Mr. Skeffington - Plot

Plot

In 1914, spoiled Fanny Trellis (Bette Davis) is a renowned beauty, with many suitors. She loves her brother Trippy (Richard Waring) and would do anything to help him. When Fanny learns that Trippy has embezzled money from his stockbroker employer Job Skeffington (Claude Rains), she marries the lovestruck businessman in order to save her brother. Disgusted by the arrangement, in part because of his prejudice against Skeffington being Jewish, Trippy leaves home to fight in the Lafayette Escadrille in World War I.

Job loves Fanny, but she is merely fond of him and largely ignores him. She becomes pregnant with his child, but, when Trippy dies in France, she states she is "stuck" with Job, and the marriage then becomes wholly loveless, continuing only for the child's sake. Job and Fanny's cousin, George Trellis, also enlist but remain stationed near home.

Fanny enjoys playing the wealthy socialite, stringing along a persistent quartet of suitors who are unfazed by her marriage, as well as much younger lovers. Lonely, Job finds solace with his secretaries. When Fanny finds out, she divorces him, conveniently ignoring her own behavior.

Their daughter, also called Fanny, prefers her father and begs him to take her with him to Europe. Although Job fears for his child and tries unsuccessfully to explain to her the nature of prejudice she will encounter as a Jew abroad, he finally, tearfully and joyfully, says yes to her. Fanny is relieved to be free of the encumbrance of a child. Fanny has a series of affairs, living well on the extremely generous settlement Job has left her, half his fortune, and hardly giving a thought to her daughter, whom she does not see for many years.

She retains her beauty as she grows older (much to the envy of her women acquaintances), but when she catches diphtheria, it ravages her appearance. In denial, she invites her old lovers (and their wives) to a party. The men are shocked (and the women relieved) by how much Fanny has changed, leaving her distraught. Ironically, her latest young suitor Johnny Mitchell falls in love with her kind daughter (played as an adult by Marjorie Riordan), who has returned from Europe because of the rise of the Nazis. They marry after only a few months and leave for Seattle. Fanny is left alone with her maid, Manby.

Fanny's cousin George (Walter Abel), who has wryly observed Fanny's self-centeredness all along, brings Job back to Fanny's home, unannounced. The Nazis have left Job penniless and worse, George tells Fanny, and he calls on her to be generous. Fanny's vanity nearly prevents her from venturing down her home's grand staircase to see Job. When she does finally enter the parlor, Job moves to her, stumbles and falls, and it is apparent that, among the sufferings he has undergone in Germany, Job has been made blind. Fanny, sobbing with compassion, rushes to cradle him in her arms. As she takes his arm and guides him up the staircase, she tells the maid that "Mr. Skeffington has come home." Job had once, long ago, told Fanny that, "A woman is beautiful when she's loved, and only then." George tells Fanny that, at that moment, "she has never been more beautiful". At long last, she realizes the truth of it.