Davis was less than thrilled when Warner Bros. assigned her to a supporting part in the Depression-era pre-Code melodrama Housewife in the Spring of 1934 opposite George Brent and Ann Dvorak. Davis was to play Pat Berkeley, a sophisticated copywriter whose brazen affair with advertising executive Bill Reynolds (Brent) threatens to break up his longtime marriage to Nan (Dvorak), the loyal housewife who has stuck with Bill through thick and thin.
Davis protested this new assignment by failing to show up for wardrobe fittings and other pre-filming preparations for several days. It wasn't until the studio sent numerous warnings reminding her that she was contractually obligated to make the film that Davis -begrudgingly--reported to work.
Once cameras were rolling, however, Davis made the most of the vampy part. Sporting platinum blonde hair and a chic wardrobe, she is at her most glamorous as the husband stealing career woman who gives Dvorak a run for her money competing for George Brent's affections.
Davis admitted in her 1987 memoir This 'N That that she had fallen in love with frequent co-star George Brent early in her career. Before Housewife they had already made two films together, So Big! and The Rich are Always With Us (both 1932), and afterwards they made several more including Front Page Woman (1935), Jezebel (1938), and The Old Maid (1939). However, it wasn't until 1939 when the pair co-starred in Dark Victory together, according to Davis, that Brent finally returned her affections and the two became a real-life item. "I often hoped he would want to marry me," she said. "He never did."
Housewife failed to catch fire at the box office, but by the time it was released in August 1934, Bette Davis was igniting Hollywood with her performance in a different film. Just before Housewife, Davis begged to be loaned out to RKO to play the part of Mildred, a slatternly waitress who torments Leslie Howard in Of Human Bondage (1934). It was a part no other actress wanted to touch, but Davis knew it would finally give her a chance to shine, and it did. Her raw performance in Of Human Bondage won Davis the attention and critical praise for which she had long been working, and she quickly became one of Warner Bros.' most prized and utilized assets.
By Andrea Passafiume
