All About Eve - Bette Davis movie makes perfect rainy Saturday Tv viewing

When it is pouring with rain, which it was, I like nothing better than lying beside the fire, watching a black and white movie while enjoying a box of Milk Tray and a pot of tea.

For film options, I turn to BBC 2 – which does a nice line in old black and white movies on Saturday afternoons.

How lucky was I? Not one but two Bette Davis features preceded by Talking Pictures – a montage of interviews with one of Hollywood Golden Era’s finest actresses, if not its finest – was its offering.

The documentary series is narrated by the late Sylvia Syms – a formidable talent of British cinema.

There were clips of Davis – never afraid of saying how old she was or showing the ravages of time – and smoking – on talk shows. She was gloriously glamorous, strong, sassy and outrageously outspoken til the end.

The Talking Pictures profile should be requisite viewing for all actresses – watching Davis is a lesson on how to be a star – hard working, humble, grateful, unapologetic and nobody’s fool or victim.

The double bill of movies chosen to highlight Davis’ powers was Dark Victory and All About Eve. The list of contenders for Davis’ best films is long – Now Voyager, The Letter, The Old Maid, Jezebel, The Great Lie, Dangerous, Deception … on and on.

Not my favourite, Dark Victory. It is the story of Judith Traherne – a young, carefree, hedonistic Long Island heiress who is diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Davis is in magnificent form and the rest of the cast is made up of Hollywood’s finest – Humphrey Bogart included.

The subject matter is tiresome, maudlin and too melodramatic for my taste.

Now All About Eve, which followed, is in a different league. As Davis says: Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Released in1950, it stars Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star, and Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, an ambitious young fan who manoeuvres herself into Channing’s life, threatening Channing’s career and relationships.

Her co-stars are George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe – and features Thelma Ritter and Marilyn Monroe.

It received a record 14 Oscar nominations – including Davis and Baxter for Best Actress – and won six awards including Best Picture.

It is Davis’ film – she was never better than as Channing – the sardonic, 40-year-old actress who realises she has nothing in her life but work – unless she can commit to the younger man who adores her, director Bill Sampson.

She smokes, smoulders, sulks, screams, shouts, sobs, shines and shimmers as a woman struggling to let go of a fragile fame.

With a cigarette in one hand and a martini – very dry – in the other and dressed in gowns cut to show off her décolletage, Davis looked the height of sophistication and every inch a star.

Baxter was magnificent as the cunning understudy and Holm equally glorious as Margot’s indulgent best friend.

Davis’ witty exchanges with Ritter, who played her maid, are hilarious.

Margo: You bought the new girdles a size smaller, I can feel it.

Birdie: Something maybe grew a size larger.

Of the men in the film, the Brit George Sanders is the stand-out as acerbic, cold-blooded, manipulative theatre critic Addison DeWitt. The performance won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

He is worth a column in his own right.

As for this Saturday – I’m hoping for a Bogart double bill … The Big Sleep followed by Casablanca – arguably the most perfect film ever made.

If Davis was Hollywood’s queen then Bogie was its king.