Bio: Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.
Without question, Bette Davis made some of the best films in Hollywood's golden era, between 1934 and 1956, delivering many indelible performances, arguably more than any actor of her generation.The acting profession today is not the same as it was in Davis' time. Acting is no longer learn-as-you-go. Although Davis' education began at a dramatic academy, her actual education was working with established actors in off-Broadway plays. The time-worn formula then was toil until you're "discovered," transported to Hollywood, and given a part in a movie. For Davis that was "Bad Sister" in 1931 at Universal, an inauspicious start, but George Arliss saw something in her that no one else could, which wasn't sex appeal or glamour. It was something much better: untapped talent and a willingness to learn. And learn she did, and trudged her way through contractual obligations to reach something worthy of her talents: Mildred Rogers.Beginning with her first really good film, "The Man Who Played God," with Arliss, who regarded her his prot��g��, Davis secured a seven-year contract with Warners, where her career progressed with forgettable films, like "The Cabin in the Cotten" (best remembered today for the line "I'd love to kiss 'ya but I just washed my hair") and "Parachute Jumper." Then casting began for "Of Hunan Bondage" in 1934. Davis begged and won temporary release from her contract to play Mildred at RKO, the role that would make her a star. For this part, she learned to speak Cockney, impressing her costar Leslie Howard (affecting a believable English accent would serve her well in later years). This repellent, unsympathetic woman was a challenge for Davis, which she took on with blind will and determination, managing not only to portray Mildred convincingly, but make audiences both despise and pity her. The Davis trademark took shape: she is the woman audiences love to hate, a trait that stuck, even though not all the women were bad. She was a write-in vote for best actress in 1934 (the last time that was possible), but lost to Claudette Colbert. Back at Warners, her first Oscar came in 1935 for "Dangerous," which she always thought a consolation for having lost the previous year.For three years, Davis-a Yankee trouper-waded through dregs at Warners until she could no longer accept substandard roles. She left for England and sued Warners to get out of her contract. She lost the suit, but was offered better films, most notably "The Petrified Forest" in 1936, reuniting with Leslie Howard, and "That Certain Woman" in 1937, costarring her favorite actor Henry Fonda. Eventually, she was given the lead in "Jezebel"(1938), opposite Fonda again-the film that began her career-altering relationship with director William Wyler and won her a second Oscar. Of the films that followed, many would bring memorable, iconic performances, demonstrating the remarkable range of her talents. No one more so than Leslie Crosbie in "The Letter" (1940), again for Wyler. For this film, he wanted Davis to tone down the trademarked mannerisms and wide-eyed stares for a subtler approach (he had her wear eyeglasses in many scenes). At first she resisted, but later admitted he was right. As a long-suffering, plantation wife, prim on the surface but yearning underneath, she is revelatory-it's a controlled and beautifully underplayed performance, perhaps her best, and earned her a fifth Oscar nomination.Davis always challenged herself to play against type, never afraid to be unlikable, or ugly in temperament and appearance. She tackled roles that other women might have refused to play.Like Garbo's Camille and Crawford's Mildred Pierce, Margo Channing is the role Davis was born to play. She might have been playing herself, some have said, but this was a woman Davis knew well and knew she could play, although it was first offered to Colbert. This is Davis for the ages, both camp caricature and genuine midlife crisis. It earned her a ninth Oscar nomination.If the apogee is Margo, than everything else is post "All About Eve." In the years after 1950, subsequent roles did not live up to the standards set by this extraordinary film, and her acting choices careened, from noir villainess, to hasbeen Oscar winner (a tenth nomination), to Elizabeth I (again), to Catherine the Great, to evil twins, to worn-down Bronx housewife, to Apple Annie. And then the forays into Grand Giuignol horror, the last resort for aged actors in the 1960s. But for Davis this was yet another triumph (for Crawford, too).An all-out duel between sibling grotesques, "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane"(1960) was a critical and box-office success, earning Davis her final Oscar nomination. This is a role she inhabits (see Lynn Redgrave struggle to find her footing in the unfortunate remake). Davis is captivating-just try to look away: the hideous maquillage (her own choice), the boozed-up voice, the feeble singing, the joyful rages, the child freak dancing on the beach with ice cream cones. Weird and sad, sad, sad. Who among her peers could have set aside ego to play this woman? One might argue that Davis had laid the groundwork for Ruth Gordon's Minnie Castevet in 1968.Much has been written about the so-called feud between Davis and Crawford, most of it fabricated and enhanced over the years by those who knew them and thought they knew them. The feud was more likely a clever marketing ploy sanctioned by both stars, who ably played their parts well. Maybe too well. After all, Davis resented Crawford for supposedly campaigning against her nomination and accepting the award for Ann Bancroft who was absent at the ceremony. The two actors really had no