The New Pictures, Nov. 22, 1943

Old Acquaintance (Warner) is another of those psychological joy rides for the talents of Bette Davis. But this time Miss Davis leaves the abnormal psychology to Miriam Hopkins and portrays a novelist who never gets around to marrying. She writes well but unprofitably. Her friend (Miriam Hopkins) is a mental charlotte russe who, out of subconscious jealousy of Novelist Davis, froths out a shelfload of bestsellers. As Author Hopkins’ royalties soar, her husband (John Loder) sinks more & more to the status of a cute trick to have around the house. He falls in love with Miss Davis, who refuses to betray her helpless, foolish friend. In early middle age Miss Davis has a discreet affair with a naval officer ten years her junior. But he prefers Miss Hopkins’ daughter, runs away with her, leaves Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins like a pair of dangling participants in a sentence of slow death. Georgia-born Miriam Hopkins achieves a lethal portrayal of a lint-brained, romantic, frantically egocentric mother. Bette Davis makes her two love affairs intelligent, sad, dignified. Vincent (The Hard Way) Sherman’s direction of a careful cast turns a negligible play not so much into cinema as into good average theater.

Princess O’Rourke (Warner) is radio-advertised by a police voice: “Calling all moviegoers! Calling all moviegoers! Be on lookout for “Princess O’Rourke,” better known as Olivia de Havilland. Five feet three, and every inch a darling. Also young American pilot, known as Robert Cummings. Six feet one, has gleam in his eye. This couple believed to have stolen everybody’s heart. . . . That is all.”

It is—just about. But Princess O’Rourke, a pleasant enough comedy, offers one unusual shot—prim Olivia de Havilland in a bathtub scene. Miss de Havilland, a princess in search of a diplomatically and physically acceptable consort, happens on Transcontinental Pilot Robert Cummings. Miss de Havilland and Pilot Cummings exchange some rather rare wheezes about his ability to perpetuate the royal line and she decides he is just what she needs. Then the picture shifts to Washington for what is getting to be a patent Warner Bros, windup. It seems that President Roosevelt has avuncular feelings toward the princess, so he invites her to the White House. When Pilot Cummings realizes that his marriage will mean the loss of his U.S. citizenship, a quarrel develops. President Roosevelt is treated with Warners’ usual restraint; only his shoulder appears in the picture. But Fala (played by a standin) carries notes, and at length his invisible master stoops from the height of history to play Mr. Fixit to the romance.