User Reviews

When I was a kid, the next door neighbor was "divorced." You would have thought she was the town hooker. People just did not get divorced in the '50s.

Taken with that framework, 1951's "Payment on Demand" is quite interesting. The Ramseys, David and Joyce (Barry Sullivan and Bette Davis), have been married for about 21 years and have two daughters (Betty Lynn and Peggie Castle). One day, a grumpy David comes home and announces that he wants a divorce. Joyce is shocked, though she really shouldn't be. She and her husband have widely divergent values. She's an ambitious, social-climbing, greedy bitch, and he wanted to have a practice with his partner Robert (Kent Taylor) and live on a farm. The life she has driven him into has made him miserable.

In flashback, Joyce reviews their young love and early marriage, during which she manages to steer a lucrative client her husband's way -- and away from his partner Robert. When Robert finds out, an important friendship ends. When Joyce gives birth to their second child, David informs her that they're moving to San Francisco so he can work with his client's new business, and he'd like to buy a farm outside the city. Joyce may be weak from childbirth, but she manages to gather enough strength to make a scene. From there, she manages to get in with the society crowd, even though her husband tells her he doesn't like "snooty people." And on it goes.

The couple separate; Joyce finds out David is seeing someone and uses it to get an enormous settlement with the threat that she'll ruin the woman's reputation. Then she goes on a cruise and learns something. Loneliness isn't fun.

This is a somewhat old-fashioned look at divorce, focusing on loneliness and the misery of not having a man instead of a woman building a new life for herself and enjoying a sense of freedom. There's a lot of warning about what happens to older women. While some of that has truth to it, the script doesn't allow that there's anything in life that will bring happiness except marriage or companionship.

"Payment on Demand" offers Bette Davis a somewhat typical role as a controlling, difficult woman with shallow values, but one who learns a few lessons along the way. She's excellent. Jane Cowl, who had passed away by the time this film was released, is Mrs. Hedges, an older woman with a young "protege" - she's very good. Barry Sullivan is the long-suffering husband; he always worked well with these strong actresses, and he hands in a sympathetic performance here. John Sutton is a man Joyce meets on a cruise, and he's appropriately elegant.

Good film probably not appreciated today because we're so used to divorce, settlements, and infidelity. For the average person, this was big stuff in the '50s, when my mother's generation was just getting married and beginning their families.

I didn't have high hopes for this film, in part because I've never been very impressed by Barry Sullivan. However, although this is not one of the great Bette Davis films, this is a very fine movie.

There isn't much of a supporting cast that will impress you, although they all do fine. Otto Kruger is always excellent, however, and although his role as a divorce lawyer here is not large, it's a pleasure seeing him.

Bette Davis is excellent here. Not beautiful as she was in her younger years, not homely as she was in her latter years. Here she is just right as a middle-aged woman whose marriage falls apart. And while there is blame to go around, it is the Davis character who is most responsible for the demise of the marriage, and by the end of the film, she realizes it.

Barry Sullivan, is also excellent here. Perhaps I underestimated him.

This is well worth watching, and perhaps, will end up on your DVD shelf.

***SPOILERS*** Things begin to fall apart for snobbish San Francisco socialite Joyce Ramsey, Bette Davis, within the first ten minutes of the movie when her teenage daughter Martha, Betty Lynn, introduces her working class boyfriend and future husband Phil Polanski,Brett King, to her. Polinski being of working class Polish stock not the blue blood type that Joyce and Martha are doesn't impress Joyce at all feeling that Phil is not worthy of marrying her high class, even though she doesn't think of herself as that, daughter Martha.

The second shoe to drop on Joyce's head is when her businessman husband back home from a hard day at the office David, Barry Sullivan, hits her with a double whammy telling her that he's sick and tired of her and want's a divorce by getting a new and improved as well as younger woman as his wife! We then get a number of flashbacks of the wild and turbulent as well as bittersweet life of the Ramseys that now some 20 years later lead to all this sorrow.

