The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

To give the illusion of baldness, Bette Davis shaved her head two inches in front to show a high forehead under Elizabeth's red wigs.

This was an adaptation of the play "Elizabeth the Queen" by Maxwell Anderson. The title of the movie was to be the same, but Errol Flynn protested that he wanted his presence acknowledged in the title. The choice of "The Knight and the Lady" upset Bette Davis, and "Elizabeth and Essex" was a book title already copyrighted. Thus the final unwieldy title was used. The stage production opened at the Guild Theatre in New York on November 3, 1930 starring legendary married couple Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt. The play ran for 147 performances.

For several years, from the time of Errol Flynn's death until the film was issued on videocassette and began to be shown on Turner Classic Movies, the title was changed to "Elizabeth the Queen", the title of Maxwell Anderson's original play on which the film is based.

As well as shaving two inches off her hairline at the forehead, Bette Davis also had her eyebrows removed. She later complained that they never grew back properly and that ever after she had to draw them in with an eyebrow pencil.

Bette Davis had originally wanted Laurence Olivier for the role of Lord Essex, claiming that Errol Flynn could not speak blank verse well. She remained extremely upset about this through the entire filming, and Flynn and Davis never worked again together in a film, but according to Olivia de Havilland, she and Davis screened the film again a short while before Davis's stroke. At film's end, Davis turned to de Havilland and declared that she had been wrong about Flynn, and that he gave a fine performance as Essex.

Errol Flynn and Bette Davis disliked each other, and when Elizabeth slaps Essex in front of the entire court, Davis hauled off and unexpectedly belted Flynn for real. The anger on Essex's face is quite genuine, as is Flynn's visible imposition of self-control to avoid hitting Davis back.

The real Robert Cecil was apparently a dwarf, and one of Queen Elizabeth's chief counselors, not the supercilious character portrayed in this film, or in Maxwell Anderson's original play. The queen would affectionately refer to him as "my dwarf". He is more accurately portrayed in the TV miniseries "Elizabeth I" (2005).

Nanette Fabray's first film.

Bette Davis (31 at the time the movie was made) was less than half the actual age of Queen Elizabeth was at the time of the events of the film. Queen Elizabeth was 63 in 1596.

The sixth of nine movies made together by Warner Brothers' romantic couple Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn.

The cast of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex:

Bette Davis as Queen Elizabeth
Errol Flynn as Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
Olivia de Havilland as Lady Penelope Gray
Donald Crisp as Francis Bacon
Alan Hale, Sr. as Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone
Henry Daniell as Sir Robert Cecil
Vincent Price as Sir Walter Raleigh
Henry Stephenson as Lord Burghley
James Stephenson as Sir Thomas Egerton
Nanette Fabray as Mistress Margaret Radcliffe (as Nanette Fabares)
Ralph Forbes as Lord Knollys
Robert Warwick as Lord Mountjoy
Leo G. Carroll as Sir Edward Coke