Bette Davis
| Bette Davis | |
 from the Jezebel film trailer, 1938. | |
| Birth name: | Ruth Elizabeth Davis |
|---|---|
| Date of birth: | April 5, 1908 |
| Birth location: | Lowell, Massachusetts |
| Date of death: | October 6, 1989 |
| Death location: | Neuilly, France |
| Height: | 5' 3" (1.60 m) |
| Academy Awards: | Best Actress 1935 Dangerous 1938 Jezebel |
| Spouse: | Harmon Nelson (1932-1938) Arthur Farnsworth (1940-1943) William Grant Sherry (1945-1950) Gary Merrill (1950-1960) |
Bette Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989), born Ruth Elizabeth Davis, was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were romantic dramas.
Early acting career
Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as "Betty", was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Harlow Morrell Davis and Ruth ("Ruthie") Augusta Favor. The family was of English, French, and Welsh ancestry. In 1915, Davis's parents separated and, in 1921, Ruth Davis moved to New York City with her daughters, where she worked as a photographer. Betty was inspired to become an actress after seeing Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and Mary Pickford in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921). She changed the spelling of her name to "Bette" after Honoré de Balzac's La Cousine Bette.
She attended Cushing Academy, a finishing school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts where she met her future husband, Harmon O. Nelson. In 1926, she saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck with Blanche Yurka and Peg Entwistle. Davis later recalled that it inspired her full commitment to her chosen career, and said, "Before that performance I wanted to be an actress. When it ended, I had to be an actress... exactly like Peg Entwistle". She auditioned for admission to Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory, but was rejected by LeGallienne who described her attitude as "insincere" and "frivolous". She was accepted by the John Murray Anderson School of Theatre, where she also studied dance with Martha Graham.
She auditioned for George Cukor's stock theater company, and although he was not impressed, he gave Davis her first paid acting assignment – a one week stint playing the part of a chorus girl in the play, Broadway. She was later chosen to play Hedwig, the character she had seen Peg Entwistle play, in The Wild Duck. After performing in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston, she made her Broadway debut in 1929 in Broken Dishes, and followed it with Solid South. She was seen by a Universal Studios talent scout, who invited her to Hollywood for a screen test.
Transition from stage to film
Accompanied by her mother, Davis traveled by train to Hollywood, arriving on December 13, 1930. She later recounted her surprise that nobody from the studio was there to meet her; a studio employee had waited for her, but left because he saw nobody who "looked like an actress". She failed her first screen test but was used in several screen tests for other actors. Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, considered terminating Davis's employment, but the cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for The Bad Sister (1931), in which she subsequently made her film debut. The film was not a success, and her next role in Seed (1931) was too brief to attract attention.
Universal Studios renewed her contract for three months, and she appeared in Waterloo Bridge (1931) before being loaned to Columbia Pictures for The Feathered Serpent and The Menace, and to Capital Films for Hell's House (all 1932). After nine months, and six unsuccessful films, Laemmle elected not to renew her contract.
George Arliss chose Davis for the lead female role in The Man Who Played God (1932), and for the rest of her life, Davis credited him with helping her achieve her "break" in Hollywood. The Saturday Evening Post wrote, "she is not only beautiful, but she bubbles with charm", and compared her to Constance Bennett and Olive Borden. Warner Brothers signed her to a five year contract.
In 1932, she married "Ham" Nelson, who was scrutinized by the press; his one hundred dollar a week earnings compared unfavorably with Davis's reported $1000 a week income. Davis addressed the issue in an interview, pointing out that many Hollywood wives earned more than their husbands, but the situation proved difficult for Nelson, who refused to allow Davis to purchase a house until he could afford to pay for it himself.
Success as "The Fourth Warner Brother"
Davis began work on Marked Woman (1937), a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano. The film, and Davis's performance, received excellent reviews and her stature as a leading actress was enhanced.
David O. Selznick was conducting a search for an actress to play Scarlett O'Hara, a role Davis coveted, in Gone with the Wind, and a radio poll named Davis as the audience favorite. She won a second Academy Award for her next film, Jezebel (1938), in which she portrayed a willful and self absorbed Southern Belle, much like Scarlett. Warner offered her services to Selznick as part of a deal that also included Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but Selznick did not consider Davis as suitable, and rejected the offer.
Jezebel marked the beginning of the most successful phase of Davis's career, and over the next few years she was listed in the annual "Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money Making Stars", which was compiled from the votes of movie exhibitors throughout the United States for the stars that had generated the most revenue in their theaters over the previous year. In contrast to Davis's success, her husband, Ham Nelson, had failed to establish a career for himself, and their relationship faltered and soon after they divorced.
