Eight and a half decades have passed since the premiere of one of the most successful golden Hollywood melodramas, the film that gave birth to Jane Fonda and in which Bette received a letter that changed her life.
There was a 'flower of the South' as illustrious or more than Scarlet O'Hara. In the mid-30s, Hollywood was fantasizing about the film adaptation of 'Gone with the Wind' that producer David O. Selznick was going to carry out. Margaret Mitchell's novel was a bestseller and her heroine, the indomitable Scarlett, the character that every young woman dreamed of in a few years in which the woman began an unstoppable takeoff.
In March 1938, 'Jezebel' was released, a film that was more than a year ahead of 'Gone with the Wind'; a film that also featured a viperine lady from the Old South as its absolute star. The press immediately saw Warner Bros' strategy clearly: the studio wanted to launch its own southern film and compete with Selznick. Whoever hits first hits twice.
Selznick himself wrote a letter to Jack Warner pointing out some similarities to his future film that had bothered him. For example, Bette Davis, the protagonist of 'Jezebel', puffs up her cheeks in front of the mirror, a moment that was also in 'Gone with the Wind' and she planned to include it in her adaptation. No one was unaware that, for a time, the name of Bette Davis sounded strong to embody Scarlet O'Hara. Something that made the vitriolic star's hair stand on end since there was talk of Errol Flynn, whom she could not even see in paint, as a possible Rhett Butler. The mere idea of shooting a movie like this with him horrified Davis. Wars aside, before the premiere of 'Jezebel' and the hateful comparisons with the mythical 'Gone with the Wind', many things happened.
'Jezebel' was set in the South of the United States before the Civil War, with yellow fever that devastated New Orleans and the tensions between slavery and abolitionists in the background. Before being a movie, it was a play devised by Owen Davis Sr and performed on stage by Miriam Hopkins, Davis's archenemy. Hopkins, a woman as determined and as picky or more than Bette, screamed to heaven when she learned that she was not chosen to star in the film. To direct it, Warners 'borrowed' William Wyler, then under contract to producer Samuel Goldwyn.
For him, he produced masterpieces such as 'Those Three' or 'Disappointment', the cruelest image of a decomposing marriage that had been seen in the cinema until then. It was on the set of the southern story that the spark between Davis and a Wyler in top professional form arose. In those years, Bette Davis was married to the musician Harmon Nelson and she was a difficult beast to tame. Her marriage was in its last throes and she had already sued the studio, alleging that they forced her to make films that she did not want. 'Jezebel' was therefore a prize to her; a very careful blockbuster in which she was going to share the set with Henry Fonda.
Wyler and Davis had met years before when he auditioned for her at Universal. Shocked by the look he donned on camera, the filmmaker is said to have commented to an assistant: "What do you think of these ladies who show their tits and think they can get a job?" Bette never forgot that phrase and she reminded her of it on the set of 'Jezebel'. The director, nicknamed '50 Shots Wyler', did nothing to banish the bad memory or lower the level of demand from her.
The actress had to repeat up to 45 times the moment in which she lifts part of her skirt with her riding crop. That was the first sequence of the film in which she appeared, a curious metaphor for the incendiary nature of Julie, her character. Wyler also scrupulously took care of the moment in which she appears dressed in red at a ball full of young ladies with white and spotless costumes. During another day of shooting, she also threatened the star with tying a chain around her neck to keep her head still. The result was one of the best performances of her life and, in the long run, would mean the second Oscar of her career as best actress.