***SPOLIERS*** With David more then willing to settle for half of his money and properties to go to Joyce she plays hard-ball and demands far more then even her lawyer is willing to settle for from the by now confused, in his wife's unreasonable demands, David. Joyce went as far to hire a private detective who sneaks or poked his head into his hotel room, on a fire escape, and photographed David getting a friendly kiss from his secretary Eileen Benson, Frances Dee, and using it as blackmail material against David. That's to get her way or destroy his reputation as a God fearing as well as upstanding family man! It's later on a Caribbean cruse that she took to chill off that Joyce got involved with this English and married, in what she didn't known at the time, gigolo Sir Anthony Tunliffe, John Sutton, and realized that she not David was the one who's the cheater of the couple.

Touching final with Jocce rushing back to San Francisco for her to attend her daughter Martha's wedding to lowly educated-he didn't attend collage- commoner and Polish/American Phil Polanski and then dropping to her hands and knees begging for David to take her back despite all the hurt that she caused him. David for his part is ready to take her back but tells Joyce to take a few days to cool off before he makes his decision and then, by finally kissing and making up, the two can start all over again.

Divorce is never easy, and for the wife all of a sudden told by her husband that he wants a divorce, it will not be easy for him to obtain. She wants her day in court. Hell hath no fury like Bette Davis when she's scorned, and after a seemingly happy marriage, hubby Barry Sullivan's request for a peaceful divorce will not go unpunished. As Davis faces life alone, she reflects on their relationship from their innocent courtship to his struggles rising up the ladder and to her own social climbing schemes with the aid of an aging society matron (the marvelous Jane Cowl). Ms. Cowl tells Davis upon their first meeting that she is immediately on to her, recognizing all the signs because "I invented them". Davis also learns some valuable lessons from her about getting older and lonelier, something she must utilize as she looks at the woman she's become rather than who she could have been.

But in the meantime, Davis is ruthless as she goes out of her way to find any way to make Sullivan pay for what she believes to be his betrayal. "I made him, now I can break him", the poster for this movie declares with an imperious Davis standing in the background. Certainly enough, Davis did go out of her way to introduce him to the right people, and pushed him just enough to make him think that he was becoming more successful on his own. His belief that their marriage has become so staid to the point that they bore each other is rewarded with a hard slap across the face. She can't face her own failings and her part in the disillusions of their marriage and this leads to her temperature rising to red-hot then all of a sudden cooling below freezing temperature as she realizes the truth about what she's become.

There were two types of Bette Davis performances after her triumph in "All About Eve": the camp, melodramatic Bette (films like "Another Man's Poison" and "The Anniversary") and the serious character study of women falling apart ("The Star", "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte"). This ranks in the later, allowing Bette to play every emotion as she plays devoted mother unaware of troubles leading up to her own spouse's spontaneous announcement, her scorned woman's revenge, her realization of what life holds in store for her in being alone, and finally, in her breakdown scene, one of Bette's finest moments on film. Sullivan underplays the role of the husband, but his character is far from perfect although his involvement with another woman (Frances Dee) is certainly understandable.

An interesting supporting cast surrounds the two, particularly Betty Lynn and Peggie Castle as their two growing daughters, Natalie Schafer and Katherine Emery as two of Davis's gossipy social circle, Otto Kruger as Davis's attorney, and especially Cowl as the wise but sad older woman who subtly warns Davis to watch what she's doing. The screenplay is excellent, and the direction by Curtis Bernhardt allows the viewer to empathize with Davis as she grows more and more bitter which brings sympathy when she finally faces destruction. This is one of Davis's classier films which reveals a lot about a woman's heart and how easy it is to loose one's soul when clouded by revenge. It deserves a higher place in her archlight of classic films instead of having been rarely seen as it has been, sliding into slight obscurity.

Beautiful Peggie Castle had had several uncredited parts in various films but her role as Diana Ramsey, the sophisticated daughter in "Payment on Demand" should have put her on the road to stardom. Unfortunately the road was paved with Westerns and the role she became identified with was Lily Merrill, owner of the Birdcage Saloon in the popular TV series "Lawman". Though eighth billed Peggie had a choice role caught up in the turmoil of her parent's divorce. Although Peggie actually looked and acted as if she could have been Bette Davis' daughter, the person who walked away with the acting honours was Betty Lynn, who played youngest tomboy daughter Martha with great sensitivity. Lyn, like Castle, also had an unsatisfactory career, even though she showed such promise in movies like "Carousel".

