Now, Voyager

Now, Bette: A glittering, slushy take on the ugly duckling transformation. It's Olive Higgins Prouty, at it again (she also penned Stella Dallas, the durable soap opera from which three films, including the Barbara Stanwyck classic, were made), with a title lifted from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a conceit enough to raise a dead poet. Irving Rapper directs as if he wants to stay out of the way of Davis and Cooper--perfectly understandable.

As usual, Davis has to overplay her hand at Jekyll/Hyde transformation. Beforehand, she's got unplucked eyebrows like last spring's dead caterpillars, hair like a mudpuddle with a net over it, and glasses and ...