She appeared in three other box office hits in 1939, The Old Maid, Juarez and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. The latter was her first color film, and was one of her few color films made during the height of her career. To play the elderly Elizabeth I of England, Davis shaved her hairline and eyebrows. During filming she was visited on the set by the actor, Charles Laughton. She commented that she had a "nerve" playing a woman in her sixties, to which Laughton replied, "Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut". Recalling the episode many years later, Davis remarked that Laughton's advice had influenced her throughout her career.
By this time, Davis was Warner Brothers' most profitable star, described as "The Fourth Warner Brother", and she was given the most important of their female leading roles. Her image was considered with more care; although she continued to play character roles, she was often filmed in close-ups that emphasized her distinctive eyes. In 1940 Davis met Arthur Farnsworth, a New England innkeeper. They were married in December of that year.
War effort, and the Hollywood Canteen
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Davis spent the early months of 1942 traveling across the country selling war bonds. She sold two million dollars worth of bonds in two days, as well as a picture of herself in Jezebel for $250,000. She also performed for black regiments as the only white member of an acting troupe formed by Hattie McDaniel, that also included Lena Horne and Ethel Waters.
When John Garfield discussed opening a serviceman's club in Hollywood, Davis responded enthusiastically. With the aid of Warner, Cary Grant and Jule Styne, they transformed an old nightclub into the "Hollywood Canteen", which opened on October 3, 1942. Hollywood's most important stars volunteered their time and talents to entertain servicemen prior to them being sent to war. Davis ensured that every night there would be at least a few important "names" for the visiting soldiers to meet, often calling on friends at the last moment to ensure the soldiers would not be disappointed. The canteen remained in operation until the end of World War II. Davis later commented, "There are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud of. The Hollywood Canteen is one of them." In 1980, she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the United States Department of Defense's highest civilian award, for her work with the Hollywood Canteen.
Personal and professional setbacks
In August 1943, Davis's husband, Arthur Farnsworth, collapsed while walking along a Hollywood street, and died two days later. An autopsy revealed that his fall had been caused by a skull fracture which had occurred about two weeks earlier. Davis testified before an inquest that she knew of no event that might have caused the injury, and a finding of "accidental death" was reached. Highly distraught, she attempted to withdraw from her next film, but Jack Warner, who had halted production following Farnsworth's death, convinced her to continue.
She married an artist, William Grant Sherry, in 1945. She had been drawn to him partly because he had never heard of her and was therefore not intimidated by her, but after their marriage the disparity between their levels of professional success and earnings led to tensions and arguments.
In 1947, Davis gave birth to a daughter, Barbara (known as B.D.) and later wrote in her memoir that she became absorbed in motherhood and considered ending her career. Her relationship with Sherry began to deteriorate and she continued making films, but her popularity with audiences was steadily declining. After the completion of Beyond the Forest (1949), Jack Warner released Davis from her contract, at her request. The reviews that followed were scathing; Newsweek called it "undoubtedly one of the most unfortunate stories [Davis] has ever tackled", while Dorothy Manners writing for the Los Angeles Examiner, criticized the "sheer hysteria and overexposed histrionics" of Davis's performance, and described the film as "an unfortunate finale to her brilliant career". Hedda Hopper wrote, "If Bette had deliberately set out to wreck her career, she could not have picked a more appropriate vehicle."
In July 3, 1950 Davis became divorced from William Sherry, and on July 28 she married Gary Merrill. With Sherry's consent, Merrill adopted B.D., Davis's daughter with Sherry, and in 1950, Davis and Merrill adopted a baby girl they named Margot and a baby boy, Michael, in 1952. The family traveled to England, where Davis and Merrill starred in a murder-mystery film, Another Man's Poison. When it received lukewarm reviews and failed at the box office, Hollywood columnists wrote that Davis's comeback had petered out.
Renewed success
In 1962, Davis opened in the Broadway production, The Night of the Iguana to mostly mediocre reviews, and left the production after four months due to "chronic illness." She then joined Glenn Ford and Ann-Margret for the Frank Capra film A Pocketful of Miracles, based on a story by Damon Runyon. She accepted her next role, in the Grand Guignol horror film, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? after reading the script and believing it could appeal to the same audience that had recently made Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) a success. She negotiated a deal that would pay her ten percent of the worldwide gross profits, in addition to her salary. The film became one of the year's biggest successes.[1]
Davis and Joan Crawford played two aging sisters, former actresses forced by circumstance to share a decaying Hollywood mansion. The director, Robert Aldrich, explained that Davis and Crawford were each aware of how important the film was to their respective careers and commented, "It's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly". [2] After filming was completed, their public comments against each other allowed the tension to develop into a lifelong feud, and when Davis was nominated for an Academy Award, Crawford campaigned against her. Davis also received her only BAFTA Award nomination for this performance.
