Dangerous (1935)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- A spellbinding performance in director Alfred E. Green's moody drama garnered the legendary Bette Davis her first Academy Award as Best Actress. Davis portrays Joyce Heath, a boozy and broke former Broadway star who gets an opportunity to resuscitate her career thanks to the efforts of well-to-do architect Don Bellows (Franchot Tone).
- Actors:
- Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, Margaret Lindsay, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge, Dick Foran, Walter Walker, Richard Carle, George Irving, Pierre Watkin, Douglas Wood, William B. Davidson, George Beranger, Bill Elliott, Helen Ericson, Florence Fair, Eddie Foster, Pauline Garon, Edward Keane, Milton Kibbee
- Directors:
- Alfred E. Green
- Producers:
- Hal B. Wallis, Jack L. Warner
- Writers:
- Laird Doyle
- Aka:
- Peligrosa
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama
- Collections:
- Award Winners, Oscar Nominations Competition 2024, Oscars: Winners & Losers
- Awards:
More like Dangerous
Reviews (1) of Dangerous
Crazy Soap. - Dangerous review by Steve
Bette Davis didn't get an Oscar nomination for her sensation in Of Human Bondage and it seems standard to assume that a year later, the Academy gave her the award for Dangerous to make up for the oversight. But this scenario ignores that Claudette Colbert deserved her win for It Happened One Night, and that Bette is pretty good in this.
There are signs it was jigged to give the audience a few echoes of her star-making role. But her character is completely different; an intelligent and celebrated stage actor who has fallen on hard times and alcoholism but finds a way back through the support of Franchot Tone's principled, wealthy architect/playboy.
It's melodrama and there are many sacrifices made before the cast manoeuvres towards a conclusion acceptable to the Production Code. This hasn't the prestige of a Somerset Maugham adaptation. The plot is clumsy, though there’s a witty script. The direction is dreadful, but this is Warner Brothers and there's enough talent on board to compensate.
Bette is fabulous and makes the standard situations a lot of fun. Including when she manipulates the engaged Franchot to kiss her in a thunderstorm. She is the sort of predatory girl you don't leave alone with your man! Her solution to an inconvenient marriage is to accelerate herself and her husband into a tree and see who survives! It's that crazy. And it's that irresistible.