Bette Davis Centenary Celebration Collection (All About Eve / Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte / The Virgin Queen / Phone Call from a Stranger / The Nanny)
Bette Davis, original name Ruth Elizabeth Davis, was an American actress, whose raw, unbridled intensity kept her at the top of her profession for 50 years.
Background
Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as "Betty", was born on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Harlow Morrell Davis (1885–1938), a law student from Augusta, Maine, and subsequently a patent attorney, and Ruth Augusta (née Favór; 1885–1961), from Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. Betty's younger sister was Barbara Harriet.
Bette's parents separated in 1915, when Bette was barely seven years old. She and Bobby were raised by their mother Ruth. In 1921, Bette moved to New York City with her mother and sister. Here Bette was introduced to the glamorous world of entertainment.
Education
They were initially sent to Crestalban, a Spartan boarding school in Lanesborough. Later Bette attended Cushing Academy, which is said to be the oldest coeducational boarding school in the United States.
Bette's experience in New York City was not encouraging. In fact, Davis was rejected when she tried to enroll in the famed acting school of Eva Le Gallienne, noted actress, director, and producer. Le Gallienne told her to study some other field. Undaunted, Davis was admitted to the John Murray Anderson's drama school instead.
Bette got a role with George Cukor's stock company in Rochester, New York. For the next four years, she hung around New York City and the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, where she worked as an usherette in between playing bit parts. Her first major role was in an off-Broadway production of The Earth Between (1928). After a brief tour in The Wild Duck, Davis reached Broadway. The comedy Broken Dishes opened in November of 1929 and ran for six months. That led to a 1930 production of Solid South, which led to a screen test in Hollywood. She failed the screen test.
Critics who viewed Davis's 1930 screen test at Goldwyn studios said she had no audience appeal. So, she tested at Universal and was hired, even though it was said that studio boss Carl Laemmle also didn't think she had appeal. However, she was cast in two films in 1931, Bad Sister and Seed. The critics ignored her in both.
With her strong resolve about to cave in and force her to leave Hollywood, Davis got a break when George Arliss offered her the part opposite him in The Man Who Played God from Warner Brothers. She won good reviews and a long-term contract. Thus began a succession of films with Warner, most mediocre and unmemorable. But poor as the films were, the talent and unique quality of Davis began to emerge so that critics started to praise her while panning her movies.
Fighting the studio for better roles became a way of life for Davis as she clawed her way to the top of the film world. She fought for and won the right to be loaned out to RKO in 1934 to play Mildred, the selfish waitress who manipulates an infatuated medical student, in John Cromwell's Of Human Bondage. Suddenly, the world was introduced to a brilliant new actress.
One might have thought that Davis's career was on the upswing, but Warner continued to cast her in poor quality films. There were two exceptions. In Dangerous, Davis played a failed actress who tries to murder her husband. For this role, she won her first Best Actress Academy Award in 1935. She also appeared with Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard (her co-star in Of Human Bondage) in The Petrified Forest in 1936. Growing disgusted with the studio's offerings, Davis refused any more roles and was suspended without pay. She sued. Warner Brothers and the movie world were astounded; this was not expected behavior of the time. Although Davis lost her battle in court, Warner Brothers apparently got the message for they paid her legal fees and began offering her more suitable roles.
The stature of Davis, the actress, continued to grow. Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly noted that "Davis was a top box office draw throughout the '30s and '40s, and in 1948 she was the highest paid star in Hollywood." Among her memorable roles in the 1930s and 1940s were: Jezebel, 1938, for which she won her second Academy Award for her portrayal of "a witchy Southern belle" according to Burr; Dark Victory, 1939, which she once told Harry Bowman of the Dallas News was her favorite film; The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and Juarez, also 1939; All This and Heaven Too and The Letter, both 1940; The Little Foxes, 1941; Now Voyager, 1942; Watch on the Rhine, 1943; The Corn Is Green, 1945; Deception and A Stolen Life, both 1946; and the delightful June Bride, (1948) which showed her comic touch.
Despite the praise and awards, by the end of the 1940s, Davis's career seemed to be slowing down, mainly for lack of good material. But in true Davis style, she came through with perhaps the greatest performance of her career as the troubled, aging star, Margo Channing, whose life and career are being taken over by a cunning newcomer, Eve, played by Anne Baxter in All About Eve (1950). It was a biting satire on the world of the theater. Davis won the New York Film Critics best actress of the year award.
