Dark Victory is a 1939 American melodrama film directed by Edmund Goulding, starring Bette Davis, and featuring George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Ronald Reagan, Henry Travers, and Cora Witherspoon.

Judith "Judy" Traherne is a young, carefree, hedonistic Long Island socialite and heiress with a passion for horses, fast cars, and too much smoking and drinking.

She initially ignores severe headaches and brief episodes of dizziness and double vision, but when she uncharacteristically takes a spill while riding and then tumbles down a flight of stairs, her secretary and best friend Ann King insists she see the family doctor, who refers her to a specialist.

Dr. Frederick Steele is closing his New York City office in preparation for a move to Brattleboro, Vermont, where he plans to devote his time to brain cell research and scientific study on their growth.

While helping his assistant pack the office before their departure for Vermont, Judy discovers her case history file containing letters from several doctors, all of them confirming Steele's prognosis.

Judy makes Ann stay mum, as Steele leaves that day to present his most recent medical findings—which hold out the long-term prospect of a cure for her type of cancer—in New York.

[2] Davis had recently ended affairs with William Wyler and Howard Hughes and her husband Ham Nelson had filed for divorce, and after the first few days of filming she begged to be released from her contract, claiming she was too sick to continue.

Another scene for the film's ending was shot, but ultimately was deemed anticlimactic: after Judith's death, her horse was seen winning a race, and her stablehand Michael (Bogart) was shown crying.

Frank S. Nugent, in his review in The New York Times, observed: "A completely cynical appraisal would dismiss it all as emotional flim-flam, a heartless play upon tender hearts by a playwright and company well versed in the dramatic uses of going blind and improvising on Camille.

Bette Davis' cinematic portrayal of a young woman dying from a brain tumor is close to the reality of denial, bargaining, a hope for a cure, and final acceptance."

Although the film "shows an implausible clinical course (an abrupt peaceful ending)...the cinematic portrayal of the vicissitudes of living with a brain tumor is often close to reality.

"[10] Time Out London critic Tom Milne writes: "[Davis] and [director Edmund] Goulding almost transform the soap into style; a Rolls-Royce of the weepie world.

The site's consensus states: "Bette Davis does it her way with a tour de force performance in Dark Victory, a moving melodrama that snatches triumph from the jaws of mortality.

Max Steiner, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score for both this and Gone with the Wind, lost to Herbert Stothart for The Wizard of Oz.

[18] Barbara Stanwyck and Melvyn Douglas had previously performed an adaptation, one based on the original Broadway play, on Lux Radio Theatre on April 4, 1938.

It was remade in 1953, under its original title, as a TV adaptation for the Broadway Television Theatre, starring Sylvia Sidney, Christopher Plummer, and Ian Keith.