voyager with bette davis

Now, Voyager

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Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, irving rapper, bette davis, paul henreid, claude rains, gladys cooper, bonita granville, photos & videos, technical specs.

Dowdy, thirtyish Charlotte Vale lives with her dictatorial, aristocratic mother in a Boston mansion. Fearing that Charlotte is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her sister-in-law Lisa brings psychiatrist Dr. Jaquith to the Vale home to examine her unobtrusively. Jaquith's observations and conversation with Charlotte convince him that she is, in fact, very ill, and he recommends that she visit his sanitarium, Cascade. Away from her domineering mother, Charlotte recovers quickly, but does not feel ready to return home and accepts Lisa's proposal of a long cruise as an alternative. On board the ship, a newly chic Charlotte is introduced to Jerry Durrance, who is also traveling alone. The two spend a day sight-seeing together, during which time the married Jerry asks Charlotte to help him choose gifts for his two daughters. Charlotte is touched when Jerry thanks her with a small bottle of perfume. Subsequently, Charlotte tells Jerry about her family and her breakdown and learns from his good friends, Deb and Frank McIntyre, that Jerry is unhappily married but will never leave his family. After the ship docks in Rio de Janeiro, Jerry and Charlotte become stranded on Sugarloaf Mountain and spend the night together. Having missed her boat, Charlotte stays with Jerry in Rio for five days before flying to Buenos Aires to rejoin the cruise. Although they have fallen in love, they promise not to see each other again. Back in Boston, Charlotte's family is stunned by her transformation. Her mother, however, is determined to regain control over her daughter. Charlotte's resolve to remain independent is strengthened by the timely arrival of some camellias. Although there is no card, Charlotte knows the flowers are from Jerry because he had called her by the nickname "Camille," and, reminded of his love, she is able to forge a new relationship with her mother. Charlotte eventually becomes engaged to eligible widower Elliot Livingston. One night, at a party, Charlotte encounters Jerry, who is now working as an architect, a profession he had renounced years before in deference to his wife's wishes. His youngest daughter Tina is now seeing Dr. Jaquith for her own emotional problems. Charlotte asks Jerry not to blame himself for their affair as she gained much from knowing that he loved her. This chance encounter forces Charlotte to realize that she does not love Elliot passionately, and they break their engagement, so angering Mrs. Vale that during an argument with Charlotte, she has a heart attack and dies. Guilty and distraught, Charlotte returns to Cascade, where she meets Tina. Seeing herself in the girl, Charlotte takes charge of her, with Jaquith's tentative approval. When Tina improves enough, Charlotte takes her home to Boston. Later, Jerry and Jaquith visit the Vale home, and Jerry is delighted by the change in Tina. Charlotte warns him, however, that she is only able to keep Tina with her on condition that she and Jerry end their affair. Jerry believes that he is responsible for her decision not to marry Elliot, but Charlotte reassures him otherwise, saying that Tina is his gift to her and her way of being close to him. Jerry then asks if Charlotte is happy and she responds, "Well, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon; we have the stars."

Lee Patrick

Franklin Pangborn

Katherine Alexander

James Rennie

Mary Wickes

Michael ames.

Charles Drake

David clyde.

Frank Puglia

Janis wilson, claire du brey.

Don Douglas

Charlotte wynters, lester matthews, sheila hayward, bill edwards, isabel withers, yola d'avril, georges renavent, bill kennedy, reed hadley, elspeth dudgeon, george lessey.

Constance Purdy

Corbet morris, hilda plowright, tempe pigott, dorothy vaughan, martha acker, al alleborn, eddie allen, george becker, edward blatt, meta carpenter, phyllis clark, joseph cramer, emmett emerson, frank evans, leo f. forbstein, hugh friedhofer, robert haas, robert b. lee, rydo loshak, fred m. maclean, scotty more, harold noyes, charles o'bannon, casey robinson, marguerite royce, sherry shourds, gilbert souto, max steiner, willard van enger, perc westmore, photo collections.

Hosted Intro

Award Nominations

Best actress, best supporting actress, the essentials - now, voyager.

Pop Culture 101 - Now, Voyager

Trivia - now, voyager - trivia & fun facts about now, voyager, trivia - now, voyager - trivia & fun facts about now, voyager, the big idea - now, voyager, behind the camera - now, voyager, critics' corner - now, voyager, critics' corner - now, voyager.

No member of the Vale family has ever had a nervous breakdown. - Mrs. Henry Windle Vale

Well there's one having one now. - Dr. Jasquith

Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars. - Charlotte Vale

Remember what it says in the Bible, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." - Dr. Jasquith

How does it feel to be the Lord? - Charlotte Vale

Not so very wonderful, since the Free Will Bill was passed. Too little power. - Dr. Jasquith

I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, mother. I'm not afraid. - Charlotte Vale

A maiden aunt is an ideal person to select presents for young girls. - Charlotte

Producer Hal B. Wallis originally wanted Irene Dunne for the lead role, but Bette Davis convinced him otherwise.

The Walt Whitman poem Bette Davis reads (just before leaving Cascades) is "The Untold Want" from Songs of Parting (just 2 lines): "The untold want by life and land ne'er granted / Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

Bette Davis complained about 'Max Steiner' 's Academy Award-winning musical score, saying that it was too intrusive on her performance.

The film is remembered for the scene in which Paul Henreid places two cigarettes in his mouth, lights them, and then passes one to Bette Davis, but it wasn't an original idea - a similar exchange occurred ten years earlier between Davis and 'George Brent' in _Rich Are Always With Us, The (1932)_ .

