Bette Davis's bravura, moving-but-never-morbid performance as Judith Traherne, a dying heiress determined to find happiness in her few remaining months, remains a three-hankie classic. Dark Victory was Davis's biggest box-office hit yet and garnered Academy Award nominations for 1939's Best Picture, Actress and Original Score. "If it were an automobile," Newsweek wrote, Dark Victory "would be a Rolls-Royce." It's the perfect match of star and vehicle.

Bette Davis soars in this superb, soapy starring vehicle, chauffeur-driven by director Edmund Goulding (THE GREAT LIE, GRAND HOTEL). A flighty, energetic socialite with a passion for champagne and country living, Judith (Davis) won't admit there's something wrong with her vision until she almost dies in a horse jumping accident. When a handsome doctor (George Brent) examines her, he discovers a rare and incurable brain disease. They fall in love and get married, determined to make every last moment count, aware that she might pass on at any time. A batch of familiar faces helps make these last few months as happy as possible: Geraldine Fitzgerald, terrific as Judith's friend and secretary; Humphrey Bogart, sporting an occasional Irish brogue as a horse trainer; and Ronald Reagan, slurring up a storm as Judith's boozy pal. Although the men acquit themselves nicely, the film belongs to the women, and Davis and Fitzgerald are both first-rate in this typically tough and lovely Warner Brothers tear-jerker.