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Directed by Jackie Cooper

A proud widow. A frightened homeless kid. Nobody cared about them until they cared enough to fight for each other.

A poor, elderly white woman living in a tenement in a black ghetto is befriended by a neighborhood boy, and the two of them form a mutually beneficial relationship: he provides her companionship and protection, and she becomes the mother he never had.

Bette Davis Ernest Harden Jr. Eileen Heckart Virginia Capers Anne Ramsey Lurene Tuttle Tony Burton Peg Shirley Ernie Hudson Dan Mason Vincent Schiavelli Cheryl Harvey Jesse D. Goins John Hancock Lanyard A. Williams Eddie Quillan Tracy Fine Maggie Gwinn Roger Hampton Robert Ruth

Director Director

Jackie Cooper

Producer Producer

Jean Moore Edwards

Writer Writer

Robert C.S. Downs

Editor Editor

Jerry Dronsky

Cinematography Cinematography

William B. Jurgensen

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Thomas W. Moore

Art Direction Art Direction

Ned Parsons

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Gary Moreno

Composer Composer

Tomorrow Entertainment

Drama TV Movie

Releases by Date

05 mar 1980, releases by country.

105 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jack Often ★★½ 8

Bette Davis and Ernest Harden Jr. star in this harrowing white savior TV drama directed by former child star and long-timer Jackie Cooper. Davis plays a widowed retiree in a poor neighborhood who takes in a foster child to earn money. When Harden Jr. arrives he's not what she expected; a homeless orphan of 16 arrested for stealing cars who has an unusual relationship with the local bag ladies. They clash and ultimately come together as found family. Davis' character is off-puttingly reactionary. This is less like the liberal fantasies of the 90's depicted in films like Dangerous Minds, and more a fantasy directed at people who might have been Davis' age in 1980. Grandparents who would like nothing more…

Review by B E R T ★★★½

Strangers is a hard act to follow, that movie was just sublime, but this was a nice follow up and in keeping with Bette’s brand of films she made in this later period of her career. Her role in this was a little bit heartbreaking, especially through the middle of the film when she’s homeless, felt so sad for her. A nice little movie with a lot of heart and meaning about friendship and being kind.

Review by david_bruner 2

I haven’t seen Now Voyager , Jezebel , Of Human Bondage, or Dark Victory , but I have certainly seen... White Mama !

Not (quite) as problematic as its title suggests, and is worth it if you want to see Bette Davis slip into a Lars von Trier movie about her own eviction halfway through and join a houseless old lady girl gang that carry screwdrivers as weapons (including Bad Seed  legend Eileen Heckert).

Review by Eloise ★★★

The title makes this sound like it's going to be an exploitation or a race picture but this is actually a pretty nuanced social drama (with an intriguing production pedigree that I'm curious to follow up on) in which Bette Davis waits just a beat too long to say every one of her lines but takes no prisoners nonetheless.

Review by M e e p ★★★½

a movie called white mama starring 1980s bette davis that's about her and a black man teaching each other about life is only hilarious and not problematic

Review by asta ★★

I can't believe that Bette Davis was alive in the 80s. I wonder if she liked Madonna.

Review by RÓGE

“Blessed to star opposite Mrs.Bette Davis besides having my two kids was the highlight of my life. The movie was called “White Mama” directed by Jackie Cooper. Who knows maybe one day I’ll be directed and Star opposite Bradley Cooper. 🙂”

- Ernest Harden Jr.

Bette Davis is Adele “White Mama” Malone! “I’m soooo sick.”

Review by La ★★★½

That scene where she was teaching B.T. how to read was funny.

Review by Nora MacIntyre ★★★

Hoo boy, this was a ride. I'm surprised this averaged a fairly high rating here on Letterboxd (3.3 stars for a 1980 made for TV movie starring Bette Davis is more than I would anticipate).

First off, it's horribly dated. I respect that it was trying to tackle a difficult subject (race relations/poverty/classism) at a time where it was often shoved quietly under the rug -- so just something to keep in mind before viewing. Watch it through the lens of somebody living in 1980.

Basic premise revolves around Bette Davis -- the titular 'White Mama' -- who is a lonesome and destitute old woman on the brink of homelessness. She agrees to take in a foster child for supplemental…

Review by Brendan ★★★

I'll be honest, when copying down Bette's complete filmography, this one did get an eyebrow raise from me based on the title. But it isn't *quite* as, uh, problematic as the title implies (almost but not quite)—I mean, the first act is almost textbook white saviourism, there's no denying that. The second act turn, though, is quite horrifying, and it shows so much more nuance and it comes so close to actually saying something important about money and homelessness and systematic poverty and the injustices of the system and how uncaring it all is...

