She ruled as queens and empresses, she was the tempestuous heart of love triangles, and she didn’t balk at playing an older character or a nasty woman — that’s right, she’s Bette Davis, and her historical costume movie roles are legendary. With her trademark pencil-thin eyebrows and those piercing eyes, Davis made her mark on screen.
Julie Marsden in Jezebel (1938)
Louise Elliott in The Sisters (1938)
Carlota of Mexico in Juarez (1939)
Charlotte Lovell in The Old Maid (1939)
Queen Elizabeth in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Henriette Deluzy-Desportes in All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1941)
Fanny Trellis Skeffington in Mr. Skeffington (1944)
Miss Lilly Moffat in The Corn Is Green (1945)
Queen Elizabeth I in The Virgin Queen (1955)
Empress Catherine the Great in John Paul Jones (1959)
Mrs. Van Schuyler in Death on the Nile (1987)
What’s your favorite Bette Davis historical costume role?
QEI by far—both times.
All About Eve!
I’m with MoHub on this. QEI. Although her Julie in Jezebel was terrific and Oscar winning and I prefer it over GWTW, it and the Old Maid are my seconds. But IMHO you can’t go wrong with MS Davis.
Her ‘modern’ film favourites of mine are Now Voyager and All About Eve.
I love Jezebel, so it is may top favorite, but she was great in The Old Maid too and in all the other holes. Ah, and just a correction, Carlota was married to as Austrian prince, but she was from Belgium.
Oh Lord! There is so much to choose from! I’ll have to go with the following:
Julie Marsden in Jezebel
Queen Elizabeth in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
Henriette Deluzy-Desportes in All This, and Heaven Too
Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes
Mrs. Van Schuyler in Death on the Nile