FILM 2032: OLD ACQUAINTANCE

TRIVIA: In one scene, an enraged Millie refers to Kit as "Jezebel!" This was the title of Bette Davis' blockbuster hit five years before this movie (Jezebel (1938)). Hopkins herself had starred in Jezebel on the stage before the play was filmed.

This is the film with the often shown, camp classic scene of Bette Davis calmly grabbing Miriam Hopkins by the shoulders, vigorously shaking her, throwing her down into a chair, and then calmly saying with a clipped, sarcastic edge: "Sorry". Bette Davis later admitted she immensely enjoyed playing that scene.

This film was the second collaboration of legendary arch-enemies Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, (Their previous collaboration had been The Old Maid (1939).) The fact that in 1939, Bette Davis had an affair with Miriam Hopkins' then-husband, director Anatole Litvak, only added to their mutual hatred. To their credit, the two actresses had a sense of humor about the situation and allowed publicity photographs to be taken of them facing each other wearing boxing gloves, with director Vincent Sherman between them.

Inside joke: The star of the Broadway play written by Bette Davis' character is a difficult actress named "Julia Broadbank" - a pretty obvious allusion to Tallulah Bankhead, with whom Davis had a famously acrimonious relationship after Davis landed film versions of Dark Victory and The Little Foxes, both of which had been stage triumphs for Bankhead.

Remade theatrically in the 1980s as "Rich and Famous."

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