The man is Bill Emerson(Glenn Ford), an engineer, and he and Kate hit it off as they sail to the island. Kate misses the boat, but luckily finds a man with his boat who agrees to take her out to the island. As the film opens, Kate is rushing to catch a steamer that is to sail out to an island off the coast of Massachusetts-she’s spending the weekend there with her sister and their cousin, Freddie. Patricia, or Pat, is loud, flamboyant, and a flirt. She is an artist, lives in NYC, and is introspective and thoughtful. Independently wealthy women, due to inheriting their family’s wealth, and being that their parents are deceased, the only family the two has is each other and one cousin, Freddie(Charlie Ruggles.) Kathryn, or Kate, is the quiet twin. Ford impressed Columbia Pictures so much in this Davis vehicle that they cast him in Gilda, for his next role, and that really got his acting career moving forward.īette Davis plays identical twin sisters Kathryn and Patrica Bosworth. Ford did so well, that Davis gave him the part and Jack Warner grumblingly complied. Davis wanted to see if Ford could do the role, so she had him secretly brought on to the Warner Brothers lot and do a screen test. Jack Warner didn’t want to hire Ford, as he was at Columbia Pictures and that meant Warner Brothers would have to pay Columbia a loan out fee. He had just gotten out of the Marines, where he’d been serving during the war. She then agreed to sign Robert Alda, but actor Glenn Ford caught her attention. For the leading man of the film, Warner Brothers wanted Davis to consider Dennis Morgan, but she said no to that choice. The always great Max Steiner composed the music for the film, and Orry-Kelly designed the costumes. The film did receive one nomination at the 1947 Academy Awards for Special Effects. Using matte shots, a double for Davis, and then reshooting with Davis’s head or face on another matte shot, a scene such as one sister lighting the other sister’s cigarette could be done. She decided she wanted that director for her picture and that is how Curtis Bernhardt came on board.īernhardt, along with cinematographer Sol Polito, devised the intricate shots needed to really show Bette as twin sisters. Davis had seen Barbara Stanwyck’s 1946 film, My Reputation, and had enjoyed it immensely. Wilder wrote the screenplay and I think it was a great idea of Davis’s to get women to write this film’s screenplay, since the two main characters are sisters, and the story revolves around love, and what one wants out of life. His novel had been made into a movie in England in 1939 and Davis wanted to make a new version of the film in America. A Stolen Life was based on the best selling novel Stolen Life by Czechoslovakian writer Karel J. Producing was a big task and Davis ably carried it out. A Stolen Life was Davis’s first time as a producer. Davis had been wanting a better contract with Warner Brothers, and studio head Jack Warner was not going to let his leading female star go, so the studio agreed in 1944, that Bette could make 5 pictures for them and get to be the producer too. It may seem stale but in the hands of director Curtis Bernhardt and actress Bette Davis, the concept of the dual twins with wildly varied personalities turned out well. In A Stolen Life, we get the “good” twin and the “bad” twin plot. It’s a film that is intriguing to me as Bette gets to play identical twins, and as a mom of twins, I am always interested in seeing how Hollywood handles the concept of twins, and how did the scenes look where the actor or actress in dual roles are in the same scenes at the same time?! I decided to focus on one of Bette’s lesser known films, 1946’s A Stolen Life, a film that Bette actually produced as well as starred in for Warner Brothers. Be sure to visit Crystal’s blog to read all of the other great posts by other classic film fans about Bette Davis and her outstanding career. To honor her memory, blogger and classic film fan Crystal at In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood created a blogathon for this purpose. Actress Bette Davis, if she were still alive, would be turning 108 today, Tuesday, April 5th.
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