After a number of films in the 1950s, Davis's career seemed to slow down again. But she was back on top in the early 1960s, with two shockers. In 1962, Davis appeared in the smash Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, playing opposite Joan Crawford. Crawford played the physically handicapped sister at the mercy of her demented sister, Baby Jane Hudson (Davis), a former child star. It was ghoulish and audiences loved it. This was followed by Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, (1965) with Davis (co-starring Olivia de Havilland and Joseph Cotton) playing a recluse who is haunted by the unsolved murder of her lover many years earlier.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Davis continued to appear in films, mainly on television. As she marched cantankerously into old age, she appeared on many talk shows, delighting her audiences with her feisty, undaunted in the face-of-aging spirit. She was the fifth recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1977, the first woman to be so honored. In 1979, she won an Emmy Award for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter. One her best features became the inspiration for a number one pop song, "Bette Davis Eyes," in 1982.
Davis wrote two autobiographies, The Lonely Life (1962) and This 'N That (1987), the latter to refute her daughter's (Barbara Davis Hyman) 1985 tell-all book My Mother's Keeper, which portrayed Davis as an abusive alcoholic.
In the last five years of her life, Davis had a mastectomy, suffered with cancer and had several strokes. Davis died on October 6, 1989, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, outside of Paris.
Bette Davis was one of Hollywood's greatest actresses. In 1962, Bette Davis became the first person to secure 10 Academy Award nominations for acting. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
During 1988 and 1989, Davis was honored for her career achievements, receiving the Kennedy Center Honor, the Legion of Honor from France, the Campione d'Italia from Italy, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1960, Davis, a registered Democrat, appeared at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where she met future President John F. Kennedy, whom she greatly admired.
Views
Quotations:
"Old age is no place for sissies."
"I'd luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair."
"Getting old is not for sissies."
"If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent."
"This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."
"To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy."
"From the age of six, I have known that I was sexy. And let me tell you it has been hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it."
"The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"
"Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism."
"Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation."
Personality
Bette Davis never wanted to be the ideal woman—she wanted to be the best. She fought for, won, and proved things that women in the industry are still fighting and struggling for today.
Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative and confrontational. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech, and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona, which has often been imitated.
Waspish and witty, capricious and violent, Bette could swing from mood to mood with mercurial ease – a facility that made her a great actress if an unpredictable co-star.
Quotes from others about the person
As early as 1936, Graham Greene summed Davis up: "Even the most inconsiderable film ... seemed temporarily better than they were because of that precise, nervy voice, the pale ash-blond hair, the popping, neurotic eyes, a kind of corrupt and phosphorescent prettiness .... I would rather watch Miss Davis than any number of competent pictures."
Connections
Bette was married four times. In 1932, she married Harmon Oscar Nelson, Jr.; they divorced in 1938. Davis had several abortions during the marriage.
Bette's second marriage was to Arthur Farnsworth, a businessman from Boston who died in 1943. She married and divorced artist William Grant Sherry in 1945; they had a daughter named Barbara. In 1950, she married actor Gary Merrill, whom she met while making All About Eve. They adopted two children, Michael and Margot, and were divorced in 1960.
Father:
Harlow Davis
(1885–1938)
Mother:
Ruth Augusta Davis
(September 16, 1885 - July 1, 1961)
Sister:
Barbara Davis
(1909–1979)
Spouse (1):
Harmon Nelson
(July 5, 1907, Massachusetts, United States - September 28, 1975, Los Angeles, California, United States)
Spouse (2):
Arthur Austin Farnsworth
(1908-1943)
Spouse (3):
William Grant Sherry
(1914-1995)
Spouse (4):
Gary Merrill
(August 2, 1915 – March 5, 1990)
He was an American film and television character actor whose credits included more than fifty feature films, a half-dozen mostly short-lived TV series, and dozens of television guest appearances. Merrill starred in All About Eve and married his co-star Bette Davis.
Daughter:
Barbara Davis Hyman
(née Sherry; born May 1, 1947)
She is an American author and pastor. She is the daughter of Bette Davis.
Daughter:
Margot Merrill
Son:
Michael Merrill
Friend:
Anne Baxter
(May 7, 1923 – December 12, 1985)
She was an American actress, star of Hollywood films, Broadway productions, and television series. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy.
