AWARDS & HONORS

Bette Davis won her fifth Best Actress Oscar® nomination in a row for Now, Voyager, a record for consecutive nominations only matched by Greer Garson.

Now, Voyager also received Academy Award nominations for Gladys Cooper for Best Supporting Actress and Max Steiner for his score.

On Oscar® night the big winner was Mrs. Miniver, which won Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Cinematography. Garson beat Davis for Best Actress, while Teresa Wright bested Cooper in the supporting category.

Now, Voyager was voted a place on the National Film Registry in 2007.

THE CRITICS' CORNER - NOW, VOYAGER (1942)

"Bette Davis is a perfect choice for the role of a neurotic, unwanted daughter of an aged mother, turning in a moving performance filled with warmth and color to catch audience sympathy. Irving Rapper again marks himself as a director with an understanding for searching, human drama, capturing the sweep of emotion that distinguished the Olive Higgins Prouty novel. Casey Robinson displays his craftsmanship in the screen adaptation for another of his top writing jobs."
- Variety.

"Although it carries a professional bedside manner, Now, Voyager, Bette Davis's latest tribulation at the Hollywood, contains not a little quackery. For two hours of heartache and repeated renunciation, Miss Davis lays bare the morbidities of a repressed ugly duckling who finally finds herself as a complete woman. From the original novel, Casey Robinson has created a deliberate and workmanlike script which more than once reaches into troubled emotions. Director Irving Rapper has screened it with frequent effectiveness. But "Now, Voyager," either because of the Hays Office or its own spurious logic, endlessly complicates an essentially simple theme. For all its emotional hair-splitting, it fails to resolve its problems as truthfully as it pretends. In fact, a little more truth would have made the film a good deal shorter."
- The New York Times.

"The story is more sentimental than the true psychological study it might have been. But Miss Davis is always interesting to watch and the role affords her many opportunities for fine acting. She makes the film worthwhile artistically, and gives it a dignity not fully warranted by the script."
- The National Board of Review magazine

"Paul Henreid achieves his full stature as a romantic star." -- New York Herald Tribune

"The score, by Max Steiner, aims right for the jugular; the director, Irving Rapper, is just barely competent, and the action plods along, yet this picture is all of a piece, and if it were better it might not work at all."
- Pauline Kael, 5,001 Nights at the Movies.

"Davis, impeccable as usual, turns the sow's ear of Hollywood's notion of a repressed spinster (remove the glasses and lo! a beauty) into something like a silk purse. Great stuff....The women's weepie angle gets to be a bit of a slog later on, but it is all wrapped up as a mesmerically glittering package by Rapper's direction, Sol Polito's camerawork, and Max Steiner's lushly romantic score."
- Tim Milne, TimeOut Film Guide

"With its bittersweet romance and air of tragic empowerment, Now, Voyager represents the pinnacle of the woman's picture."
- Donna Bowman, The Onion A.V. Club

" This film takes the ugly duckling turning into a swan scenario to melodramatic heights one has to see to believe...Considering the material, Davis gives a convincing and controlled turn as a subdued and shattered soul who finally finds her voice. Her relationship with Cooper, who plays one of the meanest mothers I've ever seen onscreen, is layered and complex, giving the film emotional depth and dynamic energy."
- Crazy for Cinema, crazy4cinema.com/Review/FilmsN/f_now_voyager.html

Compiled by Frank Miller