JEZEBEL
1938
Starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda

Jezebel was adapted from an original play, also titled Jezebel, by American playwright Owen Davis, Sr.

PLOT
Julie Marsden, a free-spirited Southern belle in Antebellum Louisiana, shocks high society by wearing a 'saucy' red ballgown to the Olympus Ball where all unwed ladies are expected to wear white. She and her fiancé, banker Preston 'Pres' Dillard, are consequently shunned during a dance, and Pres decides that the time has come to break his engagement to the rebellious Julie. Distraught, but refusing to show it, Julie waits a year for Pres to return, certain that he won't be able to stay away from her. When he does return, it is with his new wife Amy, but Julie is determined to win him back anyway.

The film has been called 'Gone With The Wind without Yankees'. Instead, the enemy is yellow fever. The story takes place in New Orleans in the 1850's. Although there are references to the abolitionists and the prospect of war, the entire story takes place pre-war. 

After an advanced screening of the film, David O. Selznick wrote to Warner Brothers complaining about the film's similarities to Gone with the Wind (1939), particularly citing Julie's pinching her cheeks to give them colour, which Scarlett O'Hara does in the book, and a dining room scene in which the male characters discuss the differences between the North and the South and the possibility of war. Warners countered that the dining room scene was faithful to the scene in the original play, which had appeared a few years before Margaret Mitchell's novel.

A song, "Jezebel" with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Johnny Mercer was published to promote the movie but not used on the soundtrack.

One of Bette Davis' most memorable performances and one which helped secure her place in movie history as one of Hollywood's greatest stars. Here she gives one of the finest performances of her career which was to win her her second Oscar for best actress. (Her first was for `Dangerous' in 1936.) Though she never won another Oscar, she went on to be nominated eight more times with five straight nominations between 1939 and 1943. 

CAST
Bette Davis ... Julie
Henry Fonda ... Preston Dillard
George Brent ... Buck Cantrell
Margaret Lindsay ... Amy
Donald Crisp ... Dr. Livingstone
Fay Bainter ... Aunt Belle
Richard Cromwell ... Ted
Henry O'Neill ... General Bogardus
Spring Byington ... Mrs. Kendrick
John Litel ... Jean La Cour
Gordon Oliver ... Dick Allen
Janet Shaw ... Molly Allen
Theresa Harris ... Zette
Margaret Early ... Stephanie Kendrick
Irving Pichel ... Huger

RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes