A long deluxe soap opera that follows the exploits of the egotistical and vain Fanny Trellis Skeffington. Mr. Skeffington gives the audience the opportunity to watch Davis age over a 26 year period with some good acting and over-the-top makeup effects. This is a Bette Davis showcase vehicle through and through.

Fanny Trellis is a gorgeous sought after New York socialite who learns that her brother Trippy is guilty of stealing money from Job Skeffington's (Claude Rains) bank, where he is employed. She's informed of this by Rains himself, and they discover that Trippy has been embezzled the money to make up for his gambling losses.

Fanny uses her charms to persuade Skeffington not to press charges against her brother, agreeing to marry him in a loveless, but friendly union. Trippy is outraged that his sister sacrificed her life because of him and he leaves town to join the British air corps and fight in WW I. He is killed in the service and Fanny is shattered, blaming her husband for her brother's death.





She gives birth to a daughter, but after the war she and Skeffington divorce. He grants her a generous settlement then takes their daughter and moves to Europe while Fanny takes up a receiving line of suitors in her parlor, and engages in a series of affairs. WW II begins and Rains sends their daughter, also named Fanny, now 18, back to the States. Davis is currently dallying with Johnny Mitchell, a handsome engineer, and when they go on a sailing trip, Fanny contracts diphtheria.

She survives but the disease causes her hair to fall out and ravages her beautiful face. Fanny, a creature of vanity tries everything to look better, all the tricks of the makeup trade, but it only seems to make it worse. She is then stunned when Drake marries her daughter and they move to California. Alone and despondent, Fanny hears that Skeffington, who spent time in a Nazi concentration camp, has returned from Europe.

She visits him and finds he's blind and penniless. He remembers Davis as being the most beautiful woman in the world, so when she says she would like nothing better than to spend the rest of her life taking care of him. Words spoken by Mr. Skeffington years earlier come true, that a woman is only really beautiful when she is loved by another.





This was a demanding part for Davis, calling on her to go from a girlish glow to a freakish death mask. She was once again way to involved in the make-up and hair decisions for the character, and the result is that her physical appearance is a little distracting, to put it mildly. She did lend credibility to the transformation by deftly using her voice. She pitched her normally deep voice about eight notes higher when playing the younger Fanny, and as the picture progressed, she lowered the tone until her voice was back to her normal pitch.





By some accounts Davis took no prisoners behind the scenes of Mr. Skeffington. She again had problems getting along with her colleagues and had a series of mysterious illnesses that put the production two months behind schedule. This pattern of medical problems plagued the actress throughout her career, was thought for the most part to be as a result of stress. Perhaps on this occasion it is understandable given that she had just recently been widowed by the sudden and unexpected death of her second husband Arthur Farnsworth.