Wicked Stepmother

I have a feeling there are two groups-- those who rate this a good example of Bette's acting late in her career (and her willingness to still act at all); and those who find the film so abysmal as to be an embarrassment that mars the Davis legacy.

From what I have read, she was quite ill during filming. It probably became too much of a toll for her, but she labored on because she still wanted to act and my guess is she needed the money for her mounting medical bills. Then, there were creative differences over the script and how the project was being filmed. So she walked off.

WICKED STEPMOTHER had a rather small budget of $2.5 million. But it only made $43,000 at the box office. So by all accounts, it was a huge bomb and not the type of movie swan song befitting a legend of Davis' magnitude.