...and then it kind of retreats from that position and slides back into the tried-and-true "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" nonsense and back into mildly…

Review by Nickstradamus ★★★

Definitely not nearly as exploitation-style or misguided as the name would indicate, even if the adopted Black kid that Bette Davis adopts is solely obsessed with crime and boxing.

Even if it's fairly clumsy in almost every way, the movie itself is actually a surprisingly thoughtful little story about social and economic issues that slammed home circa 1980 and seem to be wheeling back around today. There's some real merit and heart to what it's trying to do here, I think.

It's also notable that part of this is how the movie changes gears at the midpoint to tell a very different story altogether -- and while it definitely makes this feel like two episodes of a TV show, it…

Review by Zā ★★

Yet another movie I couldn't find years ago, but has popped up on youtube in recent years.

Definitely not really offensive? It's just a white savior story so more of its time. At one point I was more concerned it was going to turn into Stone Pillow starring Lucille Ball. It never gets to that level, but a similar exploitation of it is absolutely still there. Wants to be a message picture, but overloads a paper plate of a script. It just can't handle all of these heavy subjects for a TV movie of the week.

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White Mama (1980)

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A proud widow. A frightened homeless kid. Nobody cared about them until they cared enough to fight for each other.

A poor, elderly white woman living in a tenement in a black ghetto is befriended by a neighborhood boy, and the two of them form a mutually beneficial relationship: he provides her companionship and protection, and she becomes the mother he never had.

Jackie Cooper

Robert C.S. Downs

Top Billed Cast

Bette Davis

Estelle Malone

Ernest Harden Jr.

B.T. Williamson

Eileen Heckart

Three Bag Lady

Virginia Capers

Gorilla Sydney

Anne Ramsey

Heavy Charm

Lurene Tuttle

Mrs. McIntyre

Tony Burton

Black Fighter

Peg Shirley

Judge Alice Quentin

Ernie Hudson

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Beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema.

A poor, elderly white woman living in a tenement in a black ghetto is befriended by a neighborhood boy, and the two of them form a mutually beneficial relationship: he provides her companionship and protection, and she becomes the mother he never had.

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White Mama Reviews

A powerful movie, and the main protagonist is one of the most quietly impressive documentary characters to grace screens in the last year.

Full Review | Sep 22, 2020

White Mama (1980)

Directed by jackie cooper.

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Description by Wikipedia

White Mama is a 1980 American made-for-television drama film directed by Jackie Cooper and starring Bette Davis in the title role. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Robert C.S. Downs. It was broadcast on CBS as The CBS Wednesday Night Movie on March 5, 1980.

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Black Mama White Mama (1973)

Daniels (Pam Grier) a former drug runner, and Karen (Margaret Markov) a revolutionary, escape a woman’s prison camp. With Daniel’s being chased by a drug dealing gangster, Karen by her revolutionary pals, and both of them by the police and criminals in the pay of the police, the two women, chained together, must work together to survive.

The Defiant Ones (‘58) this is not. Instead of issues of race, and uniting together, you have two scantily clad women running around the Philippines in an exploitative flick that is a mish mash of bizarre ideas and performances.

Sid Haig as criminal Ruben, hunting down the women, dressed as a garish cowboy who seems to have been jettisoned in from another film is a particular highlight. Pam Grier, whilst very amateur in this, is still Pam Grier, dominating scenes with her toughness and sex appeal, alongside the statuesque Markov.

The majority of the film is wall to wall breasts, with topless nudity appearing in quick succession, scene to scene. Oh, getting bogged down by clunky dialogue and terrible acting?, here’s some breasts.

The opening sets you up. The director, Eddie Romero, filming a female prison shower scene whilst an aggressive lesbian guard watches secretly. Things don’t get better as women are used throughout as fodder and play things of the male characters. But it’s credit to Grier and Markov who aggressively embrace their characters, fighting and surviving as the men hunt them down.

Unintentional/ intentionally amusing scenes such as the women mugging nuns for their clothes where the nuns are seemingly played by men! Karen placing her underwear around the neck of a small dog to throw off the scent of the larger dogs hunting them, foley sound of people walking outside seemingly recorded inside… I could go on.