The title of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel was taken from Walt Whitman's poem "The Untold Want." In a letter to literary agent Harold Ober included in the Warner Bros. Collection at the USC Cinema-Television Library, Prouty made the following suggestions about the novel's adaptation: "...In my novel I tell my story by the method of frequent flashbacks....It has occurred to me, however, that by employing the silent picture for the flashbacks, in combination with the talking picture, similar results can be accomplished, and with much interest to an audience because of the novelty of the technique....I am one of those who believe the silent picture had artistic potentialities which the talking picture lacks. The acting, facial expressions, every move and gesture is more significant....Of course the silent picture has 'gone out' now, but I believe it has a place, for depicting what goes on in the mind of a character...."        Various contemporary sources add the following information about the production: Mary Astor was first signed as the second female lead and Norma Shearer and Irene Dunne were approached to play the role of "Charlotte." Producer Hal Wallis sent Ginger Rogers a copy of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, hoping to interest her in the film. Juanita Quigley tested for the role of "Tina." Director Edmund Goulding wrote a treatment for the film and, at that time, was scheduled to direct; later Michael Curtiz was assigned to direct the film. Some scenes were filmed on location in Laguna Beach, CA and the Cascade scenes were filmed at Lake Arrowhead, CA. Although Frank Puglia's character is called "Giovanni" in the film, contemporary reviews, the screenplay and the CBCS list it as "Manoel."        According to modern sources, Prouty had written an elaborate cigarette-lighting ceremony for her characters, which proved too awkward to complete on film. In its place, Henreid invented a romantic gesture which has since become famous. He lit two cigarettes at the same time and handed one of the cigarettes to "Charlotte." Modern feminist critics have described Now Voyager as an "initiation" or "coming of age" film in which a psychologically immature woman becomes a self-determining adult and comment favorably on the accurate depiction of the mother-daughter relationship. Although contemporary critics derided the film as contrived and melodramatic, it was Warner Bros. fourth-highest grossing film in 1942 and has enjoyed an enduring popularity. Max Steiner won an Oscar for Best Score, and both Gladys Cooper and Bette Davis were nominated for Academy Awards. The film was adapted for radio and, starring Bette Davis and Gregory Peck, was broadcast on The Lux Radio Theatre on February 11, 1946 and May 24, 1955.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States 1942

Released in United States on Video April 5, 1988

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Now, Voyager

1942, Drama, 1h 57m

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Critics Consensus

Now, Voyager is a Hollywood swooner with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in a melodrama to end all melomers. Read critic reviews

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Now, voyager   photos.

Boston heiress Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is a neurotic mess, largely because of her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper). But after a stint in a sanatorium where she receives the attention of Dr. Jasquith (Claude Rains), Charlotte comes out of her shell and elects to go on a cruise. Aboard ship she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid) and falls in love, despite his being married. They enjoy a brief tryst in Rio before returning to the States, where Charlotte struggles to forget him and find happiness.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Irving Rapper

Producer: Hal B. Wallis

Writer: Olive Higgins Prouty , Casey Robinson

Release Date (Theaters): Oct 22, 1942  limited

Release Date (Streaming): Sep 1, 2009

Runtime: 1h 57m

Production Co: Warner Brothers

Sound Mix: Mono

Aspect Ratio: 35mm

Cast & Crew

Bette Davis

Charlotte Vale

Claude Rains

Dr. Jaquith

Paul Henreid

Jerry Durrance

Gladys Cooper

Mrs. Henry Windle Vale

Bonita Granville

Elliot Livingston

Lee Patrick

Deb McIntyre

Mary Wickes

Nurse Dora Pickford

Janis Wilson

Tina Durrance (uncredited)

Irving Rapper

Olive Higgins Prouty

Casey Robinson

Screenwriter

Hal B. Wallis

Max Steiner

Original Music

Cinematographer

Film Editing

Robert M. Haas

Art Director

Fred M. MacLean

Set Decoration

Costume Design

Perc Westmore

Makeup Artist

Edward A. Blatt

Dialogue Editor

Robert B. Lee

Willard Van Enger

Special Effects

Audrey Scott

Leo F. Forbstein

Musical Director

News & Interviews for Now, Voyager

Know Your Critic: Angelica Jade Bastién, Critic at Vulture/ New York Magazine

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Critic Reviews for Now, Voyager

Audience reviews for now, voyager.

I've avoid seeing this film for years. But, I'm glad I finally got to screen it. Bette Davis is super in this role. There's a depth to her performance that lovers of acting will surely appreciate.

Davis gives a remarkable performance both big and filled with subtle nuances. The over-quoted ending scene feels a bit silly but most of what comes before is a convincing narrative about becoming the best version of oneself even if that means alienating others.

This film tugs on a few different heartstrings, with themes of a domineering mother, being an awkward, depressed young person, finding a deep connection and love with someone who can't be yours, and then personally evolving to the point of being able to transcend all of that, and finding one's path. It's really quite a touching film, and Bette Davis turns in another brilliant performance. The supporting cast around her is strong as well, and features Gladys Cooper (her mother), Paul Henreid (her lover), Claude Rains (her wise doctor). And, how fascinating is it that both Henreid and Rains began filming Casalanca immediately afterwards; clearly a great year for them. The film scores points for me for having its title come from a Walt Whitman line in 'Leaves of Grass': "The untold want by life and land ne'er granted; Now, Voyager sail thou forth, to seek and find," which is appropriate. The film speaks to being honest with oneself, to one's identity, as well as to the person you love, even if it's complicated. I loved the little touches of the inner voice that director Irving Rapper employs, which helps underscore this. It's heartwarming to see how those in love make each other better people. She begins to bloom, and radiate confidence after receiving simple acts of kindness and appreciation. He returns to his passion, architecture, and is more empathetic and understanding of his troubled daughter. The scene where they meet by chance again at a party, and have a conversation interlaced with whispered remarks of tenderness (such as her saying to him she could "cry with pride" over him following his dream) is lovely. At the same time, she's not defined by him, or dependent on him. In fact, the movie is a celebration of independence, and shows how it can be done gracefully and with class. Her strength come through in so many ways: in standing up to her mother, determining her path with another suitor, asserting herself with her old doctor, and ultimately deciding the terms she'll have her relationship with Henreid on. While she admits that "I've just been a big sentimental fool. It's a tendency I have," she also calmly says "Please let me go" when a big romantic moment threatens to sweep her away. The story about his child was touching, as we see Davis help her, as she was once helped, but I thought this part dragged on too long, and needed tightening up. It felt overly melodramatic and false; for one thing, where was the mother? There was a much earlier scene with a Brazilian taxi driver that got silly, and should have been left on the cutting room floor as well. On the other hand, I loved those last lines. He asks her, "And will you be happy, Charlotte?" And she responds "Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." How brilliant that line is; there is something larger than ourselves, larger than what others consider happiness.

