Bette Davis is positively magnificent in this film, and it won her a well-deserved second Oscar as Best Actress. She plays a very spoiled and uncompromising southern belle named Julie in 1850's New Orleans, who intends to marry young beau Henry Fonda but mercilessly tries his patience; she is selfishly late for her own party, and despite all self-respecting folks' protests, rebelliously dons a glowing red gown at a Grand Ball at a time when it's forbidden for any unmarried woman to wear anything other than white. After properly humiliating herself and fiancé Fonda at the Ball, her man decides he can take no more of her manipulation tactics and leaves her.<br /><br />Julie comes to regret some of her ways and is confident that her intended will come back to her. One year later, when a violent outbreak of Yellow Fever plagues the south for the first time in 22 years, Fonda returns home again; but it will be an unpleasant shock for the headstrong and vengeful Davis.<br /><br />William Wyler directs this lavish melodrama quite well, and all the actors are well selected ("Little Rascals" fans will also have fun spotting young Stymie Beard). The greatest scene in the movie has got to be the humiliating Olympus Ball sequence, with Davis beginning to have second thoughts when she is ostracized by hundreds of aghast eyes, leering at her and Fonda as they waltz around an abandoned dance floor while she wears that controversial dress. She begs her fiancé to take her out of there, but he makes her endure every second of what she so defiantly wanted.<br /><br />Bette Davis is perfect and oozes star power. Her performance makes you wonder how she would have fared in GONE WITH THE WIND, the classic film for which this film is said to be a warm-up.