Winter Meeting Reviews

This one has more talk than a Senate filibuster and is only a tenth as interesting. Bette Davis is one of the great "sufferers" of the silver screen and she does it again here, but the audience suffers just as much in this overblown drama. A spinster living alone in a swank New York City flat, she is the daughter of a stern New England man of the cloth. She works at various charities and spends her off-hours writing poetry. One of her few friends, Hoyt, invites her to a party in honor of Jim Davis--a recent Navy hero of WW II-- where she dances with Davis. She is not accustomed to having a man in her arms and feels uncomfortable. Jim Davis has come to the party with busty beauty Paige, but he only has eyes for the dowdy Bette. At the end of the evening, he takes Davis home, and she innocently asks him in for a last drink. She prepares the nightcaps and then discovers that he's off in dreamland. Later, he awakens and says he feels awful about what's happened. She bids him good night but he is not eager to leave her apartment until she responds to his amorous advances. She tries to keep him at arm's length and eventually gives in when he showers her with kisses. The following morning, they take a long drive up to Connecticut where she owns a country home. She doesn't want to go into the house but he presses her and they arrive to be greeted by Bates and Baldwin, the couple who watch the property. Later, Bette Davis admits why she stays away from the house. It was here that her father took his own life after her mother ran away with another, more interesting man. Jim Davis chooses this time to tell her that he had intended becoming a Catholic priest but changed his mind after all the battles in the war and now questions his ability to don the cloth. In the morning, she is surprised to learn that he has departed. Back in New York, Bette Davis finds out that her mother is ill in a local hospital. Hoyt calls her for a friendly dinner date and they run into Jim Davis and Paige, who makes some snide remarks about Bette Davis. The next day, Jim arrives at her residence to say that he only went out with Paige to keep himself from falling in love with Davis. She tells him that he has to follow his dream of becoming a priest, as she thinks that's what he really wants to do. He is still wavering between his love of the church and his affection for her, but she persuades him to wear the collar in the end by showing him the letter from her mother. She has forgiven her mother's treatment of her father and is now planning to be at the woman's side to help her through her illness. Jim Davis exits, now sure of his vocation in life. He eventually had his greatest success on the "Dallas" TV series in a role he was playing at the time of his death. A dull movie made palatable by Bette Davis, who never seemed to give a bad performance in the 1930s and 1940s.