Dark victory: Cancer and popular hollywood film

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 94-115

  Lederer, Susan E ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

Author keywords

Bette Davis; Brain tumor; Cancer; Cultural representation of cancer; Hollywood films

Indexed keywords

EID: 34047096779     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2007.0005     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (70)

1. Frank S. Nugent, "Bette Davis Scores New Honors in 'Dark Victory,'" New York Times, 21 April 1939, p. 27;
2. Mae Tinee, "'Dark Victory' a New Triumph for Bette Davis," Chicago Tribune, 29 April 1939, p. 15.
3. Plot descriptions for all films in this essay are taken from the American Film Institute On-Line Catalogue.
4. James Patterson, The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
5. Ellen Leopold, A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), p. 240.
6. See Leslie J. Reagan, "Engendering the Dread Disease: Women, Men and Cancer," Amer. J. Pub. Health, 1997, 87: 1779-87;
7. Robert Aronowitz, "Do Not Delay: Breast Cancer and Time, 1900-1970," Milbank Quart., 2003, 79: 355-86.
8. Nancy J. Tomes, "Epidemic Entertainments: Disease and Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century America," Amer. Lit. Hist., 2002, 14: 625-52.
9. See Susan E. Lederer, "Repellent Subjects: Hollywood Censorship and Surgical Images in the 1930s," Lit. & Med., 1998, 17: 91-113.
10. Robert A. Clark, "Reel Oncology: How Hollywood Films Portray Cancer," www.moffitt,usf.edu/pubs/ccj/v6n5/dept7.htm (2 September 2004).
11. For Sarandon, see Franz Lidz, "In a Higher State of Being (That Is, Dying)," New York Times, 10 January 1999, p. 46.
12. See Gary Sperling, All-Cancer Film Festival, http://slate.mm.com/id/ 2065895/ (accessed 31 October 2006).
13. The AFI Catalog does not yet include the 1950s.
14. However, three of the eighteen films are related to George Gershwin's real-life cancer, including the bio-pic Rhapsody in Blue (1945).
15. All plot summaries are taken from the AFI on-line Catalog.
16. Pat McGilligan, Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 301.
17. Susan E. Lederer and John Parascandola, "Screening Syphilis: Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet Meets the Public Health Service," J. Hist. Med., 1998, 53: 345-70.
18. National Cancer Act, S 2067, 75th Cong., 1st sess.
19. Karen Rader, Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for American Biomedical Research, 1900-1955 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 147-49.
20. The article in Life was "U.S. Science Wars against an Unknown Enemy: Cancer," 1 March 1937, pp. 11-17. One Burlington, Iowa, reader wrote, "I burned up my copy.... I can't imagine anything more repulsive";
21. A. T. Gordon of Seattle, Washington, wrote, "I tore out the gruesome sheets before anyone could be as shocked as we were." See "Letters to the Editor," Life, 22 March 1937, p. 76.
22. See also Susan E. Lederer, "Medicine Comes to Life: Photojournalism, Doctors, and Disease" (Paper presented at Yale conference, The Art of Medicine, April 2004).
23. See, e.g., Gerald G. Gross, "10 Grams of Radium Tested Here to Go Throughout U.S.," Washington Post, 10 August 1939, p. 4;
24. "Atom Smasher Fights Cancer," Los Angeles Times, 10 November 1937, p. 1.
25. Charles Higham, Warner Brothers (New York: Scribner's, 1975), p. 137.
26. Vermont was apparently the place to go for medical research: in both Sinclair Lewis's book Arrowsmith and the 1931 film version, Martin Arrowsmith goes to Vermont to pursue medical research.
27. Casey Robinson, ed., with an introduction by Bernard F. Dick, Dark Victory (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), p. 76.
28. Shooting script (1939) available at http://www.alexanderstreet2.com/ afsolive/ (accessed 2 November 2006).
29. Ibid., p. 100.
30. Ibid., p. 111.
31. "'Jury' to Decide Fate of Baby in Eye Case," New York Times, 9 May 1938, p. 19.
32. "2 Little Victims of Glioma-One Lives; One Exists," Chicago Tribune, 9 May 1938, p. 2.
33. "Girl Sees Well 18 Years After Removal of Eye," Chicago Tribune, 10 May 1938, p. 6, with accompanying photograph of Miss Roach, captioned "Victim of Glioma."
34. "Left Her Head to Science," New York Times, 6 October 1935, p. 14.
35. "Operation Fails to Save Life of Famous Composer," Washington Post, 12 July 1937, p. 1.
36. "Seek Data in Death of Horlick Heiress," New York Times, 17 July 1938, p. 16;
37. "Ex-Circus Giant Dies," ibid., 3 August 1938, p. 19.
38. Logan Clendenning, "Today's Health Talk," Washington Post, 21 April 1939, p. 18.
39. Nugent, "Bette Davis Scores New Honors" (n. 1).
40. Tinee, "'Dark Victory' a New Triumph" (n. 1).
41. Jeanine Basinger, A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960 (New York: Knopf, 1993).
42. For the pressbook, see Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman's Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 29-30.
43. Matthew Kennedy, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory: Hollywood's Genius Bad Boy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), p. 184.
