Of Human Bondage is a 1934 American drama film directed by John Cromwell and regarded by critics as the film that made Bette Davis a star. The screenplay by Lester Cohen is based on the 1915 novel Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.
Plot Sensitive, club-footed artist Philip Carey is a Briton who has been studying painting in Paris for four years. His art teacher tells him his work lacks talent, so he returns to London to become a medical doctor, but his moodiness and chronic self-doubt make it difficult for him to keep up in his schoolwork.
Philip falls passionately in love with tearoom waitress Mildred Rogers, even though she is disdainful of his club foot and his obvious interest in her. Knowing he is attracted to her, she is manipulative and cruel toward him when he asks her for a date. Her constant response to his romantic invitations is "I don't mind", an expression so uninterested that it infuriates him – which only causes her to use it all the more. His daydreams about her distract him from his studies, and he fails his medical examinations.
When Philip proposes to her, Mildred declines, telling him she will be marrying Emil Miller (a loutish salesman) instead. The self-centred Mildred vindictively berates Philip with nasty insults for becoming romantically interested in her.
Philip begins to forget Mildred when he becomes involved with Norah, an attractive and considerate romance writer working under a male pseudonym. She slowly helps him resolve his painful addiction to Mildred. However, just when it appears that Philip is finding happiness, Mildred returns, pregnant and claiming that Emil has abandoned her. Philip provides a flat for her, arranges to take care of her financially, and breaks off his relationship with Norah. Norah and Philip admit how interpersonal relationships may amount to bondage (Philip was bound to Mildred, as Norah was to Philip, and as Mildred was to Emil). Philip's intention is to marry Mildred after her child is born, but a bored and restless Mildred is an uninterested mother, and she hands the baby's care to a nurse.
At a dinner party celebrating their engagement, one of Philip's medical student friends, Harry Griffiths, flirts with Mildred, who somewhat reciprocates. After Philip confronts Mildred, she runs off with Griffiths to Paris. A second time, Philip again finds some comfort in his studies, and with Sally Athelny, the tender-hearted daughter of one of his elderly patients in a charity hospital. The Athelny family is caring and affectionate, and they take Philip into their home.
Once again, Mildred returns with her baby, this time expressing remorse for deserting him. Philip cannot resist rescuing her and helping her recover from another failed relationship. Things take a turn for the worse when Mildred moves in, spitefully wrecks his apartment, destroys his paintings and books, and burns the securities and bonds an uncle gave him to finance his tuition. Philip is forced to quit medical school. Before he leaves the institution, an operation corrects his club foot. The Athelnys take Philip in when he is unable to find work and is locked out of his flat, and he takes a job with Sally's father as a window dresser.
Later, Philip meets Mildred, now sick with tuberculosis, destitute, and — the movie obliquely hints — working as a prostitute. Her baby has died, and she has become distraught. As time progresses, Philip receives a letter that informs him that his uncle has died, leaving a small inheritance. With the inheritance money, Philip is able to return to medical school, pass his exams, and become a physician. At the hospital, Philip learns that Mildred has died in a charity ward. With Mildred's death, Philip is finally freed of his obsession, and he makes plans to marry Sally.
Cast
Leslie Howard as Philip Carey Bette Davis as Mildred Rogers Frances Dee as Sally Athelny Kay Johnson as Norah Reginald Denny as Harry Griffiths Alan Hale as Emil Miller Reginald Sheffield as Cyril Dunsford Reginald Owen as Thorpe Athelny Desmond Roberts as Dr. Jacobs Tempe Pigott as Agnes Hollet, Philip's landlady (uncredited)
Production In 1932, director Michael Curtiz showed Cromwell a print of his recently completed film The Cabin in the Cotton because Cromwell was interested in casting its leading man, Richard Barthelmess, in a project he was preparing. Instead of Barthelmess, Cromwell's attention was drawn to Bette Davis, whose portrayal of a femme fatale brought to mind the slatternly waitress Mildred in W. Somerset Maugham's 1915 novel Of Human Bondage. Cromwell knew producer Pandro S. Berman had purchased the rights to Maugham's story for Leslie Howard and when he suggested Davis would be the perfect co-star, Berman agreed.Stine, Whitney, and Davis, Bette, Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis. New York: Hawthorn Books 1974; , pp. 41–42, 50–51, 57–63, 68 Maugham also supported her being cast in the role.Higham, Charles, The Life of Bette Davis. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company 1981; , pp. 66–72
Screenwriter Wilson Mizner brought a copy of the Maugham novel to Davis, who was in the midst of filming her 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. After reading it and learning RKO held the screen rights, she implored Jack L. Warner to lend her to the rival studio. "At the time, however", Davis later recalled, "Warner Brothers had other plans for me. They thought they needed me desperately for such immortal classics as Fashions of 1934, The Big Shakedown, and Jimmy the Gent."Chandler, Charlotte, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography. New York: Simon & Schuster 2006. , pp. 93–100, 102 She filmed those as well as Fog Over Frisco but continued to harass Warner, who continued to object because he felt the role of Mildred would destroy her glamorous image, the same reason Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Ann Harding reportedly declined the role.Of Human Bondage at Turner Classic Movies "An evil heroine such as Mildred was really unheard of in that day. J. L. could not possibly understand any actress who would want to play such a part", Davis said. Warner finally relented only because Mervyn LeRoy wanted RKO contract player Irene Dunne for Sweet Adeline, the screen adaptation of the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II musical, and the two studios agreed to trade actresses.