Bette Davis is her usual brittle mannered, staccato sounding self as Joyce, a ruthless social climber who barks out orders to her perfectly controlled family who rapidly are falling apart. Her easy going husband has finally had enough of the endless round of cocktail parties and his wife's underhand machinations and is now demanding a divorce.

As Joyce remembers their life together the scenes show just what David (Barry Sullivan) had to put up with. It is filmed in an odd way, trying to be innovative but it somehow just doesn't come off. Walls appear, then dissolve into outdoor scenes, the initial scenes are dimly lighted (obviously to help Bette Davis, who could never be made to look like a young bride). From the start Joyce was always two steps ahead of nice guy David. During the depression when David and his friend Robert (Kent Taylor), a pair of out of work lawyers are working as ditch diggers, David suddenly gets a lucky break as his first client, Swanson, seeks to include him in his corporation. Later when Robert, completely discouraged, plans to give up law, the truth comes out - Joyce had specifically recommended her husband to Swanson, telling him to disregard Robert. The next wake up call comes when David announces he wants to buy a small farm and commute to the city. Joyce flies off the handle and is downright abusive fearing the children will grow up among "hicks" and that as a family they are too young to bury themselves in the country.

Twenty years later Robert, down and out, comes to the house hoping David will lend him money to help him out of a jam. David does but not before he sees yet another awful side to Joyce. David has found someone else and as played by Frances Dee, she is beautiful, calm and serene, just what David needs but unfortunately she only has a small scene. Loyal Martha opts to stay with her mother as the person who will need her the most even though she has a closer bond with her father.

Davis comes into her own during the last half hour when she realises what being lonely means. While on a cruise she not only meets an old, now divorced friend who employs a young houseboy to attend to her when she is drunk but also an oily gigolo (John Sutton) who informs her he always goes back to his wife and children and keeps his two lives separate. The stage is set for a disappointing ending, one I didn't expect. After seeing Joyce's manipulations over the course of 20 years of marriage, I don't believe that a leopard could change it's spots from just a few months of loneliness.

Joyce's divorced friend is played by Jane Cowl, a beautiful stage actress who in 1917 was one of the first stars signed to Goldwyn Pictures.

When you saw a Bette Davis flick, you were expecting fireworks all over. You'll be disappointed here as all you get instead is a rather bland Davis, with the exception of one or two scenes. The writing didn't allow for a severe emotional outburst or even the classic Bette murders at best.

After her husband of many years asks her for a divorce, by flashback, Davis shows what kind of person she was that drove him to it. Invariably, before the divorce becomes final, Bette discovers loneliness. Barry Sullivan and Davis have good chemistry, but the writing needed the necessary sparks.

. . . cash registers, PAYMENT ON DEMAND argues. This sort of cold, calculating consort is sure to drive a man into the arms of the nearest nubile English Major, DEMAND documents. "Joyce" dominates the unkind glare of the center stage spotlight here, as she schemes, connives and plots behind husband "Dave's" back to cut him off from his friends and rural roots. Joyce is a back-stabbing witch, driving Dave's best buddy "Bob" to the brink of suicide. Playing "Mr. Potter" to Bob's Building and Loan business, Joyce does her damnedest to disparage a working stiff she dismisses as an "indigent, sniveling whiner." While she's opening wide for self-confessed married playboy "Anthony," Joyce pays a private snoop to photograph each peck Dave scores with college girl "Eileen." While the older horrid hag harasses Dave for the ultimate PAYMENT ON DEMAND, Joyce serves as a nefarious role model molding her own two daughters into the next generation of merciless mercenary men's money manipulators. Though this flick concludes with Dave supposedly tempted to rejoice, he clearly would be better off with another hole in his head!