away. Also, restaurant and bar patios.

Shocking.

totally shocking r53

It's shocking in the context of how they do endless publicity about fitness and diet and all that shit but behind the scenes they smoke and drink and do drugs.

Yes, it's hypocritical.

Whatever.

R57 I was agreeing with you. The hypocrisy is shocking. You made me see it.

No, r58, you aren't agreeing with me because i simply don't care.

R59 Fine, you seem like a psycho anyway.

Bette was a testament to indulging every vice.

She smoked and drank right until the end.

Remember how River Phoenix was depicted as a vegan hippie boy? And then he died of a drug overdose on a sidewalk in front of Johnny Depp's club.

River really was a vegan. He wouldn't wear a leather belt. He was also on drugs. Makes no sense but there are other people like this in entertainment. Macrobiotic diet and snorting coke. Or drunk. I've known people like this.

I recently rewatched “Ronger” for the first time in decades, because I recalled enjoying it as a gayling. It seemed pretty tacky and poorly made to me this time around, considering that it was made by Bette’s star-era studio, Warner Brothers. I thought Henried’s daughter was fine as the maid—her actions and lines were peripheral to the main characters’ action and storyline, and so she came across behaving and speaking as a wealthy person’s maid would, IMO.

Can’t believe they couldn’t do better as a bloated, has-been Peter Lawford as the “affair” love-interest. And the fabulous Estelle Winwood deserved more screen time than what they gave her! Bette looked bloated.

^”Ringer”

You have to be in the mood but Dead Ringer is entertaining. It's not trying to be something it's not. Bette is fascinating to watch.

"Dead Ringer" was the final movie for the wonderful Jean Hagen, hilarious as Lina Lamont in "Singin' in the Rain."

Dead Ringer was based on "La Otra" a 1945 Mexican drama starring Dolores del Río.

In1986 it was re-remade as "Killer in the Mirror" as a television movie starring Ann Jillian.

Oooh, Ann Jillian in a Dead Ringer remake? How did this one get past Loni Anderson and her string of rotten made for TV remakes?

What's scary about Peter Lawford is that he's just 41 in "Dead Ringer" and indeed looks puffy and dissolute. Bette was 56 at the time and looked at least 10 years older. As I mention in my review, Bette had the guts to play the dead sister on the morgue slab with zero makeup and looking 20 years older! Imagine Joan or Lana agreeing to that...

I think Bette just looks like Bette. It wasn't common for actresses in their mid-50s to play leads in movies. She was no spring chicken. And they didn't have the work done they have today.

Glenn Ford was so hot in A Stolen Life. There's something about him in his 1940s films that has a very contemporary sexual vibe.

I remember one review of this film said that her face looks like a relief map of Utah.

Bette's wig was so fucking ugly.

Indeed, R74..... R47

The booze and cigs aged Bette HARD.

The reviewer that compared her face to a map of Utah did go on to give her a positive review for her acting, however.

Bette Davis had such magnetism and screen presence. Even when she was in a shit movie with a shit script you couldn't take your eyes off of her. That's a STAR, baby.

The booze and cigs aged all the old time stars hard. Without all her drag, Joan's face didn't look much better. Gary Cooper and Clark Gable looked ancient when they died at 60. Ty Power when he died at 44 and Alan Ladd at 50. The few who didn't live that kind of life aged best, Loretta Young, Maureen O'Hara, etc. They were few and far between!

Funny how Lauren Bacall looked good for years despite being a smoker.

This 1963 docu is built around the making of Dead Ringer with lots of behind the scene footage.

R82 I used to watch that show--narrated by Joseph Cotten--it was a series. It was pretty old when I used to see it, I don't remember when. Was it directed by Jack Haley, Jr.? (That's Entertainment)

But r80 celebrities still smoke and drink, they just do it on the DL. It's really advances in cosmetic surgery and dermatology that have made the difference.

Yes, Jack Haley, Jr. was the producer of the series and directed 22 episodes.

Brad Pitt looks like a drunk, tbh.

R85 Thank you. Is that Bronco Billy, btw?

I could never remember the name of this show.

Haley had a formula, he used it in That's Entertainment, also--I can't really explain it but it was more like the clips would be put together to serve a premise, but the premise was sometimes simplistic or slightly inaccurate. In That's Entertainment!, he shows Rogers and Astaire in The Barkleys of Broadway, and one of the star narrators says something like: "When they starred in a series of musicals..." As if Barkleys was one of that series (for RKO), rather than a reunion 10 years later at MGM. This is typical of Haley. While you watch the movie, you're either correcting things in your mind (movie buffs), or you're unaware and oblivious (the rest of the audience).

(He's very good at making the show or movie flow, and making it entertaining, though.)

*was

Also says Kelly and Sinatra made a series of musicals (they made three--one in 1945, two in 1949), and "here's a number from one of their best", Take Me Out to the Ball Game, which is generally regarded as the least of the three.

As a kid I LOVED watching Hollywood and the Stars on TV in the mid-60s. It was my introduction to old Hollywood and was rare in its time for its interest in that history, years before the nostalgia craze kicked in around 1970.

My local station had it on in the 80s, at some odd time.

Stars certainly like their vices today. But back in the day, cigs heavily promoted as part of social norms. Stars like Bogie, Burton, Robert Taylor, etc. smoked 4 to 5 packs a day. And heavy drinking had become socially acceptable after Prohibition, which had only caused people to drink more. And popping dolls, to make all those movies. Yeah, nobody was making exercise videos and running off to have their faces filled with junk back then, either. But it was definitely a work hard/play hard era...

Robert Taylor looked pretty good as he aged, considering.

Really? I think Robert Taylor aged horribly, looking way older than his age by the early 1940s. Of that generation, only Cary Grant comes to mind as a man who aged gracefully.

Another aging issue was the heavy pancake makeup they all, even the men, had to wear, baking into their skin under heavy lights for hours each day.

Start at 9:15. He was around 52 here. (Lili Palmer was around 49). I think he aged pretty well compared to some others.