Badly acted, directed and very cheaply made with amusing bouts of over the top violence, watch if you want some peak Pam Grier, then fire up Coffy (‘73).

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White Mama (1980 TV movie)

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An elderly White woman, living in a dangerous neighborhood with little money, becomes friends with a Black boy. They strike a deal, in which he protects her, while she becomes the mother he never had. In the process, they form an unlikely bond that changes both of their lives forever. Emmy nomination for Davis. VIEWER COMMENT: " Perhaps one of Bette Davis' best TV performances and certainly a winner for her very talented co-star, Ernest Harden, Jr. A touching story of two people who were regarded as cast-offs by society supporting and loving one another. I cry each time I watch this movie and wonder once again what our world would be like if we truly took care of one another. I highly recommend this movie."

Product details

• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.32 x 4.19 x 1.12 inches; 6.13 ounces
• Run time ‏ : ‎ 105 minutes
• Date First Available ‏ : ‎ February 24, 2004
• Actors ‏ : ‎ Bette Davis, Ernest Harden Jr., Eileen Heckart, Anne Ramsey, Lurene Tuttle
• Studio ‏ : ‎ USA Home Video
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0001M7N16

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Black Mama, White Mama (1973) Pam Grier, Sid Haig, Laurie Burton

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Peyton Robinson is a freelance film writer based in Chicago, IL. 

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That mood changes by the end of the Carter era, as fuel-pump frustration triggered by decreased oil production (and higher prices) after the Iranian Revolution reveals just how gas-dependent Americans were. Blaming the outgoing administration for “the fiasco we call the energy crisis,” Reagan sailed into office on promises of drill-happy plenitude. He slashed oil-industry regulation and solar-power programs. He also chose as his VP Bush, a Connecticut Yankee who’d “moved to Texas and made a fortune in the oil business.” 

Eight years later, however, Bush was campaigning for top office as “the environmental President,” with an apparently sincere will to address climate-change concerns that had only escalated in the interim. He appointed an unabashed “greenie,” William K. Reilly of the World Wildlife Fund, as EPA chief. But he also named conservative “ideological warrior” John Sununu as chief of staff; it soon became clear who held greater sway. 

Most of the ample drama in “White House Effect” comes from the sinking feeling generated by cunningly assembled archival materials (including leaked White House and corporate communiques), as pressure from the administration’s corporate allies caused it to gradually renege on its ballyhooed eco-consciousness. What’s particularly maddening is the subterfuge deployed to “soften” or contradict the consensus wisdom of legitimate scientific research. One scarifying high-profile report was modified against its respected author’s will. “Experts” begin infiltrating the media to minimize climate fears, prompting populist voices like Rush Limbaugh to rail against “eco-imperialism” — never mind that most of these authorities turned out to be paid shills for the gas, oil and coal industries.

As Bush and Sununu blandly deny any shift, Reilly begins to look like a “dead man walking,” forced to make unconvincing excuses for the administration at international summits where the U.S. becomes the biggest — and sometimes only — refusenik amongst nations willing to commit to CO2 reduction mandates. The white noise of obfuscation (who can really say when this alleged “crisis” will hit?), misdirection (claims that green policies are “anti-growth, anti-jobs, anti-America”) and outright disinformation (“humans are not causing global warming”) create sufficient cover for an about-face in which the whole issue gets “moved from the scientific to the political realm,” as Al Gore put it as early as 1984.

Meanwhile, disasters of all sorts unfold, from the Exxon Valdez spill to Hurricane Hugo and the Gulf War, each in their own way underlining the dangers of continued fossil fuel dependencies. Needless to say, the 30-plus years since that first Bush presidency have seen much, much more of the same. Yet denialist rhetoric has only intensified, even as seemingly each new year becomes the hottest in recorded history. 

The lack of any external commentary in what’s essentially a compilation feature only strengthens the filmmakers’ forceful argument. (Two of them, longtime collaborators Cohen and Shenk, also have a second Telluride nonfiction feature this year in combat-PTSD-themed “In Waves and War.”) The result leaves little doubt that discourse around climate change, once an issue of bipartisan agreement, has been deliberately manipulated to encourage ill-informed doubt, and to protect the interests of corporations still posting sky-high profits at the planet’s expense. 

This story compels in the way of a slow-motion trainwreck, albeit one that’s briskly paced and entertaining. A strong contributor in binding together its potentially daunting pile of events, personalities and conflicts is the increasingly mournful urgency of Ariel Marx’s string-driven original score. 

