Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins in... The Old Maid 1939 🎥 Official Trailer The Old Maid is a 1939 American drama film directed by Edmund Goulding. The screenplay by Casey Robinson is based on the 1935 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by Zoë Akins, which was adapted from the 1924 Edith Wharton novella The Old Maid: the Fifties (taken from the collection of novellas Old New York). Plot Set during the American Civil War, the story focuses on Charlotte Lovell and her cousin Delia, whose