Old Acquaintance

Another of the movies that's been sitting on my DVR for a couple of months is Old Acquaintance. I don't think this one is coming up soon, but it's on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, which is why I sat down to watch it recently and do a post on it.

Bette Davis plays Kit Morrow, a woman who's written a critically successful novel in 1924. She's returning to her smallish home town to be fêted and do a presentation on the novel, and her childhood best friend Millie Drake (Miriam Hopkins) is going to pick her up at the train station. Millie stayed behind to marry Preston (John Loder) and do the wealthy bored housewife thing -- and she's clearly jealous of Kit. She decides that she's going to start writing novels herself, although she has different ideas about what to write than Kit.

Fast forward eight or nine years. Kit lives a nice life doing the New York writer thing, currently having a play about to open while her latest "serious" novel is on the back burner. Millie's first, trashy novel was a big success, and she's been cranking out similar trashy stuff on a roughly annual basis like Sidney Sheldon or Danielle Steel in more recent times. She's also got a young daughter Deirdre (nicknamed Deedee), while Kit has remained unmarried and childless.

But Millie is still somehow jealous of Kit, something that's always bothered Preston, who has remained somewhat of a background figure while his wife has become the successful one in the family. He's resentful of this and has fallen in love with Kit, but while Kit is certainly a friend of his, she knows that it wouldn't do any good to start a relationship with Preston. So Preston decides that he's just going to walk out on Millie and file for divorce. This sends Millie over the deep end.

Or should I say it sends Miriam Hopkins over the deep end. Fast forward another nine or so years, and it's about 1942 (the movie was released in 1943). World War II is on, and Kit is on a fund-raising drive for the American Red Cross, while Millie is still a successful author. Kit has a guy who's interested in her, Rudd Kendall (Gig Young), but Kit isn't quite interested mostly because of the age difference, since she doesn't want to be a burden on a younger guy.

Who should hear the latest radio benefit drive but Preston, who's now a major in the Army? Having heard it, he decides that he wants to see Kit again, which gives Kit the opportunity to bring an adult Deedee (Dolores Moran) into her father's life. Millie finds out about all this, and starts engaging in hilarious histrionics.

Old Acquaintance is one of those "women's pictures" which were a big thing in Hollywood back in the 1930s and 1940s, with melodramatic story lines that might make a lot of guys crings. Indeed, as drama, I didn't find myself caring for it all that much. It's not exactly bad, but I didn't think of it as anything special.

What does make this movie a must-see is the performance of Miriam Hopkins. She and Davis had starred together in The Old Maid four years earlier, and supposedly that absolutely hated each other. So Hopkins must have wanted to upstage Davis or something, which would explain why she's so hilariously over the top, especially in the third act. That, or she saw some of Davis' rants and decided to emulate them. It results in a famous scene of Davis grabbing Hopkins and literally shaking some sense into her. It wasn't the intent that people find this stuff funny, but I certainly was laughing at it.

Old Acquaintance doesn't necessariy succeed in doing what it set out to do, but boy is it still a fun ride.