reason to dislike each other, as they were both under contract at separate studios and never in competition for the same parts. There were, in fact, more reasons for them to like each other: they were both career-driven and dedicated to their profession, unafraid to confront powerful studio heads for more demanding parts in prestigious projects. It is well documented that Davis admired Crawford's work ethic and considered her talent equal to her own (it was Miriam Hopkins she considered her inferior).Davis was known to have had lasting friendships with fellow actors she respected, like Claude Raines (also a lover), Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Olivia de Haviland, Mary Astor, and Geraldine Fitzgerald. Davis championed the careers of Astor and Fitzgerald, choosing them as costars in crucial roles (Astor won an Oscar and Fitzgerald, the National Board of Review). These actors were, after all, her colleagues at Warners.In those days, working at Warners and MGM was like living on opposite ends of the earth. Davis and Crawford were both stars at their respective studios, and audiences knew what to expect from each: it was either a "Davis film" or a "Crawford film"-the twain never met. But it was Davis that audiences most loved to see and loved being surprised by. Perhaps that was so because she wasn't an unattainable beauty like Crawford, but someone in whom audiences could see themselves. She was for them the epitome of the acting profession and always more than just a movie star. Yet, she wore both identities well.Davis remains still today the subject of debate and discussion, more so than most of her peers, whose careers have been given the certified stamp of approval, like that of Katherine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyke, Vivian Leigh, and certainly Joan Crawford. Some may question her choices in the years after "All About Eve," but those who do must remember that Davis was, for better or worse, a working actor her entire life, in theater first, then film, then theater again, then finally television. But even the small screen could not contain her, nor diminish her commitment to acting. Although she seemed without discretion at times, she returned to form in "Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter," with Gena Rowlands in 1979. It is a remarkable testament to Davis' evolution as an actor as there exists no equivalent to this performance in her body of work. For it she was awarded a Primetime Emmy.While a few of her performances over the years may have veered into self parody (even Crawford could not escape this trap), the incredible span of her career cancels out any dismissive commentaries or bad jokes. By all accounts, she was at times temperamental, opinionated, and, with age, imperious, but those are well-earned qualities for someone who was never going to win the hearts of audiences. In the end she was content to win their respect.
Tivia: According to her August 1982 "Playboy" magazine interview, in her youth she posed nude for an artist, who carved a statue of her that was placed in a public spot in Boston, MA. After the interview appeared, Bostonians searched for the statue in vain. The statue, four dancing nymphs, was later found in the possession of a private Massachusetts collector.Joan Crawford and she had feuded for years, some of it instigated by publicists and studio heads. During the making of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Davis had a Coca-Cola machine installed on the set due to Crawford's affiliation with Pepsi (she was the widow of Pepsi's CEO). Joan got her revenge by putting weights in her pockets when Davis had to drag her across the floor during certain scenes. Crawford died in 1977, and ten years later Davis spoke more freely about her. In a 1987 interview with Bryant Gumbel, she said that Crawford acted professionally on the set since she showed up on time and knew her lines, and that the rift happened only after she campaigned against Davis, making sure she didn't win her third Oscar. That same year, she told Barbara Walters that she was hurt and angry by Crawford's actions. However, she also added that she won't tarnish Crawford's accomplishments: "She came a long way from a little girl from where she came from. This, I will never take away from her".The first actor to receive ten Academy Award nominations.When she died in 1989, she reportedly left an estate valued between $600,000 and $1 million, consisting mainly of a condominium apartment she owned in West Hollywood 50% of her estate went to her son, Michael Merrill, and the remaining 50% went to her secretary and companion, Kathryn Sermak. Her daughter, Barbara Merrill aka B.D. Hyman, was left nothing due to her lurid book about life with her mother. Davis spent the majority of her wealth supporting her mother, three children, and four husbands.While she was the star pupil at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School in New York, another of her classmates was sent home because she was "too shy". It was predicted that this girl would never make it as an actress. The girl was Lucille Ball.After the song "Bette Davis Eyes" became a hit single, she wrote letters to singer Kim Carnes and songwriters Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon, asking how they knew so much about her. One of the reasons she loved the song is that her grandson heard it and thought it "cool" that his grandmother had a hit song written about her.She was elected as first female president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in October 1941. She resigned less then two months later, publicly declaring herself too busy to fulfill her duties as president while angrily protesting in