The transformation of Bette Davis is a treat to watch. I have yet to find a film of hers in which I have been terribly disappointed.

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“Now, Voyager”: Why the 1942 screen classic with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid will never age

“Box office dynamite—that’s ‘Now, Voyager’.” Those are the first words of Naka ‘s “Now Voyager” Variety film review, as published August 19, 1942. Continuing in the very same review: ‘Here is drama heavily steeped in the emotional tide that has swept its star, Bette Davis, to her present crest, and it’s the kind of drama that maintains Warners’ pattern for box office success. (…) It affords Miss Davis one of her superlative acting roles, that of a neurotic spinster fighting to free herself from the shackles of a tyrannical mother. (…)  For Henreid, perhaps, this is his top role in American pictures; he neatly dovetails and makes believable the sometimes underplayed character of the man who finds love too late.’

The film tells the story of Boston heiress Charlotte Vale (in the beginning unglamorously portrayed by Bette Davis), a sheltered, frumpy, and middle-aged neurotic who is driven to a nervous breakdown by her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper), but with the help of a soft-spoken idealized therapist (Claude Rains), she is transformed into a modern, secure and attractive young woman. During an ocean voyage to South America, she meets a suave man, Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid), and blooms as a woman. Durrance, unhappily married to a woman he dares not to hurt, has a young daughter Tina (played by the then twelve-year-old promising juvenile actress Janis Wilson in an uncredited role). She is an emotionally depressed child victimized by the insecurity of their unsettled home. Ultimately, Charlotte Vale and Jerry Durrance end up in a platonic relationship in which she keeps Tina, who in the meantime, is in the process of recovering, while Henreid stays with his unwanted wife.

“Now, Voyager” is an unabashed first-rate soap opera—or a woman’s picture, if you wish—and as such, it’s one of the very best of its kind, thanks to Warner Bros. expertise. At the same time, the powerful drama is backed by Max Steiner’s lush and Academy Award-winning musical score which is almost as much a part of the film as the actors. Bette Davis, one of Hollywood’s queens in the 1940s, made the film’s heroine a touching, dignified, and truly believable woman.

Miss Davis was not the first choice to play the role of Charlotte Vale, though. Irene Dunne, along with Charles Boyer, her co-star in “Love Affair” (1939), were considered to be perfect for the leading roles. Producer Hal B. Wallis also offered the female lead to Norma Shearer, and although she was fond of it, she had already made up her mind to retire from the screen after George Cukor’s “Her Cardboard Lover” (1942), due to her eye problems. When Irene Dunne heard that the script had also been discussed with Norma Shearer, she declined as well, fearing that both actresses were played against each other. Then Ginger Rogers was offered the part. She liked it, but weeks passed by for her to reply, and even after Wallis sent her a wire while she was on her ranch on the Rogue River, she did not respond, so finally the part went to Bette Davis, who was eager to play it.

One of the most famous and landmark scenes of the film is when Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes simultaneously and gallantly hands one of the cigarettes to Bette Davis, thereby starting a new custom (in an era when people obviously weren’t aware of the danger of smoking). The film became highly successful: “Now, Voyager” was Warner Bros.’s fourth biggest grossing film of 1942.

Compared to the then-established two-time Academy Award-winner Bette Davis, Mr. Henreid only had a few years of experience in Hollywood. After leaving Austria in the mid-1930s, he first settled in London and then moved on to the West Coast. So, although pretty much a newcomer in Hollywood when “Now, Voyager” was made, his performance was well-received. The New York Herald Tribune wrote, ‘Paul Henreid achieves his full stature as a romantic star’ while Time praised him as ‘Hollywood’s likeliest leading man who acts like a kind and morally responsible human being.’

In his autobiography “Ladies Man” (1984), Paul Henreid remembers Bette Davis as ‘a solid master of her craft’: “I found her a delight to work with, and we got along famously. In fact, a very close friendship started between us, and she remained a dear, close friend—and always a very decent human being.” The atmosphere on the set was amiable and supportive, although Miss Davis did have problems with her co-star Bonita Granville (who played the part of Charlotte’s young niece June Vale). “She was bitchy in the film and off. I don’t remember the details, but she struck me as flighty and gossipy,” she told Boze Hadleigh in his interview book “Bette Davis Speaks” (1996).

Principal photography of “Now, Voyager” began on the Warner lot on April 7, 1942, and ended on June 23, with retakes on July 3. The film was released in the U.S. on October 31, 1942. “Casablanca,” another Hal B. Wallis production, also starring Paul Henreid and Claude Rains (a frequent performer in Wallis’ pictures), was released a few months later on January 23, 1943, and was almost shot simultaneously at Warner Bros., from May 25 until August 3. Over the years, “Casablanca” gained a more popular following than “Now, Voyager” did; in 1998, a novel entitled “As Times Goes By,” written by Michael Walsh for Warner Books, follows the characters of Rick, Ilsa, Victor (Paul Henreid), Sam, and Louis (Claude Rains) after they left Casablanca.

When originally scheduled to direct “Now, Voyager,” filmmaker Edmund Goulding wrote a treatment for the film, but he fell ill and was unable to direct the film. Michael Curtiz then was assigned as director, as soon as he had finished shooting another Wallis production called “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942) with James Cagney. Still, from the very start, it became clear that Curtiz and Bette Davis couldn’t get along. Finally, producer Hal B. Wallis decided to go with a new director, London-born Irving Rapper. “He was a pleasant, amusing Englishman. He liked Bette, and she liked him,” Wallis recalled in “Starmaker,” his 1989 mémoires . Irving Rapper was a vocal coach, dialogue director, and assistant director in the 1930s who, prior to “Now, Voyager,” had directed only three features, including “One Foot in Heaven” (1941) starring Fredric March and Martha Scott, and “The Gay Sisters” (1942) with Barbara Stanwyck. In the end, just like Bette Davis, he was not the first choice by all means, but he turned out to be the right one.

