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Now, Voyager

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Cast & crew, irving rapper, bette davis, paul henreid, claude rains, gladys cooper, bonita granville, photos & videos, technical specs.

Dowdy, thirtyish Charlotte Vale lives with her dictatorial, aristocratic mother in a Boston mansion. Fearing that Charlotte is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her sister-in-law Lisa brings psychiatrist Dr. Jaquith to the Vale home to examine her unobtrusively. Jaquith's observations and conversation with Charlotte convince him that she is, in fact, very ill, and he recommends that she visit his sanitarium, Cascade. Away from her domineering mother, Charlotte recovers quickly, but does not feel ready to return home and accepts Lisa's proposal of a long cruise as an alternative. On board the ship, a newly chic Charlotte is introduced to Jerry Durrance, who is also traveling alone. The two spend a day sight-seeing together, during which time the married Jerry asks Charlotte to help him choose gifts for his two daughters. Charlotte is touched when Jerry thanks her with a small bottle of perfume. Subsequently, Charlotte tells Jerry about her family and her breakdown and learns from his good friends, Deb and Frank McIntyre, that Jerry is unhappily married but will never leave his family. After the ship docks in Rio de Janeiro, Jerry and Charlotte become stranded on Sugarloaf Mountain and spend the night together. Having missed her boat, Charlotte stays with Jerry in Rio for five days before flying to Buenos Aires to rejoin the cruise. Although they have fallen in love, they promise not to see each other again. Back in Boston, Charlotte's family is stunned by her transformation. Her mother, however, is determined to regain control over her daughter. Charlotte's resolve to remain independent is strengthened by the timely arrival of some camellias. Although there is no card, Charlotte knows the flowers are from Jerry because he had called her by the nickname "Camille," and, reminded of his love, she is able to forge a new relationship with her mother. Charlotte eventually becomes engaged to eligible widower Elliot Livingston. One night, at a party, Charlotte encounters Jerry, who is now working as an architect, a profession he had renounced years before in deference to his wife's wishes. His youngest daughter Tina is now seeing Dr. Jaquith for her own emotional problems. Charlotte asks Jerry not to blame himself for their affair as she gained much from knowing that he loved her. This chance encounter forces Charlotte to realize that she does not love Elliot passionately, and they break their engagement, so angering Mrs. Vale that during an argument with Charlotte, she has a heart attack and dies. Guilty and distraught, Charlotte returns to Cascade, where she meets Tina. Seeing herself in the girl, Charlotte takes charge of her, with Jaquith's tentative approval. When Tina improves enough, Charlotte takes her home to Boston. Later, Jerry and Jaquith visit the Vale home, and Jerry is delighted by the change in Tina. Charlotte warns him, however, that she is only able to keep Tina with her on condition that she and Jerry end their affair. Jerry believes that he is responsible for her decision not to marry Elliot, but Charlotte reassures him otherwise, saying that Tina is his gift to her and her way of being close to him. Jerry then asks if Charlotte is happy and she responds, "Well, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon; we have the stars."

Lee Patrick

Franklin Pangborn

Katherine Alexander

James Rennie

Mary Wickes

Michael ames.

Charles Drake

David clyde.

Frank Puglia

Janis wilson, claire du brey.

Don Douglas

Charlotte wynters, lester matthews, sheila hayward, bill edwards, isabel withers, yola d'avril, georges renavent, bill kennedy, reed hadley, elspeth dudgeon, george lessey.

Constance Purdy

Corbet morris, hilda plowright, tempe pigott, dorothy vaughan, martha acker, al alleborn, eddie allen, george becker, edward blatt, meta carpenter, phyllis clark, joseph cramer, emmett emerson, frank evans, leo f. forbstein, hugh friedhofer, robert haas, robert b. lee, rydo loshak, fred m. maclean, scotty more, harold noyes, charles o'bannon, casey robinson, marguerite royce, sherry shourds, gilbert souto, max steiner, willard van enger, perc westmore, photo collections.

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Award Nominations

Best actress, best supporting actress, the essentials - now, voyager.