B.D. also played a small role in the film, and when she and Davis visited the Cannes Film Festival to promote it, she met Jeremy Hyman, an executive for Seven Arts Productions. After a short courtship, she married Hyman at the age of sixteen, with Davis's permission.
Davis sustained her comeback over the course of several years. Dead Ringer (1964) was a crime drama in which she played twin sisters and Where Love Has Gone (1964) was a romantic drama based on a Harold Robbins novel. Davis played the mother of Susan Hayward but filming was hampered by heated arguments between Davis and Hayward.[3] Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) was Robert Aldrich's follow-up to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which he planned to reunite Davis and Crawford, but when Crawford withdrew allegedly due to illness soon after filming began, she was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The film was a considerable success and brought renewed attention to its veteran cast, which also included Joseph Cotten, Mary Astor and Agnes Moorehead.
By the end of the decade, Davis had also appeared in the British films The Nanny (1965) and The Anniversary (1968), but her career again stalled.
Late career
In the early 1970s, Davis was invited to appear in New York, in a stage presentation, Great Ladies of the American Cinema. Over five successive nights, a different female star discussed her career and answered questions from the audience; Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, Lana Turner and Joan Crawford were the other participants. Davis was well received and was invited to tour Australia with the similarly themed, Bette Davis in Person and on Film, and its success allowed her to take the production to the United Kingdom.[4]
In the U.S., she appeared in the stage production, Miss Moffat, a musical adaptation of The Corn is Green, but after the show was panned by the Philadelphia critics during its pre-Broadway run, she cited a back injury and abandoned the show, which closed immediately. She played supporting roles in Burnt Offerings (1976) and The Disappearance of Aimee (1976), but she clashed with Karen Black and Faye Dunaway, respectively the stars of the two productions, because she felt that neither extended her an appropriate degree of respect, and that their behavior on the film sets was unprofessional.[5]
In 1977, Davis became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. The televised event included comments from several of Davis's colleagues including William Wyler who joked that given the chance Davis would still like to refilm a scene from The Letter to which Davis nodded. Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland were among the actors who paid tribute, with de Havilland commenting that Davis "got the roles I always wanted".[6]
Following the telecast she found herself in demand again, often having to choose between several offers. She accepted roles in the television miniseries The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978) and the film Death on the Nile (1978). For the rest of her career the bulk of her work was for television. She won an Emmy Award for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979) with Gena Rowlands, and was nominated for her performances in White Mama (1980) and Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982). She also played supporting roles in two Disney films, Return from Witch Mountain (1978) and The Watcher in the Woods (1980).
Her name became well known to a younger audience, when Kim Carnes's song "Bette Davis Eyes" became a worldwide hit and the highest selling record of 1981 in the U.S., where it stayed at number one on the music charts for more than two months. Davis's grandson was impressed that she was the subject of a hit-song and Davis considered it a compliment, writing to both Carnes and the songwriters, and accepting the gift of gold and platinum records from Carnes, and hanging them on her wall. [7]
She continued acting for television, appearing in Family Reunion (1981) opposite her grandson J. Ashley Hyman, A Piano for Mrs. Cimino (1982) and Right of Way (1983) with James Stewart.
Illness, betrayal and death
In 1983, she was acting in the television series Hotel when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Within two weeks of her surgery she suffered four strokes which caused paralysis in the right side of her face and in her left arm, and left her with slurred speech. She commenced a lengthy period of physical therapy and, aided by her personal assistant, Kathryn Sermak, gained partial recovery from the paralysis.
During this time, her relationship with her daughter, B. D. Hyman, deteriorated when Hyman became a born again Christian and attempted to persuade Davis to follow suit. With her health stable, she travelled to England to film the Agatha Christie mystery, Murder with Mirrors (1985). Upon her return, she learned that Hyman had published a memoir, titled My Mother's Keeper in which she chronicled a difficult mother and daughter relationship and depicted scenes of Davis's overbearing and drunken behavior.