Four years later, Irving Rapper and his three leading actors from “Now, Voyager”—Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains (Davis’ favorite co-star)—were reunited with the drama “Deception,” also made at Warner Bros. (this one without Hal B. Wallis). In 1964, Paul Henreid directed Bette Davis (playing twin sisters) in the crime drama “Dead Ringer,” with his daughter Monika Henreid playing a supporting role.

Irving Rapper and Bette Davis later worked together again in “The Corn Is Green” and “Another Man’s Posion’ (1951). “Irving has directed some of my best pictures,” she said in later interviews.

Author Olive Higgins Prouty wrote four novels about the wealthy Vale family in Boston (“Now, Voyager” being the third). She sold the “Voyager” rights to Wallis for $35,000 in October 1941, and made several suggestions. She preferred Technicolor to be used, with the flashbacks shown in subdued colors as if seen through a veil, and she had laid down a scheme for particular sequences. Wallis decided to go ahead and ignore them completely, but after she had seen the film in her New England home with twenty-five friends, ‘all of them applauded,’ Wallis wrote in his autobiography. She wrote him a letter, saying that ‘the plot follows very closely that of my book and the personalities of the various characters have been carefully observed and preserved.’

Finally, film director Irving Rapper, born in 1898 in London, passed away at age 101 in 1999 in Woodland Hills, California, of natural causes. Never really in the spotlights, there’s not too much written about him. Authors Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg did include him in their interview book “The Celluloid Muse: Hollywood Directors Speak” (1969), a collection of fifteen interviews with film directors who spent most of their careers working in Hollywood. In their introduction of the Irving Rapper interview, they describe his whereabouts at the time of the interview: ‘Irving Rapper’s apartment is set high in a glistening white building in the very heart of Hollywood. Only a stone’s throw from Hollywood Boulevard, with its seedy spangle of light-signs,  its driven restless sixties people, and its ever-skulking hustlers, Rapper inhabits a seemingly sealed-off forties world. As so often in Hollywood, fantasy and reality seem one, so that as you enter the hall, where a super-efficient blonde announces your arrival directly from the reception desk to the host’s telephone, you could easily be in a scene from a vintage Bette Davis picture, and you half expect to see her charge stormily at any moment through the glass window doors, ready for an argument with David Brian or Bruce Bennett—those lost figures of Hollywood’s past. Chez Rapper, the atmosphere of that past exists. Comfortably plump and relaxed, with an elegant and cultivated personality, he is utterly unlike the brisk new generation of grey-suited, fiercely efficient Hollywood men. (…) Like so many Hollywood talents, he has been put firmly—and one hopes only temporarily—on the shelf by the newest generation, but looking round his apartment, you see the compensations: Chinese lampstands ‘fit for a museum,” magnificent paintings crowded tightly up of a wall, a louvered cocktail recess, an atmosphere of spacious, glossy luxury. And beyond the great windows and the penthouse balcony, the whispering traffic, the horn-bleeps and the diamond shine of an ocean of lights: Los Angeles.’

Just for the record, even though “Now, Voyager” isn’t mentioned in AFI’s list of 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, the film ranks at #23 in AFI’s 100 Greatest Love Stories of All Time, while Bette Davis’ closing line, ‘Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon… we have the stars!’ is at #46 in AFI’s Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time. In 2007, “Now, Voyager” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’

“Now, Voyager” (1942, trailer)

NOW, VOYAGER (1942) DIR Irving Rapper PROD Hal B. Wallis SCR Casey Robinson (novel ‘Now, Voyager’ [1941] by Olive Higgins Prouty) CAM Sol Polito MUS Max Steiner ED Warren Low CAST Bette Davis ( Charlotte Vale ), Paul Henreid ( Jerry Durrance ), Claude Rains ( Doctor Jaquith ), Gladys Cooper ( Mrs. Vale ), Bonita Granville ( June Vale ), John Loder ( Elliott Livingston ), Ilka Chase ( Lisa Vale ), Mary Wickes ( Dora Pickford ), Janis Wilson ( Tina Durrance )

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Now, Voyager (1942)

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Now, Voyager review – Bette Davis at the height of her powers

Irving Rapper's newly restored 1942 classic about a spinster who learns to appreciate life is a brilliant showcase for its magnetic star

09 Aug 2021

A Hollywood icon in every sense of the word, Bette Davis was an actor capable of summoning wit, charisma, and intensity all in a single line of dialogue. Exhibiting the qualities that made her such a commanding screen presence, Irving Rapper’s Now, Voyager – newly restored and now in cinemas courtesy of the BFI – is a star vehicle that endures beyond its original standing as a “women’s picture” thanks to its stunning depiction of a person coming to understand who they really are.

Here is a classic film with a great deal of universal appeal, with themes ranging from self-discovery, to building trusting and robust relationships. It's all subtly interwoven into Davis' magnetic portrait of a woman in crisis, and through the subtle complexities of Casey Robinson’s adapted screenplay (based on the source novel by Olive Higgins Prouty).

Now, Voyager follows the affluent Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis), stunted after having grown up under the heel of her puritanical and controlling mother (Gladys Cooper), and who remains convinced of her own unworthiness until a kindly psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith (Claude Rains), gives her the confidence to set out on a restorative South American cruise.

The monumental moment leads Charlotte onto a ship and into the company of another solo traveller, Jerry, played by Paul Henreid. Although he's married, they embark on a friendship and somewhat thwarted love affair, which helps Charlotte break free of her mother’s grip and discover a sense of self that's always been lacking.

Produced at the peak of Davis’ stardom at Warner Bros., the dominating actress transforms effortlessly between an initially shy and timid spinster into a woman filled with a verve for life and all its wonders. She flourishes with independence as the film gains momentum and, with each scene, finds noble strength to care for others.