Pop Culture 101 - Now, Voyager

Trivia - now, voyager - trivia & fun facts about now, voyager, trivia - now, voyager - trivia & fun facts about now, voyager, the big idea - now, voyager, behind the camera - now, voyager, critics' corner - now, voyager, critics' corner - now, voyager.

No member of the Vale family has ever had a nervous breakdown. - Mrs. Henry Windle Vale

Well there's one having one now. - Dr. Jasquith

Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars. - Charlotte Vale

Remember what it says in the Bible, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." - Dr. Jasquith

How does it feel to be the Lord? - Charlotte Vale

Not so very wonderful, since the Free Will Bill was passed. Too little power. - Dr. Jasquith

I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid, mother. I'm not afraid. - Charlotte Vale

A maiden aunt is an ideal person to select presents for young girls. - Charlotte

Producer Hal B. Wallis originally wanted Irene Dunne for the lead role, but Bette Davis convinced him otherwise.

The Walt Whitman poem Bette Davis reads (just before leaving Cascades) is "The Untold Want" from Songs of Parting (just 2 lines): "The untold want by life and land ne'er granted / Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find."

Bette Davis complained about 'Max Steiner' 's Academy Award-winning musical score, saying that it was too intrusive on her performance.

The film is remembered for the scene in which Paul Henreid places two cigarettes in his mouth, lights them, and then passes one to Bette Davis, but it wasn't an original idea - a similar exchange occurred ten years earlier between Davis and 'George Brent' in _Rich Are Always With Us, The (1932)_ .

The title of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel was taken from Walt Whitman's poem "The Untold Want." In a letter to literary agent Harold Ober included in the Warner Bros. Collection at the USC Cinema-Television Library, Prouty made the following suggestions about the novel's adaptation: "...In my novel I tell my story by the method of frequent flashbacks....It has occurred to me, however, that by employing the silent picture for the flashbacks, in combination with the talking picture, similar results can be accomplished, and with much interest to an audience because of the novelty of the technique....I am one of those who believe the silent picture had artistic potentialities which the talking picture lacks. The acting, facial expressions, every move and gesture is more significant....Of course the silent picture has 'gone out' now, but I believe it has a place, for depicting what goes on in the mind of a character...."        Various contemporary sources add the following information about the production: Mary Astor was first signed as the second female lead and Norma Shearer and Irene Dunne were approached to play the role of "Charlotte." Producer Hal Wallis sent Ginger Rogers a copy of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel, hoping to interest her in the film. Juanita Quigley tested for the role of "Tina." Director Edmund Goulding wrote a treatment for the film and, at that time, was scheduled to direct; later Michael Curtiz was assigned to direct the film. Some scenes were filmed on location in Laguna Beach, CA and the Cascade scenes were filmed at Lake Arrowhead, CA. Although Frank Puglia's character is called "Giovanni" in the film, contemporary reviews, the screenplay and the CBCS list it as "Manoel."        According to modern sources, Prouty had written an elaborate cigarette-lighting ceremony for her characters, which proved too awkward to complete on film. In its place, Henreid invented a romantic gesture which has since become famous. He lit two cigarettes at the same time and handed one of the cigarettes to "Charlotte." Modern feminist critics have described Now Voyager as an "initiation" or "coming of age" film in which a psychologically immature woman becomes a self-determining adult and comment favorably on the accurate depiction of the mother-daughter relationship. Although contemporary critics derided the film as contrived and melodramatic, it was Warner Bros. fourth-highest grossing film in 1942 and has enjoyed an enduring popularity. Max Steiner won an Oscar for Best Score, and both Gladys Cooper and Bette Davis were nominated for Academy Awards. The film was adapted for radio and, starring Bette Davis and Gregory Peck, was broadcast on The Lux Radio Theatre on February 11, 1946 and May 24, 1955.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States 1942

Released in United States on Video April 5, 1988

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Now Voyager: The Classic Film Scores of Max Steiner

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Itzhak Perlman (violin) with Jorge Bolet (piano), Juilliard String Quartet, Yo Yo Ma (cello), Daniel Baremboim (piano), John Williams (guitar)

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• Release Date: 14th Mar 2002
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• Length: 55 minutes

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Now, Voyager (1942): Melodrama Then and Now

