Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress with a career spanning more than 50 years and 100 acting credits. She was noted for playing unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical films, suspense horror, and occasional comedies, although her greater successes were in romantic dramas. A recipient of two Academy Awards, she was the first thespian to accrue ten nominations.
The following is an overview of 1932 in film, including significant events, a list of films released and notable births and deaths.
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was a British writer.
Murder with Mirrors is a 1985 British-American television film starring Helen Hayes, Bette Davis, John Mills, Leo McKern, Dorothy Tutin and Tim Roth. It is based on Agatha Christie's novel They Do It with Mirrors, using the novel's American title. The novel has been dramatized on two separated series, Miss Marple and Agatha Christie's Marple. They were used the novel's original title.
Blackmail is a 1929 British thriller drama film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anny Ondra, John Longden, and Cyril Ritchard. Based on the 1928 play of the same name by Charles Bennett, the film is about a London woman who is blackmailed after killing a man who tries to rape her.
Death on the Nile is a 1978 British mystery film based on Agatha Christie's 1937 novel of the same name, directed by John Guillermin and adapted by Anthony Shaffer. The film features the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, played by Peter Ustinov for the first time, plus an all-star supporting cast that includes Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Jane Birkin, David Niven, George Kennedy, and Jack Warden. The film is a follow-up to the 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express.
The Man Who Played God is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by John G. Adolfi. George Arliss stars as a concert pianist embittered by the loss of his hearing, who eventually finds redemption by helping others; it also features a then little-known Bette Davis as the much younger woman engaged to the protagonist.
Bordertown is a 1935 American drama film directed by Archie Mayo and starring Paul Muni and Bette Davis. The screenplay by Laird Doyle and Wallace Smith is based on Robert Lord's adaptation of the 1934 novel Border Town by Carroll Graham. The supporting cast features Margaret Lindsay, Eugene Pallette and Robert Barrat. Although the films They Drive by Night (1940) and Blowing Wild (1953) are not specifically remakes of Bordertown, they include many of its plot elements and similar scenes.
Seed is a 1931 American Pre-Code drama film directed by John M. Stahl. The screenplay by Gladys Lehman is based on a novel by Charles G. Norris.
The Rich Are Always with Us is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic comedy-drama film directed by Alfred E. Green and starring Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, and Bette Davis. The screenplay by Austin Parker is based on the novel of the same name by Ethel Pettit.
20,000 Years in Sing Sing is a 1932 American Pre-Code drama film set in Sing Sing Penitentiary, the maximum security prison in Ossining, New York, starring Spencer Tracy as an inmate and Bette Davis as his girlfriend. It was directed by Michael Curtiz and based upon the nonfiction book Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing, written by Lewis E. Lawes, the warden of Sing Sing from 1920 to 1941.
Whodunnit? is a play written by Anthony Shaffer in 1977, originally called The Case of the Oily Levantine.
Winter Meeting is a 1948 American drama film directed by Bretaigne Windust and starring Bette Davis and Jim Davis. The screenplay, based on the novel of the same name by Grace Zaring Stone, was written by Catherine Turney.
Hell's House is a 1932 American Pre-Code drama film starring Junior Durkin, featuring Bette Davis and directed by Howard Higgin. The screenplay by Paul Gangelin and B. Harrison Orkow, set during the waning days of the Prohibition era, is based on a story by Higgin.
The Feathered Serpent is a 1934 British thriller film directed by Maclean Rogers and starring Enid Stamp-Taylor, Tom Helmore and Moore Marriott. A reporter faces a race against time to clear an actress accused of murder. It is based on the 1927 novel The Feathered Serpent by Edgar Wallace.
The Mind of Mr. Reeder is a 1939 British mystery crime film directed by Jack Raymond and starring Will Fyffe as Mr. Reeder, with Kay Walsh, George Curzon, and supporting roles for Chili Bouchier, John Warwick and Ronald Shiner.
Code of the Secret Service is a 1939 film directed by Noel M. Smith and starring Ronald Reagan. It is the second of four films in the U.S. Secret Service Agent Brass Bancroft series, having been preceded by Secret Service of the Air (1939) and followed by Smashing the Money Ring (1939) and Murder in the Air (1940).
The Solitaire Man is a 1933 American pre-Code drama film directed by Jack Conway and starring Herbert Marshall and Mary Boland.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a Gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. The work is also known as The Strange Case of Jekyll Hyde, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll and Hyde. The novella follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and a murderous criminal named Edward Hyde. It is revealed at the end of the novella that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person, with Jekyll transforming into Hyde via an unnamed chemical concoction to live out his darker urges.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Or a Mis-Spent Life is a four-act play written in 1897 by Luella Forepaugh and George F. Fish. It is an adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, an 1886 novella written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The story focuses on Henry Jekyll, a respected London doctor, and his involvement with Edward Hyde, a loathsome criminal. After Hyde murders a vicar, Jekyll's friends suspect he is helping the killer, but the truth is that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. Jekyll has developed a potion that allows him to transform himself into Hyde and back again. When he runs out of the potion, he is trapped in his Hyde form and commits suicide.