The visual transformation owes a great deal to Davis’ dexterous acting ability, though she is aided by a good number of flowing gowns and lavish hats, conjured by the delicate touches of costume designer Orry-Kelly, who Davis frequently collaborated with across her entire career. These two forces culminate through the stark juxtaposition of costumes before and after the defining cruise. Specifically, Kelly’s costumes play with literal veils, an extended visual metaphor of the character’s name and her journey of self-discovery.

Unlike many productions of the era, Now, Voyager places a great deal of attention towards location shooting, creating its memorable images far away from the usual Hollywood sound stages, what with their artificial lighting and fake trees. As a result, the truest sense of exploration comes to the forefront – the kind that shaky backdrops on studio lots rarely afford.

As in Prouty’s original novel, the film does not shy away from melodrama, yet still places a women’s authority central to proceedings, notably echoed in the film's last line. The deliverance of the film’s final line (not to be spoiled here) could have been played with a straight romantic quality, yet in Davis’ vivid delivery a whole array of feminist themes are unearthed, placing an emphasis on women caring and supporting one another outside of a purely patriarchal family structure.

Although the film was originally intended towards a female audience, Now, Voyager avoids cliche and sentimentality about a woman's place in the world and fully transcends its origins. What emerges is a universal message about the resilience of the human condition – a timeless expedition of self-discovery with an enduring lead performance from a dedicated actor working at the height of her powers.

Now, Voyager is now showing in select UK cinemas.

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75 Years Later, Now, Voyager Remains a Poignant Depiction of Mental Illness

About 23 minutes into Now, Voyager comes one of the most resplendent transformations in all of cinema.

Charlotte Vale (played with trademark intensity and brutal grace by Bette Davis) begins the film as an archetypal spinster figure. Her eyebrows are unruly, clothes dowdy, and a definitive air of anxiety cloaks her. She comes across as an exposed nerve. But at that 23-minute mark, Charlotte is transformed. When the camera tilts upward to her luminescent face, half-shrouded by her hat, she’s glamorous and beautiful in ways she hadn’t been before. The change isn’t just cosmetic. It’s a reflection of an interior transformation that’s still in progress — thanks to an extended stay in a sanitarium — from a mentally strained spinster to a woman charting her own path.

In the years since its release, the film has garnered a reputation as Davis’s best performance and a quintessential example of the women’s picture , a proto-feminist subgenre that took shape in 1930s Hollywood that made the interior lives of complex women its terrain. When I watched the 1942 film — which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year — for the first time as a teenager, it wasn’t the glamour or even the stirring romance that captured my imagination. It was the knotted story about Charlotte’s struggle with mental illness that I was drawn to because it offered something I hadn’t seen before or since in cinematic madwomen: hope.

Today, Now, Voyager remains a timeless portrait of a woman who pulls herself back from the edge of madness to create a life she’s proud to live, with the help of both psychiatry and her own willpower. The film is buttressed by sleek, highly efficient Hollywood production and the moving performances of the cast, notably Davis and Claude Rains as Dr. Jaquith, who helps usher Charlotte into this next phase of her life. Most poignantly, Now, Voyager is a curious outlier in the pantheon of American cinema that concerns itself with women living with mental illness. Few films offer the kind of blistering hope and empathy that has made Now, Voyager endure.

Films featuring mentally ill characters — consider Glenn Close’s maniacal portrayal in Fatal Attraction, Angelina Jolie’s charismatic turn in Girl, Interrupted , and the hothouse women of Tennessee Williams adaptations — often treat these women with emotional distance. Their contorting faces and bodies are a spectacle, while the particulars of their mind remain opaque. It would be difficult to cover all the permutations of madwomen, but they often fall into a few categories: cautionary true-life tales ( Sylvia; The Three Faces of Eve ), deliriously fun vixens who give way to toxicity and violence ( Girl, Interrupted; The Craft; Fatal Attraction ), vehicles for brutalization ( A Streetcar Named Desire ), and women in horror films ( Black Swan being a notable recent addition to the canon). Others slink through noir, like the overheated Technicolor Leave Her to Heaven and sharp The Dark Mirror . This is a pantheon of women whose aches and ailments, desires and downfalls I have been studying for years — partially out of need. Through most of my life grappling with mental illness, I have had no friends or family who, at least openly, dealt with similar issues. So I turned to the screen to find communion. While I personally love many of these films, and the performances that anchor them, I am acutely aware that in almost all of these cases, female madness is a tool, an archetype, a symbol. To be branded mad as a woman can sometimes feel like a black mark you can’t escape from that allows people to disregard your voice and personhood. This is a culture that film often perpetuates through its bloodthirsty femme fatales and treacly biopics offering saccharine endings in which madness is swept away by the love of a good man. Rarely are these women seen as people with interior lives.

Based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, Now, Voyager centers on Charlotte Vale (Davis), a repressed spinster and only daughter of a prominent Boston family, whose life is brutally controlled by her aristocratic mother, Mrs. Windie Vale (Gladys Cooper). Mrs. Vale heaps emotional abuse upon her daughter to such a degree, Charlotte is perpetually on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her sister-in-law, Lisa (Ilka Chase), intervenes by introducing Charlotte to Dr. Jaquith (Rains), a wryly humorous and caring psychiatrist whose sanitarium becomes a haven for the young woman. The film’s legacy is often tied to its tender romanticism: the moving yet doomed relationship between Charlotte and the married Jeremiah “Jerry” Durrance (Paul Henreid). But what truly makes Now, Voyager memorable is how it centers on Charlotte’s interior life, including her mental illness, above all else, and how Davis capably brings this to life.