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• Martin Shingler  

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In 1993, more than 50 years after its initial release, Now, Voyager (1942) was declared by Jeanine Basinger to be ‘one of the most successful and moving women’s pictures ever made’ and ‘the definitive woman’s film of all time’. 1 For other film scholars it is a melodrama. Stanley Cavell designated it a ‘Melodrama of the Unknown Woman’, along with Blonde Venus (1932), Stella Dallas (1937), Gaslight (1944) and Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948). 2 Andrew Britton assigned it to a group of ‘Freudian-feminist Melodrama’ including Rebecca (1940), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), Undercurrent (1946) and Secret Beyond the Door (1948). 3 For Jeanne Allen ‘ Now, Voyager fits comfortably within a tradition of melodrama of female suffering and self-sacrifice’, of 1930s and 1940s movies featuring ‘suffering, self-sacrificing, and morally regenerative woman figures in a mode of address specifically aimed at women: the weepy, the sudser, the four-hanky movie’. 4 She assigned it to a genre identified by Thomas Elsaesser as the ‘Family Melodrama’, even though his seminal study of melodrama, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, published in 1972, made no direct reference to it. 5 Now, Voyager did not come to dominate the debate on melodrama and the woman’s film until the 1980s, when it acquired an iconic status. Indeed, images of the film were chosen to adorn the covers of the most influential books on melodrama, including Christine Gledhill’s Home Is Where the Heart Is (1987), Jeanine Basinger’s A Woman’s View (1993) and Stanley Cavell’s Contesting Tears (1996). 6

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Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930–60 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1993), pp. 12 and438–9.

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Stanley Cavell, ‘Ugly Duckling, Funny Butterfly’, Critical Inquiry , 16 (1989–90), pp. 213–47.

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Andrew Britton, ‘A New Servitude: Bette Davis, Now, Voyager and the Radicalism of the Woman’s Film’, Cine Action , 26 /27 (1992), pp. 32–59.

Jeanne Allen, Now, Voyager , Warner Brothers Screenplay Series (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984 ), p. 37.

Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, Monogram , 4 (1972)

reprinted in Christine Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Filin ( London: British Film Institute, 1987 ), pp. 43–69.

Maria LaPlace, ‘Bette Davis and the Ideal of Consumption: a Look at Now, Voyager’, Wide Angle , 6: 4 (1985), pp. 34–43.

Charles Eckert, ‘The Carole Lombard in Macy’s Window’, Quarterly Review of Film Studies , 3:1 (Winter 1978), pp. 1–21

Richard Dyer, Stars ( London: British Film Institute, 1979 ).

Janet Staiger, ‘ “The Handmaiden of Villainy”: Methods and Problems in Studying the Historical Reception of a Film’, Wide Angle , 8: 1 (1986), pp. 19–27.

See, for example, Russell Merritt, ‘Melodrama: Postmortem for a Phantom Genre’, Wide Angle , 5: 3 (1983), pp. 24–31

Steve Neale, ‘Melo Talk: On the Meaning and Use of the Term “Melodrama” in the American Trade Press’, Velvet Light Trap (Fall 1993), pp. 66–89

Rick Altman, ‘Reusable Packaging: Generic Products and the Recycling Process’, in Nick Browne (ed.), Refiguring American Genres ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 ), pp. 1–41

See the discussion of Davis’ career in Cathy Klaprat, ‘The Star as Market Strategy: Bette Davis in Another Light’, in Tino Balio (ed.), The American Filin Industry , revised edn (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985 ), pp. 351–76.

Joseph Pihodna, ‘Review of Now, Voyager ’, New York Herald Tribune , 23 October 1942.

Wanda Hale, ‘Review of Now, Voyager ’, New York News , 23 October 1942.

Louise Levitas, ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Psychoanalysis!’, PM Daily , 23 October 1942, p. 23.

Archer Winsten, ‘Movie Talk: Review of Now, Voyager ’, New York Post , 23 October 1942, p. 40.

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© 2007 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Shingler, M. (2007). Now, Voyager (1942): Melodrama Then and Now. In: Chapman, J., Glancy, M., Harper, S. (eds) The New Film History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/9780230206229_11

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