Old Acquaintance (1943)

  I wasn't sure I'd like this one when I first started watching it.  It hit slightly too close to the bone.  We'll get to that in a minute.

Kit (Bette Davis) and Millie (Miriam Hopkins) have been friends since kindergarten.  Kit grows up, moves away, and ends up writing a critically acclaimed  but financially unsuccessful novel.  She comes back to her hometown to reconnect with her old friend who is now married with a baby on the way.  Desperately jealous of Kit, Millie has also written a book, a trashy romance, which immediately sells, catapulting Millie and her family into the lap of luxury.  Enraptured by success, Millie ignores her husband and daughter, leaving the latter for Kit to raise.  Preston (John Loder) gets sick of it pretty quickly and leaves her, professing his love for Kit.  But you don't take your friend's husband, even if she is kind of a bitch.

Ten years go by and Kit has almost made up her mind to marry her 10-year-younger suitor, Rudd (Gig Young) before he leaves for his commission in the Navy, when he confesses that he is actually in love with Deirdre, Millie's daughter (Delores Moran).  Once again, Kit steps aside.  Meanwhile, Preston, now a Major in the Army, sets up an audience with Millie.  She thinks he's coming back to her and flips out when she finds out that he just wants to talk about his new fiancee and setting up a visitation schedule with his daughter.  Then he throws out that he would have married Kit in a heartbeat if she had consented and Millie really hits the ceiling and does her best to sabotage Deirdre's affections for Kit.

Now, based on what you know about me, you might believe that I was the Millie but au contraire.  I had a friend growing up who would have sold me out in a New York second if she ever got the opportunity.  She was, and still is to some extent, the kind of person that can't see any measure of success she's achieved because she's too busy comparing it to someone else's.  She was great as long as she thought we were on equal footing but let something good happen to me and watch those claws come out.  At some point after I moved away, I realized that's not how friends are supposed to be and limited my contact with her since I'm not as selfless a person as Kit.  And yet I know that if she ever called me and needed my help, I would do it.  Just one of the mysteries of female friendship, I guess.