Product Details

• Actors: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Donald Crisp, Jane Bryan
• Directors: Edmund Goulding
• Writers: Casey Robinson, Edith Wharton, Zoe Akins
• Producers: Hal B. Wallis, Henry Blanke
• Format: NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 95 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301973313
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #82,462 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE CLASH OF THE TITANS..., December 16, 2001

By 

Lawyeraau (Balmoral Castle) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Old Maid [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Superlative soaper in which two cousins, Charlotte (Bette Davis) and Delia (miriam Hopkins) have the misfortune to love the same man, Clem (George Brent), with lifetime repercussions for both.

The film begins around the time of the Civil War. Clem returns home, only to find that the woman he loves, Delia, is getting married that same day. She is marrying a rich banker and, though she loves Clem, a ne'er do well, she wants security, so she goes through with the marriage. Seeing and seizing an opportunity, Charlotte declares herself to Clem, telling him how she has always loved him, as he goes off to fight in the war.

Duting the war, Charlotte manages to hook up with Clem long enough to get pregnant. While away, ostensibly to recover from an illness, she has Clem's out of wedlock baby, unbeknownst to the very married Delia. Clem, in the meantime is killed in action. When Charlotte returns home, she converts her stables into a foundling home for war orphans. Among them is a special favorite named Tina.

Charlotte decides to marry her cousin's brother-in-law. On the day of her wedding, Charlotte confesses to Delia what happened between her and Clem and tells her the truth about Tina. Delia, insanely jealous over this, puts a crimp in Charlotte's wedding plans. and the wedding never takes place.

Charlotte remains single and becomes a bitter and formidable woman whom Tina knows as Aunt Charlotte. Delia, meanwhile, has Tina call her "Mummy", much to Charlotte's chagrin. Delia is having the ultimate revenge, as she has never forgiven Charlotte for her amatory trespass. As Tina grows into womanhood, she speaks disparagingly to Charlotte, saving her love and adoration for "Mummy". As Tina approaches the age at which young women marry, Charlotte makes the ultimate sacrifice for her daughter. It is a sacrific that Tina will never know, but one that will allow Tina to have the hapiness that Charlotte never had.

Miriam Hopkins and Bette Davis give wonderful performances, each compelling in its own way. Charlotte's appearance toward the end of the film is a caricature of the proverbial old maid, while Delia remains youthful and vibrant. Undoubtedly, Charlotte's appearance is a result of her suffering, knowing that her own flesh and blood loves another, as a child love's its mother. This is a film that will long be remembered by the viewer for the performances given by these two divas.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Bette Davis's greatest films, April 30, 2002

By 

Simon Davis (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Old Maid [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I often think that "The Old Maid" has been unfairly forgotten by film historians and tends to get overshadowed by the other famous Davis vechicles of this time like "Dark Victory", "Now Voyager" and "The Letter".

Bette Davis has never been better than in the role of Charlotte Lovell a young lady who by one indiscretion is doomed to spend her life as a bitter old maid not being able to be a real mother to her daughter who turns to others for affection and guidance.

The film is justly famous as the first of two on screen teamings of Davis and Miriam Hopkins which resulted in fireworks on a daily basis as the two locked horns on every aspect of the production making it a nightmare assignment for talented director Edmund Goulding. The behind the scenes story of this production makes very amusing reading as two notorius scene stealers and grand dames went into daily war with each other. Amazingly this terrible tension however never shows on screen and the two women have a terrific screen chemistry that glows in one scene after another.

"The Old Maid" is a beautiful story that is nevertheless one full of tragedy, regret and pent up emotions. Davis's character has a brief affair with George Brent's character after Hopkins character passes him over to marry into money. The result is a child which Miriam Hopkins adapts and raises as her own . "Tina" the child, spends her youth calling Davis "Aunt Charlotte" and never does find out the truth about who her mother actually is. It is the stuff that great soaps are made of but the two actresses here carry it off beautifully and raise the story to great art.

George Brent, so often a co star in Davis vechicles here plays Clem Spencer, the object of both women's affection who is killed in the civil war. Brent's character dies less than half way through the film but his presence remains front and centre for the rest of the film and largely controls the lives of both women. He is very effective in his role and appears less stiff than he does in alot of Warner Bros 1940's vechicles. The great character actor Donald Crisp lends his usual dignified presence to this production. Crisp, an exceptional actor, I dont think ever gave a bad performance and here plays the family Doctor who witnesses over a number of years all the tragedy and heartbreak experienced by the two women and is the only one , with the exception of Hopkins's Delia, who knows Tina's real parentage.

The overraul look of the film is lavish and I feel it resembles an MGM production in some ways more than a Warner Bros one. Attention to sets and in particular costumnes and lighting is first class and in reality Bette Davis, long thought of as no great beauty in Hollywood here looks terrific and in the scene where she is in her own Wedding dress for her marriage which doesn't take place, she looks stunning.

"The Old Maid" has so many wonderfully touching moments and the one that never fails to move me is the concluding moment of the film after Tina's own wedding has taken place and where finally Delia and Charlotte are able to unite and put aside past grievances and regrets and walk arm in arm back through the front door which closes behind them. Never fails to bring great emotion forward!!!

As a less well known film of Bette Davis I know you will be very moved by this excellent production which I would rate among her top 5 performances.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Davis triumphs in classic tearjerker, May 15, 2002

By 

Matthew Horner (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Old Maid [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This melodrama / tearjerker is fairly typical of Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s - a basically decent woman breaks the moral code of her day and pays dearly for it. The story is interesting, but its biggest asset is Bette Davis' rather subdued performance as Charlotte Lovell, the woman who pays the price. Made in 1939, the film is from Davis' golden period. She was nominated for an Academy Award every year from 1939 to 1943. While her work here is strong, she received no special acclaim for it, possibly because the role is so similar to the one she played in the superior "Jezebel", for which she won an Oscar in 1939.

The movie begins during the Civil War. Socialite Delia Lovell [Miriam Hopkins] is about to be wed, and her cousin Charlotte is in attendance. When Delia learns that the man she promised to marry two years earlier is in town, she sends Charlotte to beg him not to make a scene. The guy is one Charlotte is secretly in love with, and she winds up consoling him in a very intimate fashion. Several years pass. The man has been killed in the war, and Charlotte is running a home for war orphans. When Delia learns that one of the children is actually one Charlotte had out of wedlock and that the father was the dead soldier, she destroys Charlotte's chance to marry a very prominent man. In a cruel twist of fate, Charlotte's daughter grows up in Delia's home and is led to believe that her mother is her aunt.

Bette Davis was a rather unusual star for her time because she was also a consummate actress. As such, she demanded roles in which glamour and beauty were often cast aside. Stunningly pretty in the first part of the movie, she spends the rest of it heavily made up to look like a dowdy old maid aunt. It's a startling transformation. By contrast, her co-star, Ms. Hopkins, typical of female stars at the time, barely ages at all. Hopkins actually gives a sensitive, studied performance, but, because of her determination to portray her character as realistically as possible, Davis totally dominates the picture.

The photography and the sets are first-rate. The script seems a little truncated, and I wonder if the print we have today is an edited one that the studio made for second run engagements. [This was a common practice in those days.] The score by Max Steiner is not one of his best and relies heavily on stock music, such as Old My Darling Clementine and Wagner's Wedding March. But when would he have had the time to compose one of his full, lush scores for the movie? He worked on at least a dozen movies that year. One of those was "Gone With the Wind".