DARK VICTORY (1939).

Dark Victory (1939) A drama directed by Edmund Goulding and the second film that he and Bette Davis worked together on. They also worked together on That Certain Woman (1937), The Old Maid (1939) and The Great Lie (1941).

Judith Traherne(Bette Davis) socialite/heiress, who loves fast cars and beautiful horses, is in the prime of her life, when Dr. Frederick Steele (George Brent) her best friend, diagnoses a brain tumor. The doctor tells her secretary that the tumor will come back and slowly kill her. After learning her fate at a fancy restaurant, Judy announces "I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative!" What follows next is a life of drunken recklessness. Her horse trainer Michael (Humphrey Bogart), who loves her, tells her to get as much out of life as she can. She marries Steele who is looking for a cure for her illness. As he goes off to a conference in New York, Judith's eyesight is beginning to fail. Will Steele find a cure in time?

Dark Victory (1939) Fun facts:

Gloria Swanson had tried and failed to get the movie made a few years earlier.

Greta Garbo was the original choice for Judith Traherne.

Geraldine Fitzgerald (November 24, 1913 – July 17, 2005). She was a great-aunt of the actress Tara FitzGerald, and a cousin of the British novelist Nevil Shute.

Inspired by her aunt, the actress/director Shelah Richards, Geraldine Fitzgerald began her acting career in 1932 in theatre in Dublin, before moving to London in 1934 to perform in British films. She was thought of as one of the British film industry's most promising young performers and her most successful film of this period was, The Mill on the Floss (1937).

Dark Victory (1939) marked one of Fitzgerald's earliest appearances in American films. Her success led her to America and Broadway in 1938, and while appearing opposite Orson Welles in the Mercury Theatre production of Heartbreak House, she was seen by the film producer Hal B. Wallis who signed her to a seven-year film contract. She received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Isabella Linton in, Wuthering Heights and her role in Dark Victory.

She appeared in, Shining Victory (1941) and Watch on the Rhine (1943)and Wilson (1944). Although she continued to work frequently throughout the 1940s, the quality of her roles diminished and her career began to fade. She returned to Britain to film, So Evil My Love (1948). In 1951 she performed in, The Late Edwina Black before returning to America.

In the 1960s she worked as a character actress in the films: Ten North Frederick (1958), The Pawnbroker (1964) and Rachel, Rachel (1968). Her other films include The Mango Tree (1977) , Arthur (1981), Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) and Arthur 2: On the Rocks (1988).