Davis’s reputation as an actress is that of unmatched intensity. She consistently played women who make shirking societal rules into an art form — martyrs, bold Southern belles, villainesses, city dwellers fueled by blinding anger. Charlotte Vale proves how deftly subtle and quiet Davis could be, despite her reputation for histrionics. Now, Voyager came relatively early in Davis’s five-decade-long career, but by this point, Davis already had a total of five Academy Award nominations and one win. Now, Voyager would be her sixth. She had also earned a reputation among directors, reportedly including Irving Rapper, who directed Now, Voyager , as being difficult, exerting her own vision to shape the films she worked on. These same traits that directors and studio heads despised in Davis — a dedication to her characters, an auteur-tinged streak, an interest in emotional and physical authenticity when bringing characters to life, no matter how repellent that may be — are the very reasons that her performance as Charlotte Vale remains so potent. What’s extraordinary about watching Davis in this role is her deft communication of Charlotte’s interior life through her physicality — the rigidity of her back as she walks, nervous hand-wringing, her wet saucer eyes darting across the room as if looking for an exit, and the startling grace and directness that comes after her transformation. She begins the film as taut as piano wire, ready to snap; by the end, she’s softened into a languid repose. There are still flashes of that intensity — like in the moving final scene — but now her energy is channeled gracefully and toward better targets. The rich emotional life Davis weaves for Charlotte, bringing nuance to even the smallest moments, is just one reason Now, Voyager is such a powerful narrative about mental illness. Ultimately, the empathy is woven into the story itself.

Now, Voyager was adapted for the screen by Casey Robinson and had a lot of material to work with, thanks to the original novel. Prouty was a pioneer for how she considered psychotherapy in her own work, eschewing the typical imagery of controlling, even malevolent doctors eager to perform lobotomies or circumscribe the lives of the women in their care, a trope that gets particular use in horror. What’s fascinating is how Dr. Jaquith forgoes the usual Freudian touches that defined cinematic representations of such doctors at the time, focusing instead on ideas of self-acceptance .

Prouty’s careful consideration of mental health and psychiatry, and the film’s portrayal of it, would feel stirring even if released today. But in the early 1940s, it was radical. As mental-health activist Darby Penney and psychiatrist Peter Stastny write about one victim of trauma in the 2009 book The Lives They Left Behind , which explores the stories of people institutionalized in the Willard Psychiatric Center during the 20th century: “Throughout history, violence and loss have sometimes driven women mad. Psychiatry has been generally complicit in this process. Today, a woman like Ethel Small who enters the system at least has a chance that she might be asked ‘What happened to you?’ rather than ‘What’s wrong with you?’ In certain places, she might even be referred to a specialist who has experience working with trauma survivors. But in the 1930s, a woman beaten by her husband and mourning her children would not have been considered a trauma survivor.” In real life and its cinematic reflections, women struggling with trauma and mental-health concerns were rarely granted the interiority and care they deserved. Now, Voyager is unique in that it understands the links between Charlotte’s mental duress and her mother’s abuse above all else; furthermore, it shows the possibility of overcoming traumas, not being consumed by them.

Charlotte may have a level of privilege and access that makes getting care for her illness easier. But how she navigates that care is strikingly familiar. In watching the film, I’m reminded of something a psychiatrist told me the second time I was institutionalized at 17: “For you, medication will only do 10 percent. The rest, the hard work, is up to you.” I didn’t truly understand what he meant at the time. But as I grew older and was forced to navigate tragedies without a support system, I came to understand how precarious mental health can be. Now, Voyager forces Charlotte to consistently reconsider how she wants to live, whether she’s navigating her mother’s attempts to manipulate her life or Dr. Jaquith’s tender probing into the sides of herself she keeps hidden. At every point, it’s Charlotte’s understanding of herself that informs its visual landscape, mood, and approach to mental illness. What Now, Voyager ultimately demonstrates is that mental-illness narratives need not be unerringly realistic but resolutely human to work.

Charlotte Vale and I are separated by race and class, culture and access. But in my late teens, shuffling between mental hospitals and new medications, Now, Voyager gave me what I couldn’t find in reality — the reality of chilly mental-hospital halls, the shameful gaze of my mother, the tender embrace of my brother trying to calm me down when I sought new ways to hurt myself: the ability to be seen and even understood.

Mental illness is complex. Hope is often withheld. Empathetic treatment can sometimes feel like a fantasy. For me, Now, Voyager offered a spark of motivation and hope, the ability to imagine a future for myself when I was too poor to get therapy and too depressed to leave my bed. It was a small joy I held on to in dark times, a salve, a form of self-care. This is how a film can save your life.

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, bette davis: cinematic medusa.

There’s an infuriating, likely apocryphal, story that, after her first screen test, Bette Davis was described as having less sex appeal than the dopey, gangly, and dramatically unsexy comedic actor Slim Summerville. This may never have actually happened, but it feels true considering the longstanding belief that Bette doesn’t just contradict our expectations of how a major Hollywood star was supposed to look at that time but that she’s outright ugly. She isn’t. But that’s not the point. At the beginning of her career no one at Warner Brothers had any idea what to do with her. Then she had a shock of platinum blonde hair, a slim waist, the sort of beauty that electrifies more than allures, and huge doll eyes flickering with a strange luminosity often communicating more than the paltry scripts given to her. Even this early on, there is a spark of something powerful and the beginnings of what would be the foremost thematic preoccupation in her career: anger. It is because of this, in spite of what the studio system’s machinery sought to shape her into, that she became not only a star but one of the most elemental, powerful actresses ever to grace the screen.

In the early 1930s through the 1940s Bette was at the forefront of a curious subgenre known as the women’s picture. The women’s picture could take the shape of a bitter, hothouse noir (“Leave Her to Heaven,” 1945), a musical (“Cover Girl,” 1941), a sharp drama (“Born to Be Bad,” 1950), or an epic melodrama (“Gone with the Wind,” 1939). Despite its shapeshifter status, what links the genre is its concern with placing women—along with their emotional, intellectual, psychological and social experiences—at the center of their own cinematic world. Bette’s image was the perfect balance of china and steel, vulnerability and strength that articulated the shifting cultural dynamics her audience was experiencing during World War II. Underneath this image of the go-getter modern woman, Bette subverts a myth that is perhaps the most recognizable image of female anger in the Western world.