44. "Screen in Review: Dark Victory," New York Times, 21 April 1939, p. 27.
45. See also "Bette Davis' Portrayal in 'Dark Victory' Hailed," Los Angeles Times, 8 March 1939, p. A10.
46. "Movie of the Week: Dark Victory," Life, 24 April 1939, pp. 31-34.
47. Jerome Lawrence, Actor: The Life and Times of Paul Muni (New York: Putnam, 1974), p. 218.
48. Whitney Stine, Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1974), p. 111.
49. "'Dark Victory' Enters Second Week," Washington Post, 6 May 1939, p. 8.
50. Reagan, "Engendering the Dread Disease" (n. 5).
51. Kirsten E. Gardner, Early Detection: Women, Cancer, and Awareness Campaigns in the Twentieth-Century United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 107.
52. Frederick Othman, "Feeling Great, Bette Davis Back at Work on New Film," Washington Post, 21 February 1940, p. 16.
53. Wolfgang Reinhardt to Hal Wallis, 3 July 1940; reprinted in Rudy Behlmer, ed., Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951) (New York: Viking Penguin, 1985), p. 135.
54. Joseph Breen to Jack L. Warner, 22 April 1941, "King's Row," MPAA/PCA Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California. Reagan claimed this was his favorite film role; he took the line expressed when he discovers the amputation, "Where's the rest of me?" for the title of his autobiography.
55. See Ronald Reagan and Richard G. Hubler, Where's the Rest of Me? (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1965).
56. The film was reviewed under the tide "Live Today for Tomorrow." None of the reviews mentions cancer or brain tumor. Edwin Schallert alludes to the wife's incurable disease: see "Marches Distinguish Mercy-Killing Drama," Los Angeles Times, 10 January 1948, p. 23.
57. Mae Tinee describes the wife as "fatally ill": see "Mercy Killing Is Explored in a Grim Movie," Chicago Daily Tribune, 9 January 1948, p. B12.
58. For an evaluation of the courtroom scenes, see Paul Bergman and Michael Asimov, Reel Justice: The Courtroom Goes to the Movies (Kansas City: Universal Press, 1996), pp. 188-93.
59. The film was banned in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico because it was deemed derogatory to Latin America. See entry "Crisis," AFI Catalog.
60. See entries for individual films in AFI on-line catalog.
61. Lester J. Keyser and Andre Ruskowski, The Cinema of Sydney Poitier (San Diego: Barnes, 1980), p. 21.
62. See entry for "No Way Out," AFI Catalog. The censors were concerned about the use of terms such as "nigger," and the portrayal of the riot in the black ghetto (among other things). See Thomas Cripps, Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). The film was also banned in the Bahamas until 1955.
63. In the API entry for Madame Curie neither "cancer" nor "leukemia" appears as a principal or additional subject. See Alberto Elena, "Skirts in the Lab: 'Madame Curie' and the Image of the Woman Scientist in the Feature Film," Pub. Underst. Sci., 1997, 6: 269-78.
64. See Susan E. Lederer, "Hollywood and Human Experimentation: Representing Medical Research in Popular Film," in Medicine's Moving Pictures, ed. Paula Treichler, Nancy Tomes, and Leslie Reagan (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2007).
65. The film was based on the 1944 novel by Ruth Southard, No Sad Songs for Me (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1944). In the novel, Cas goes to see her doctor hoping to learn that she is pregnant; instead, the doctor reads her his findings: "The report was detailed and technical. Cas recognized physiological terms, but the connecting phrases were meaningless. She looked at the X rays. They were blurry and indefinite, like some of the pictures she took of Polly - the kind returned undeveloped. They had no more significance than the words the doctor was reading. Only 'malignant' made her start, brace herself against the chair. Malignant growth ..." (p. 6). The doctor tells her she should have come months ago, and now it's too late. "Is it cancer?" she asks. They discuss radium treatments, operations, but she has only nine months to live. Later in the book, she finally tells her husband her diagnosis when she needs to go to the hospital: "Cancer. I'm going to die"; and "It's cancer," she repeated. "Nasty things that sneak up on one without warning. They must be of Japanese origin" (pp. 166-67).
66. See Gene Philips, The Films of Tennessee Williams (East Brunswick, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1980).
67. The X rating had much more to do with the suggestion of a sexual act performed by the white showgirl on her husband's racially mixed half-brother: Gene D. Phillips, "Tennessee Williams's Forgotten Film: The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots as a Screen Version of The Seven Descents of Myrtle," in Philip C. Kolin, ed., The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 69-79, on p. 76.
68. See Linda C. Pelzer, Erich Segal: A Critical Companion (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1997).
69. Quoted in Lidz, "In a Higher State of Being" (n. 8).
70. See Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 191-94.