In order to prepare for the role, Davis hired an English housekeeper: "She had just the right amount of cockney in her speech for Mildred. I never told her she was teaching me cockney – for fear she would exaggerate her own accent."Davis, Bette, A Lonely Life. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1962. , pp. 173–76, 179–80 Her efforts failed to impress Leslie Howard who, along with other British cast members, was upset an American had been cast in the role. "I really couldn't blame them", Davis stated. But his behaviour on the set was distressing: "Mr. Howard would read a book off-stage, all the while throwing me his lines during my close-ups. He became a little less detached when he was informed that the kid was walking away with the picture." Film historian Kingley Canham observes that Leslie Howard, in the "gentlemanly understatement" of his performance, served as a counter-balance to Davis’s frequent domination of her less-talented male co-stars.Canham, 1976 p. 74-75: Davis "is matched by the gentlemanly understatement of Howard’s playing, yet he is sufficiently fluid an actor to present Davis from dominating the film as she used to do at Warners with male leads of limited talent such as George Brent and Paul Henreid."
Davis designed her own make-up for the scenes depicting the final stages of Mildred's illness, changed from syphilis to tuberculosis to satisfy the demands of the Hays Code,Vieira, Mark A., Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1999; , pg. 175 which, under Joseph Breen, was beginning to expand and rigidly enforce an all-encompassing Production Code. On July 1, 1934, three days after the film was released, the upgraded system of censorship was formally announced.
"I made it very clear that Mildred was not going to die of a dread disease looking as if a deb had missed her noon nap. The last stages of consumption, poverty, and neglect are not pretty, and I intended to be convincing-looking. We pulled no punches, and Mildred emerged ... as starkly real as a pestilence."
Reflecting on her performance in later years, Davis said, "My understanding of Mildred's vileness – not compassion but empathy – gave me pause ... I was still an innocent. And yet Mildred's machinations I miraculously understood when it came to playing her. I was often ashamed of this ... I suppose no amount of rationalization can change the fact that we are all made up of good and evil."Canham, 1976 p. 75: "Miss Davis admirably projects the vulgarity and venality of the character without presenting a suggestion of depth - but then Mildred is a pretty shallow person."
Release Nervous about audience reaction to her performance, Davis opted not to attend a preview of the film in Santa Barbara, although her mother Ruth and husband Harmon O. Nelson went. Ruth later related, "For one hour and a half of horrible realism, we sat riveted without speaking a word, with only a fleeting glance now and then at each other. We left the theater in absolute silence. Neither of us knew what to think, for we felt the picture would make or break her, but would the public like the unpleasant story as well as the people at the preview seemed to?" Upon arriving home, her husband told Davis he thought her performance, while "painfully sincere", might harm her career.
One reaction RKO executives never expected to hear at the preview was laughter. After watching the film several times, they felt the Max Steiner score was to blame, and the composer wrote a new one that included a motif for each of the principal characters.
The film premiered at Radio City Music Hall on June 28, 1934, and went into general release on July 20.
Reception In a contemporary review, Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times said the Maugham novel "has come through the operation of being transferred to the screen in an unexpectedly healthy fashion. It may not possess any great dramatic strength, but the very lifelike quality of the story and the marked authenticity of its atmosphere cause the spectators to hang on every word uttered by the interesting group of characters." He thought Leslie Howard's portrayal "excels any performance he has given before the camera. No more expert illustration of getting under the skin of the character has been done in motion pictures", and he described Bette Davis as "enormously effective".New York Times review
In 2017. The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 4/5 stars, writing: "In the first, and best, screen version of Somerset Maugham's famous novel, Leslie Howard is sensitive and polished as the gentlemanly artist turned medical student who almost ruins his life over his obsessive infatuation with a vindictive teashop waitress. Bette Davis proves her credentials in this latter role, offering a nuanced portrayal that rises above her cockney accent. There is excellent support, too, and plaudits must go to John Cromwell's tightly controlled and atmospheric direction."
The generally rave reviews upset Warner executives, who were embarrassed one of their contract players was being acclaimed for a film made at another studio, and they tried to exclude its title from any publicity about Davis.
The film recorded a loss of $45,000.Richard Jewel, 'RKO Film Grosses: 1931–1951', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 14 No 1, 1994 p57
Academy Awards