Dark Victory is a 1934 Broadway play written by George Brewer Jr. and Bertram Bloch starring Tallulah Bankhead. It premiered on November 7 at the Plymouth Theatre and ran until December 19.
Plot
Judith Traherne is a Long Island socialite whose life is spent in frivolous, hedonistic pastimes. She indulges in alcohol and cigarettes, and enjoys horse riding. She experiences dizziness and headaches, and after an uncharacteristic riding accident, she is referred to a specialist, Dr. Frederick Steele. Steele is in the midst of closing his New York City office in preparation of a move to Brattleboro, Vermont, where he plans to devote his time to brain cell research. He reluctantly agrees to see Judith, who is initially antagonistic towards him. She shows signs of short-term memory loss, but dismisses these and other symptoms. Steele convinces her the ailments she is experiencing are serious and potentially life-threatening, and puts his career plans on hold to tend to her. Steele finds that she has an inoperable brain tumor, and predicts she has only a year to live. Shortly after becoming blind, she will die. Judith falls in love with the idealistic doctor, and they enjoy a brief respite in the Vermont countryside before she faces imminent death. She comes to the realization that their relationship has brought meaning to the life she had been leading.
The property, described by Robert Benchley as "Camille without all the coughing", had been floating around the entertainment capitals of both American coasts, and deficiencies in the script were acknowledged. Tallulah had read it and rejected it while she was still in Hollywood on her contract with Paramount Pictures. Katharine Hepburn had agreed to try it out in summer stock before changing her mind. When the script reached her again, Jack Whitney, American industrialist and her sometimes-lover, assured her that the play's deficiencies were corrected as Maxwell Anderson had revised it. Tallulah was adept at glossing over the holes in a script and was determined to make a success of it for Whitney. Robert Edmond Jones, who had designed the settings for John Barrymore’s Richard III and Hamlet a decade earlier, did the set craft, and Tallulah's costumes were by Elsa Schiaparelli. Robert Milton directed the production. David O. Selznick was considering filming Dark Victory with Greta Garbo, but Tallulah was uninterested in serving as a dry run for another actress. She got a contract stipulation that if she did not play Judith Traherne on screen she would receive a percentage of the film sale. After 51 performances, on December 20, 1934, it was the first sold-out performance since the opening night. But Tallulah awoke to find that she had lost her voice. Estelle Winwood, who’d spent the night at Tallulah's, called for a doctor. He instructed Tallulah to proceed to the theater and that he would meet her there, but by the time Tallulah reached the theater, her face was swelling rapidly. She was sent home and the matinee was canceled. Bankhead had contracted an infection that was then potentially deadly. Without Tallulah, Whitney was not interested in prolonging the run of Dark Victory, and it closed immediately.
Reception
The play was generally received well critically, and Bankhead's acting was praised. However, the play was commercially unsuccessful. Robert Garland in the Telegram, reviewing the play, wrote that Bankhead had acted with “unflagging skill.” In the Sun, Richard Lockridge wrote: “Miss Bankhead gives an altogether admirable performance for the first sane act and a half. At odd moments even in the later difficult moments she brings into her playing a note of tense feeling which cuts through the theatricalism.” Percy Hammond of the Herald Tribune wrote of the scene where Judith, at her nadir, considers giving herself to the groom at her estate stables. “Miss Bankhead was gorgeously tempting and tempted, and for a moment or two many of us feared that she would request him to visit her in the middle of the night.” Regarding the lukewarm commercial reception, Variety speculated that Dark Victory was the right play at the wrong time. “Tragedy has a place in the theatre, but it seems so much vexation has plagued the people that they prefer to be amused instead of going through an ordeal.” The paper’s “Ibee.” reported that several spectators in the first-night audience had passed out in response to the intensely realistic medical examination Tallulah received in the opening scene.
