The first thing you notice about this film is how frequently people smoked back in the day. They smoke in their doctors offices, they smoke while they're gardening, they smoke in their hospital beds just prior to being wheeled in for brain surgery. The next thing you notice is that George Brent, who plays Dr. Frederick Steele, has been levered into a tighter corset than anyone else. That may explain his slightly stiff style here - although he's not an overly dramatic actor, & I'm guessing that suited Bette Davis just fine. Here she plays a 23 year old horse rearing socialite whose worthless but jolly life of partying and races is nixed by a brain tumor. Davis is all enormous eyes and (then) fashionable little acorn shaped hats - she spends most of the film looking like a trembling insane blonde pixie.
While the plot revolves around Davies tumor, the action consists of all of the characters lying to each other in order to protect each other from the truth - first it's Davies turn, then later Brent gets pay back. You can't help feeling he deserves it - in one scene Davies is trying to find out about the surgical procedure being carried out on her head and Brent tells her not to worry about it. Also he laughs all the way through about how the ladies won't understand his man-science.
The film follows Davies's character's fall from ignorant party-girl grace, to better informed but harder partying girl, to the inevitable redemption through marriage. Davies hitting rock bottom is sensitively portrayed by her nearly sleeping with an Irish servant - played by a badly accented Humphrey Bogart.
Ronald Regan plays a posh hanger-on whose only role is to be permanently drunk.
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