Ah, Sweet Misery of Life!

Stolen Hours. Brain tumors can be beautiful. On Hollywood's form sheet, a woman with a brain tumor can be practically certain that she will win the love of a handsome and successful doctor and live out her days in his tender loving care. It happened to Bette Davis in Dark Victory (1939), and now it has happened to Susan Hayward.

Susan was miserable before she got her tumor. All she had was money and the things that supply it or require it: oil wells in Texas, a stately home in England, lots of yachts and a pack of International Setters baying at her heels. She didn't have love. She didn't have a rose-covered cottage by the sea. She didn't (to judge from the hours and the company she kept) have a brain in her head. But one day out of a clear sky she was told she had a tumor on it.

Overnight, her life was changed. She met a handsome young Harley Street specialist who fell madly in love with her. She had a lovely operation and came out of it feeling just fine. The doctor proposed and she said yes and they ran away to live in a charming old house on a hill overlooking a wildly romantic coast in Cornwall.

True, there was a serpent in her paradise. She knew that in a year her tumor would return, that one day suddenly she would be blind, that a few minutes later she would be dead. But death too can be beautiful, especially in Deluxe Color. Just as Susan's sight begins to fade, her husband is called out to deliver a baby. Nobly she resolves that birth is more important than death, that his place is with the baby and not with her. She sends him off and, smiling ever so sweetly, dies alone--well, not entirely alone. The ushers can't leave.

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