Reviewed online, Aug. 28, 2024. (In Telluride.) Running time: 97 MIN.

• Production: (Docu) An Actual Films, Department of Motion Pictures production in association with Impact Partners, Far Star Media, Cinereach, Bird Street Productions, Two Square Feet. (World sales: Submarine, New York City; CAA, Los Angeles.) Producers: Noah Stahl, Josh Penn, Bonni Cohen, Justine Nagan, Jon Shenk. Co-producer: Daniel Claridge. Executive producers: Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous, David J. Cornfield, Linda A. Cornfield, Philipp Engelhorn, James Costa, Trevor Burgess, Maiken Baird, Caldwell Fisher Family Foundation, Adam Lewis, Melony Lewis, Shannon O’Leary Joy, Russell Long, Plot Shift Media, Walking Softer. 
• Crew: Directors: Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk. Editors: Daniel Claridge, Kos, Sara Newens. Music: Ariel Marx. 

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‘The Order’ Review: It’s Time for Justin Kurzel to Consider a Topic That Isn’t the Male Criminal Psyche

Ryan lattanzio, deputy editor, film.

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As skillful a director as he is — and “The Order” is not without some well-orchestrated action set pieces and at least two wounding shots that echo the most gutting kills in a Michael Mann joint — this bloody, soul-killed dirge of a movie does not suggest a vision interested in anything but the same already-trodden topic. Nor is it interested in human beings other than in how they can advance an onscreen political cry of the soul. “The Order” is also hampered by a miscast Nicholas Hoult, who’s worked with Kurzel before to better results, as a Charismatic Cult Leader who’s never as menacing as he should be.

A novel called “The Turner Diaries,” written in 1978 by white nationalist and neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, is going around that portends a race war. And the events depicted therein are eerily similar to bank robberies, carjackings, and murders happening in the United States’ most northwest corridor. When Terry’s FBI contingent, reviewing that text as evidence, mentions “storming the Capitol” as one possible outcome in the it’s-all-suddenly-coming-true narrative of the book, cue the knowing, self-reassuring laughter in the audience as it congratulates itself for recognizing the prescience onscreen. Obviously, Kurzel, working from a script written by “King Richard” Oscar nominee Zach Baylin, wanted to mine the timeliness of this material. Again, something he’s done before, especially with the help of Caleb Landry Jones’ exceptional performance as a notorious Australian mass shooter in “Nitram.”

Kurzel seems to be interrogating and subverting Hoult’s earnest, sweetie-pie charisma in turning the talented actor into a neo-Nazi onscreen. But Bob is never a nefarious enough villain — nor does “The Order” fully set up how he and Terry might be the dark mirrors of one another — to inspire Anton Chigurh levels of chills in your seat. “No Country for Old Men” is surely a movie on “The Order’s” mind, as well as other American thriller classics, especially in long takes that follow Terry with a gun in his hand. On paper, the idea of Kurzel grafting his sensibility onto an American genre isn’t without potential.

Something’s missing, though. The implied sickening backdrop of Bob’s world and the fanatical minions he lures into his orbit is more intriguing than the FBI procedural that rules the film, with Terry taking rising fed Jamie Bowen (Tye Sheridan) under his broken wing. Polygamy seems to be integral to Bob’s masterminding plan for the propagation of whiteness, though when one of his harem casts quibbling doubt over Bob training their small child in the arts of a firearm, it feels jammed in, moral ambiguity for its own propped-up sake.

Though there is great stuff here, from Adam Arkapaw’s wide-lens cinematography to Nick Fenton’s crisply clipped editing and Kurzel’s brother Jed’s pulse-quickening (if sometimes overemphasized) electro score. Kurzel is a superb filmmaker at the craft level, but to what ends when the movie often hangs on the screen like a fresco mural in suspension?

Finale closing cards state that “The Turner Diaries” ended up inspiring nation-shattering far-right coups like America’s own on January 6, and this film is, sure, a sobering reminder of the dangers of radicalized thought, fanaticism, all of that, and the federal government’s incompetence to manage its twisted outpourings. But don’t the only people bound to see this movie already know that, with Kurzel’s film not just telling us how to feel but also reminding us of what we already do? “The Order” is one of those : yet another Movie We Need Now, but the director inadvertently makes the case that maybe we don’t.

“The Order” world premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival . Vertical Entertainment has U.S. distribution rights and will release the film December 6.

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