Several of Davis's friends commented that Hyman's depictions of events were not accurate; one said, "so much of the book is out of context". Mike Wallace rebroadcast a Sixty Minutes interview he had filmed with Hyman a few years earlier in which she commended Davis on her skills as a mother, and said that she had adopted many of Davis's principles in raising her own children. Critics of Hyman noted that Davis had financially supported the Hyman family for several years and had recently saved them from losing their house. Despite the acrimony of their divorce years earlier, Gary Merrill also defended Davis. Interviewed by CNN, Merrill said that Hyman was motivated by "cruelty and greed". Davis's adopted son, Michael Merrill, ended contact with Hyman and refused to speak to her again, as did Davis, who also disinherited her. [8]
In her memoir, This 'N That (1987), Davis wrote, "I am still recovering from the fact that a child of mine would write about me behind my back, to say nothing about the kind of book it is. I will never recover as completely from B.D.'s book as I have from the stroke. Both were shattering experiences." Her memoir concluded with a letter to her daughter, in which she addressed her several times as "Hyman", and described her actions as "a glaring lack of loyalty and thanks for the very privileged life I feel you have been given". She concluded with a reference to the title of Hyman's book, "If it refers to money, if my memory serves me right, I've been your keeper all these many years. I am continuing to do so, as my name has made your book about me a success."[9]
Davis appeared in the television film, As Summers Die (1986) and Lindsay Anderson's The Whales of August (1987), in which she played the blind sister of Lillian Gish. The film earned good reviews, with one critic writing, "Bette crawls across the screen like a testy old hornet on a windowpane, snarling, staggering, twitching – a symphony of misfired synapses".[10] Her last performance was the title role in Larry Cohen's Wicked Stepmother (1989). By this time her health was failing, and after disagreements with Cohen she walked off the set. The script was rewritten to place more emphasis on Barbara Carrera's character, and the reworked version was released after Davis's death.
After abandoning Wicked Stepmother and with no further film offers, Davis appeared on several talk shows and was interviewed by Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Larry King and David Letterman, discussing her career but refusing to discuss her daughter. Her appearances were popular; Lindsay Anderson observed that the public enjoyed seeing her behaving "so bitchy". He commented, "I always disliked that because she was encouraged to behave badly. And I'd always hear her described by that awful word, feisty."[11]
During 1988 and 1989, Davis was feted 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. She collapsed during the American Cinema Awards in 1989 and later discovered that her cancer had returned. She recovered sufficiently to travel to Spain where she was honored at the Donostia-San Sebastián International Film Festival, but during her visit her health rapidly deteriorated. Too weak to make the long journey back to the U.S., she travelled to France where she died on October 6, 1989, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine.
She was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California, alongside her mother, Ruthie, and sister, Bobby. On her tombstone is written: "She did it the hard way", an epitaph that had been suggested to her by Joseph L. Mankiewicz shortly after they had filmed All About Eve.[12]
In 1997, the executors of her estate, Michael Merrill, her son, and Kathryn Sermak, her former assistant, established "The Bette Davis Foundation" which awards college scholarships to promising actors and actresses.[13]
External links
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- ↑ Spada, James (1993). More Than a Woman. Little, Brown and Company, pp 353-355. ISBN 0-316-90880-0.
- ↑ Guiles, Fred Lawrence (1995). Joan Crawford, The Last Word. Conrad Goulden Books, p 186. ISBN 1-85793-268-4.
- ↑ Spada, James (1993). More Than a Woman. Little, Brown and Company, pp 376. ISBN 0-316-90880-0.
- ↑ Chandler, Charlotte (2006). The Girl Who Walked Home Alone : Bette Davis, A Personal Biography. Simon and Schuster, pp 258-259. Template:Auto isbn.
- ↑ Spada, James (1993). More Than a Woman. Little, Brown and Company, pp 414 (Karen Black) and 416 (Faye Dunaway). ISBN 0-316-90880-0.
- ↑ Spada, James (1993). More Than a Woman. Little, Brown and Company, p 424. ISBN 0-316-90880-0.
- ↑ Davis, Bette and Michael Herskowitz (1987). This 'N That. G. P. Putnam's Sons, p 112. ISBN 0-345-34453-7.
- ↑ Spada, James (1993). More Than a Woman. Little, Brown and Company, pp 451-457. ISBN 0-316-90880-0.
- ↑ Davis, Bette and Michael Herskowitz (1987). This 'N That. G. P. Putnam's Sons, pp 10, 197-198. ISBN 0-345-34453-7.
- ↑ Spada, James (1993). More Than a Woman. Little, Brown and Company, p 462. ISBN 0-316-90880-0.
- ↑ Spada, James (1993). More Than a Woman. Little, Brown and Company, p 472. ISBN 0-316-90880-0.
- ↑ Stine, Whitney and Bette Davis (1974). Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis. W.H. Allen and Co. Plc., prologue ix. ISBN 1-56980-157-6.
- ↑ Bette Davis official site. Retrieved 2006-08-12.