Medusa’s myth is primarily understand in broad strokes: hair of writhing snakes; glare that turns men to stone; her head severed and voice lost to became a weapon for Perseus, later an emblem on Athena’s shield. Ovid added new texture to her past as a young maiden raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple and turned monstrous by the goddess. The fear of expressing anger and its repercussions is a wounded inheritance for every woman. This is reaffirmed by how Medusa’s myth ends only in tragedy and loss. As girls, we’re told to snuff out this anger and ignore how useful a tool it can be to shape our lives or we’ll be doomed to a lonely existence. It’s a lesson I tried very hard to ignore as a young Afro-Latina, even though anger has an even heavier weight because of certain racial stereotypes all black women are forced to deal with. Then here comes Bette Davis in my life. I don’t remember exactly when I first saw her. In " All About Eve " (1950), during my mid-teens, perhaps when I was grappling with returning from a second trip to the mental hospital. Or maybe it was a little later when I was heading off to college watching her tear her way across the screen in "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962). I don’t remember the first film of hers I watched, but I remember how I felt. A surge of recognition. A spark of inspiration. A clarion call through the darkness inviting me to use anger instead of ignoring it or being destroyed by it. Despite the Production Code leading to her most prickly, transgressive characters meeting tragic ends, Bette subverts the myth of Medusa by finding humanity in the monster and giving her back her voice. The earliest, most dynamic signs of Bette’s preoccupation with anger is in "Of Human Bondage" (1934) and "Marked Woman" (1937).

In "Of Human Bondage," Bette plays vulgar waitress Mildred Rogers who both terrorizes and arouses Leslie Howard’s sensitive artist. As Mildred, Bette is a spiteful mess wreaking havoc throughout the lives of everyone in her path. In "Marked Woman," which has her playing off Humphrey Bogart , Bette’s anger is righteous as she stands up to the mob even after a beatdown leaves her scarred. Bette is utterly hypnotic in both roles, dominating each scene she’s in with a blistering presence even when she doesn’t speak. And yet her craftsmanship feels unrefined. She hasn’t fully tapped into what she can do with anger quite yet. A few years later, during her second collaboration with director William Wyler, she does.

When directing his second film, "In This Our Life" (1942), John Huston saw something “elemental” in Bette. It was as if “she had a demon within her which threatens to break out and eat everybody. The studio confused it with overacting. Over their objections, I let the demon go.” Bette made an art out of finding the humanity in complex, unlikable, even outright evil women. In William Wyler ’s "The Letter" (1941), she stars as Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a British plantation manager who kills her lover in cold blood at the start of the film and creates a disturbing fiction to cover up what is essentially murder. Leslie is a tricky role to pull off. She’s undoubtedly a femme fatale with cold-hearted ambition and little sense of morality. In lesser hands, she could easily be a shrill, anti-feminist creation. But one of Bette’s greatest strengths is in seeing the woman behind the monster. She’s most known for an anger dripping with braggadocio—loud, vulgar, crackling like fresh fire. This is seen in her set of identifiable acting flourishes—hand-wringing, using her cigarette to punctuate sentences or communicate mood, sharp strides across the screen as if marching into battle—that are easy to get hung up on and even confuse for overacting. In this way, Bette can be construed as a camp punchline, the flattened image of a monstress much like what our culture has done to Medusa. But in doing so you lose the ability to see the way she can subvert our expectations communicating the texture of anger through arguably the best tool in a cinematic actors arsenal: stillness.

"The Letter" opens outside, in the dead of night amongst the sounds of nature. The near-silence is broken by a man we later learn is her lover staggering from Leslie’s home and the shots she fires again and again until she empties her revolver into his back. Her eyes as bright and hypnotic as the full moon that looms above her. Without her most well-known actorly flourishes, Bette relies purely on a cool, assured physicality. This opening proves Bette was even more powerful in the quiet moments when her anger needed to seethe rather than explode.

Even in her more romantic, tender-hearted dramas, where Bette can sometime be found playing outright martyrs, that anger is still there. While the scripts that lay the foundation of much of her filmography require short bursts of anger from the various characters she played, Bette instead braids a rich tapestry with the emotion carefully evoking its ebbs and flows. We can see it in the sharp way she jabs her cigarette as if violently punctuating each sentence. We can hear it in the way she draws out her words. We can experience it through her gaze, which often feels as sharp as the edge of a blade, or like that jolt of pain when accidentally touching an open flame. 

"Now, Voyager" (1942) crystallizes her intelligence as an actress as she recognizes that anger comes in many textures and flavors. The film follows Bette as Charlotte, the sheltered daughter to the wealthy and controlling Ms. Vale, struggles with mental illness and isolation but is slowly able to wrestle from her mother’s grip with the help of a psychiatrist ( Claude Rains ) and sheer will. As Charlotte, Bette demonstrates the full breadth of anger in inventive ways, even when it seems no longer useful for its protagonist. But Bette understands the way anger propels. Anger can be underscored by the cold ache of loneliness. It can be as hot as the noonday Miami sun. It can simmer beneath the surface of ours lives causing us to quietly rebel until it openly erupts. Throughout her career Bette displays a keen understanding for the emotion in all its complexities—how anger can be tender and righteous, the aftermath of a scar or the creator of one. Perhaps, it’s her understanding of anger and refusal to shy away from its power that caused her to strike fear in the hearts of (male) critics and filmmakers, alike.

When Joseph L. Mankiewicz decided to cast Bette as the lead in "All About Eve" another director warned him about what he was in for. Edmund Goulding directed Bette in four films, including "Dark Victory" (1939), and said to Mankiewicz, “Dear boy, have you gone mad? This woman will destroy you, she will grind you down to a fine powder and blow you away. You are a writer, dear boy. She will come to the stage with a thick pad of long yellow paper. And pencils. She will write. And then she, not you, will direct. Mark my words.” I’ve never been frightened of Bette like many of the critics and filmmakers who speak of her much like Goulding does. Entranced, inspired, and challenged, yes. But never afraid. Perhaps because watching Bette has always felt like watching my own emotional landscape writ large. Something I believe many women feel.