private that the Academy had wanted her to serve as a mere figurehead.Was one of two actresses (with Faye Dunaway) to have two villainous roles ranked in the American Film Institute's 100 Years of The Greatest Heroes and Villains, as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1941) at #43 and as Baby Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) at #44.When she first came to Hollywood as a contract player, Universal Pictures wanted to change her name to Bettina Dawes. She informed the studio that she refused to go through life with a name that sounded like "Between the Drawers".Described the last three decades of her life as a"my macabre period". She hated being alone at night and found growing older "terrifying".In 1982 she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the Defense Department's highest civilian award, for founding and running the Hollywood Canteen during World War II.Was honored by James Stewart, Angela Lansbury, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy when she received her Kennedy Centre Honors.While filming Death on the Nile (1978), aboard ship, no one was allowed his or her own dressing room, so she shared a dressing room with Angela Lansbury and Maggie Smith.Her co-star from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Joan Crawford once said in an interview that she and Davis had nothing in common. In reality, they had a handful of similarities in their personal lives. They both had fathers who abandoned their families at a young age; both rose from poverty to success while breaking into films during the late 1920s and early 1930s; both had siblings and mothers who milked them financially once they became famous; both became Oscar-winning leading ladies; both were staunch liberal Democrats and feminists; both had four husbands (both were widowed once and divorced three times); both adopted children and both had daughters who wrote lurid books denouncing them as bad mothers.Was originally offered the role of fiery pianist Sandra Kovac in The Great Lie (1941). Instead, she took the less showy role of Maggie Patterson and suggested her good friend Mary Astor for the role of Sandra--she thought it would help boost Astor's career, which had been hurt by a very nasty custody battle, in 1936, with her ex-husband. Astor went on to win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance.Pictured on a 42�� US commemorative postage stamp in the "Legends of Hollywood" series, issued 9/18/2008.On 7/19/2001 director Steven Spielberg won the Christie's auction of her 1938 Best Actress Oscar for Jezebel (1938) for $578,000. He then gave it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.Was very active in leading Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts, due to the fact that in her childhood she was a decorated Girl Scout.The highest-paid woman in the US in 1942.Nominated for an Academy Award five years in a row,--1939-43. She shares the record for most consecutive nominations with Greer Garson.Turned down the role of Rose Sayer in The African Queen (1951) due to pregnancy.Her second husband Arthur Farnsworth died after a fall on Hollywood Boulevard in which he took a blow to the head. He had shortly before banged his head on a train between Los Angeles and New England, followed by another fall down the stairway at their New Hampshire home. This is the only marriage of hers that ended in death, not divorce.Suffered a stroke and had a mastectomy in 1983.The first actor of any gender to earn seven, eight, nine and ten Academy Award nominations in the acting categories.Davis, whom many critics and cinema historians rank as the greatest American movie actress ever, sent a letter to Meryl Streep early in her career. She told Streep that she felt she was her successor as The First Lady of the American Screen. She also admired Debra Winger and Sissy Spacek.In the early 1980s, she was once asked by an interviewer if she had any regrets about her career. In answer, she remarked that the only regret she had was that she was never able to appear in a movie with Clark Gable, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, or James Stewart during the days of the studio system because Warner Bros. never did "loan outs".While touring the talk show circuit to promote What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), she told one interviewer that when she and Joan Crawford were first suggested for the leads, Warner Bros. studio head Jack L. Warner replied: "I wouldn't give a plugged nickel for either of those two old broads." Recalling the story, she laughed at her own expense. The following day, she reportedly received a telegram from Crawford: "In future, please do not refer to me as an old broad!".Her performance as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) is ranked #5 on "Premiere" magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time in 2006.Awarded 2 Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Picture at 6225 Hollywood Blvd. ; and for Television at 6335 Hollywood Blvd.Filmed a television pilot for a show to be called "The Bette Davis Show" (1965), which was not picked up for series by any of the television networks, but which was broadcast as a television movie entitled The Decorator (1965).For many years, she was a popular target for impressionists but she was perplexed by the often used phrase "Pee-tah! Pee-tah! Pee-tah!". She said she had no idea who Pee-tah was and had never even met anyone by that name.Credited George Arliss with giving her her "break" by choosing her as his leading lady in The Man Who Played God (1932).Voted the 10th Greatest Movie Star of all time by "Entertainment Weekly".Smoked 100 Vantage cigarettes a day, even after