“Bette Davis still believes that the Oscar she won for Dangerous was a consolation prize for losing out with Of Human Bondage. This was the first of what came to be know as the ‘Holdover' awards--a belated prize for work unrewarded the previous year... Davis plays Joyce Heath, a bottle-swigging, once-famous stage actress hell-bent on her own destruction--until an admiring architect (Franchot Tone) befriends her and sponsors a theatrical comeback. Unfortunately, the star has a secret husband (John Eldredge), and when he refuses her a divorce so she can marry the architect, Joyce attempts to kill them both by driving into a tree...” “The Films of Bette Davis”
In her book, “From Reverence to Rape,” Molly Haskell notes, “Bette Davis...must pay heavily, in films like Dangerous... for her selfishness and vanity...she is constantly being rebuked for thinking and living only for herself--for doing, in fact, what Edward G. Robinson('s tough little gunman) is doing and getting away with and gaining audience sympathy for... (S)he was one of the few actresses willing--even eager--to play against audience sympathy... Even in her superfemale roles, the charm has a cutting edge, (e.g.) the ‘jinx' actress, Joyce Heath, patterned on Jeanne Eagles, in Dangerous...”