One of the most layered depictions of Bette’s anger is her least known, in the TV film "Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter" (1979) co-starring another powerhouse, Gena Rowlands, as her estranged daughter. After a twenty-year absence, when the two women come face to face, Bette’s posture is rigid, her face set by a hardened glare. But there’s also the flicker of something else in her eyes, in the way she sets her jaw that speaks to the shared history between these characters and the chasm that has grown between them. This flicker shows how Bette understands that such unbridled anger often is the mark of our most personal wounds.

Bette’s legacy is ultimately predicated upon her unique ability to understand and fully inhabit truly unlikable characters. She excelled at playing wounded and wounding women without an air of apology or condescension toward the characters (or audience). She played complicated characters whose monstrosity sometimes turned physical in the form of thick, mask-like makeup or physical scars. It isn’t that there haven’t been other actresses to take up this mantle. But none have done so with the consistency, honesty, and sheer delight that Bette brings to the screen. But more than anything, Bette turned anger into an art form and showed the humanity in the kind of women our culture often ignores. Through Bette’s artistry, her most transgressive characters aren’t cautionary tales but bold emblems for a way of life too few women are allowed to live. Perhaps Bette’s legacy is even more personal in the way she feels like a voice, an image reaching across the darkness to tell us there’s another way to survive.

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Now Voyager,' with Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, at the Hollywood -- 'Flying Tigers Featured at Capitol

• Oct. 23, 1942

Although it carries a professional bedside manner, "Now, Voyager," Bette Davis's latest tribulation at the Hollywood, contains not a little quackery. For two hours of heartache and repeated renunciation, Miss Davis lays bare the morbidities of a repressed ugly duckling who finally finds herself as a complete woman. From the original novel, Casey Robinson has created a deliberate and workmanlike script which more than once reaches into troubled emotions. Director Irving Rapper has screened it with frequent effectiveness. But "Now, Voyager," either because of the Hays office or its own spurious logic, endlessly complicates an essentially simple theme. For all its emotional hair-splitting, it fails to resolve its problems as truthfully as it pretends. In fact, a little more truth would have made the film a good deal shorter.In a personal study of the sort which Miss Davis has accepted as her forte, the film tells the story of an unattractive, hysterical girl enslaved by maternal tyranny and how through the ministrations of a psychiatrist, and even more through an abortive love affair on a southward cruise, she finally emerges from the dark chrysalis of her neurosis into the light of day. But the man whose love restores her is himself unhappily married to a woman he dares not hurt, and his own child has been victimized by the insecurity of an unsettled home. After several renunciations, Miss Davis and Paul Henried, as the married lover, form a curious partnership to aid the child. Violently in love with each other, they enter a platonic relationship in which Miss Davis keeps the child and Mr. Henried keeps his unwanted wife.It is in these endless renunciations that the story moves from a direct and common-sense dramatic treatment into a prudish fantasy. Chained to a personal unhappiness, the lover's refusal to consummate his love for Miss Davis itself becomes a suspicious symptom. His nobility is phony—in his self-enforced martyrdom he is no less neurotic than the woman he has helped to bring to life. And certainly the final solution is more explosive than the original problem. Two people continually resisting their affection for one another while raising a child in partnership opens whole vistas of new neuroses.Miss Davis plays the young woman, high-lighting her progress to emotional maturity with the decision and accuracy of an assured actress. Claude Rains offers a polished and even-tempered performance as the psychiatrist. But Gladys Cooper's tyrannical dowager is arbitrarily written and acted, and Paul Henried never brings into focus the ambiguously conceived character of the lovelorn husband. Although "Now, Voyager" starts out bravely, it ends exactly where it started—and after two lachrymose hours.

NOW, VOYAGER; screen play by Casey Robinson; based on the novel by Olive Higgins Prouty; directed by Irving Rapper; produced by Hal B. Wallis for Warner Brothers.Charlotte Vale . . . . . Bette DavisJerry Durrance . . . . . Paul HenreidDr. Jaquith . . . . . Claude RainsMrs. Henry Windle Vale . . . . . Gladys CooperJune Vale . . . . . Bonita GranvilleLisa Vale . . . . . Ilka ChaseElliot Livingston . . . . . John LoderDeb McIntyre . . . . . Lee PatrickMr. Thompson . . . . . Franklin PangbornMiss Trask . . . . . Katherine AlexanderFrank McIntyre . . . . . James RennieDora Pickford . . . . . Mary WickesTina Durrance . . . . . Janis WilsonDr. Dan Regan . . . . . Michael AmesLeslie Trotter . . . . . Charles DrakeManoel . . . . . Frank PugliaWilliam . . . . . David Clyde

Bette Davis: Her Life, Career and Cause Of Death

Posted: April 5, 2024 | Last updated: April 5, 2024

Bette Davis in 'Jezebel'

'Jezebel' (1938)Davis won her second Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of a headstrong Southern belle in this classic film, solidifying her status as one of Hollywood's leading ladies.

Bette Davis in 'Of Human Bondage'

'Of Human Bondage' (1934)Davis's breakthrough role came in this adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, where she portrayed a manipulative waitress. Her performance earned critical acclaim and marked the beginning of her ascent to stardom.

Gary Merrill and Bette Davis in 'All About Eve'

'All About Eve' (1950)In this iconic film, Davis delivered a memorable performance as "Margo Channing," a veteran actress facing the challenges of aging in Hollywood. Her portrayal earned her another Academy Award nomination and remains one of her most celebrated roles.

Bette Davis in 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'

'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?' (1962)Davis showcased her versatility and range in this psychological thriller, playing a former child star opposite Joan Crawford. The film became a cult classic and revitalized Davis's career.

Gary Merrill and Bette Davis

Personal LifeDavis's personal life was as dramatic as her on-screen performances. She was married four times, including to Harmon Nelson, Arthur Farnsworth, William Grant Sherry, and Gary Merrill, and had three children. Despite facing numerous challenges, she remained resilient and fiercely independent.

Bette Davis

Cause Of DeathBette Davis passed away on October 6, 1989, at the age of 81. The cause of her death was breast cancer, which she had battled for several years. Despite her illness, Davis continued to work until shortly before her death, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire generations of actors and audiences alike.

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