Product Review

Bette Davis didn't get to play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, but she did get to play a troublesome Southern belle in William Wyler's 1938 Jezebel. Davis's character, a coquette fond of stirring up rivalries among the men, goes too far and loses her fiancé (Henry Fonda), but she finds atonement when she cares for him during illness. This handsome melodrama by Wyler (who later directed Davis in The Little Foxes) is fully absorbing (John Huston contributed to the script), and Davis's carefully constructed performance does make one draw instant comparisons with Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. --Tom Keogh