suffering four strokes in 1983.Publicly, she took a tough stance on her father Harlow Davis, because he had divorced her mother when she was seven, and she and her mother and sister had called themselves "The Three Musketeers". She didn't even attend his funeral, because it was on the east coast, and she was on the west coast filming her Academy Award winning performance in Jezebel (1938). However, her private scrapbook, which was found after her death, revealed that she held a soft spot for him. She had saved congratulatory cards and notes that he had sent her when she appeared on stage, and when she won her first Academy Award for Dangerous (1935). She also financed her son Michael Merrill's education to become a lawyer, just as her father had been.Bette Davis had been nominated for Best Actress for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), which also starred Joan Crawford. If Bette had won, it would have set a record number of wins for an actress. According to the book "Bette & Joan--The Divine Feud" by Shaun Considine, the two had a lifelong mutual hatred, and a jealous Crawford actively campaigned against Davis for winning Best Actress, and even told Anne Bancroft that if Anne won and was unable to accept the Award, Joan would be happy to accept it on her behalf. According to the book on Oscar night Davis was standing in the wings of the theatre waiting to hear the name of the winner. When it was announced that Bancroft had won Best Actress for The Miracle Worker (1962), Davis felt an icy hand on her shoulder as Crawford said, "Excuse me, I have an Oscar to accept"."LIFE" magazine described her performance in Of Human Bondage (1934) as "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress".In an interview with Barbara Walters, she claimed her daughter's book, "My Mother's Keeper", was as devastating as her stroke.In Marked Woman (1937), she is forced to testify in court after being worked over by some Mafia hoods. Disgusted with the tiny bandage supplied by the makeup department, she left the set, had her own doctor bandage her face more realistically, and refused to shoot the scene any other way.On her sarcophagus is written "She did it the hard way". She credited her writer/director from All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz for coming up with the line.In Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Elizabeth Taylor does an exaggerated impression of her saying a line from Beyond the Forest (1949): "What a dump!" In an interview with Barbara Walters, Davis said that in Beyond the Forest (1949), she really did not deliver the line in such an exaggerated manner. She said it in a more subtle, low-key manner, but it has passed into legend that she said it the way Elizabeth Taylor delivered it in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). During the interview, the clip of her delivering the line in Beyond the Forest (1949) was shown to prove that she was correct. However, since people expected her to deliver the line the way Taylor had in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), she always opened her in-person, one-woman show by saying the line in a campy, exaggerated manner: "What . . . a . . . dump!!!". It always brought down the house. "I imitated the imitators", she said.She has appeared in four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Jezebel (1938), Now, Voyager (1942), All About Eve (1950) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).Had a long-running feud with Miriam Hopkins that started before they even entered films, because of jealousy. They were both stage actresses with the same company, where Hopkins had been the bigger star who first made it to Hollywood to become a star in films. They were both nominated for the Best Actress Oscar in 1935, Davis won and became the bigger star. She won her second Oscar for Jezebel (1938), which had been a flop on Broadway for Hopkins in 1933. Davis had an affair with director Anatole Litvak, who at one point was married to Hopkins, although there have been conflicting reports on whether the affair took place while he was still married to her. They competed with each other for screen time in the two films they acted in together: The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance (1943). Long after Hopkins died, the only good thing Davis said about her was that she was a good actress, but otherwise, she was a "real bitch".In 1937, for William Randolph Hearst's 75th birthday, the famous "Circus Party" at San Simeon, she came dressed as a bearded lady.Was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of her outstanding contribution to film culture.Played dual roles of twin sisters in two movies: A Stolen Life (1946) and Dead Ringer (1964).After her first picture, she was sitting outside the office of Universal Pictures executive Carl Laemmle Jr. when she overheard him say about her, "She's got as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville. Who wants to get her at the end of the picture?".Interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles, CA, just outside and to the left of the main entrance to the Court of Remembrance.Wrote the book "This 'n That" in response to her daughter's book, "My Mother's Keeper".Desperately wanted to win a third Best Actress Oscar for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), as three wins in the the leading category was unprecedented (Walter Brennan had won three Oscars, but all of his were in the supporting category). It was the general feeling among Academy voters was that while she was superb, the movie itself was little better than a potboiler exploitation film, the kind that doesn't deserve the recognition that an Oscar would give it.