Now that I've seen all three filmed versions for Of Human Bondage, no doubt about, Bette Davis leaves both Eleanor Parker and Kim Novak in the dust.
Still Parker gives a good performance as the amoral and tart tongued protagonist in W. Somerset Maugham's novel who for some reason turns on medical student Philip Carey like no one else can. Not a lot different from the way Sadie Thompson gets the Reverend Davidson's libido in overdrive in Rain, another of Maugham's female literary creations.
Amazing how three American actresses, Davis, Novak, and Parker all got to play a cockney tart. No one ever thought to hire an English actress like Vivien Leigh who in her personal life was far more Mildred Rogers than any of the three who played her.
Paul Henreid is out of place as a continental type Philip Carey. His is much inferior to the justice done this part by both Leslie Howard and Laurence Harvey. Carey is the man with the club foot and the inferiority complex because of that. Odd that both Howard and Harvey who never had trouble getting dates played a man who couldn't get one and gravitates to Mildred because she's looking real easy and sexy. Henreid's accent is way out of place here.
Good performances by Parker, Janis Paige, and Alexis Smith as the three women who enter Philip Carey's life at different times. But you have to see Bette Davis as the real Mildred deal.
