Bette Davis | Biography

Ruth Elizabeth “Bette” Davis ( April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television, and theater. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters and was known for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue ten Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. In 1999, Davis was placed second on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

Bette Davis

After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and had her critical breakthrough playing a vulgar waitress in Of Human Bondage (1934). Contentiously, she was not among the three nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actress that year, and she won it the following year for her performance in Dangerous (1935). In 1936, due to poor film offers, she attempted to free herself from her contract, and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema’s most celebrated leading ladies. She was praised for her role in Marked Woman (1937) and won a second Academy Award for her portrayal of a strong-willed 1850s southern belle in Jezebel (1938), the first of five consecutive years in which she received a Best Actress nomination; the others for Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942).

A period of decline in the late 1940s was redeemed with her role as a fading Broadway star in All About Eve (1950), which has often been cited as her best performance. She received Best Actress nominations for this film and for The Star (1952), but her career struggled over the rest of the decade. Her last nomination came for her role as the psychotic former child star Jane Hudson in the psychological horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). In the latter stage of her career, Davis played character parts in films like Death on the Nile (1978) and shifted her focus to roles in television. She led the miniseries The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978), won an Emmy Award for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979), and was nominated for her performances in White Mama (1980) and Little Gloria… Happy at Last (1982). Her last complete cinematic part was in the drama The Whales of August (1987).

Davis was known for her forceful and intense style of acting. She gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors, and co-stars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style, and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona, which has often been imitated. Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and three times divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 film, television, and theater roles to her credit.

Life and Career

1908–1929: Childhood and early acting career

Bette Davis and Donald Meek in Broken Dishes (1929). “I was now a bona fide Broadway actress—in a hit,” Davis wrote.
Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as “Betty”, was born on April 5, 1908,[3] 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 Favor; 1885–1961), from Tyng borough, Massachusetts.[4] Davis’s younger sister was Barbara Harriet.[5] In 1915, after Davis’s parents separated, Davis and her sister Barbara attended a spartan boarding school named Crestal ban in Landsborough, Massachusetts for three years. In the fall of 1921, her mother, Ruth Davis, moved to New York City, using her children’s tuition money to enroll in the Clarence White School of Photography, with an apartment on 144th Street at Broadway. She then worked as a portrait photographer.

The young Bette Davis later changed the spelling of her first name to Bette after Bette Fischer, a character in Honoré de Balzac’s La Cousin Bette. During their time in New York, Davis became a Girl Scout where she became a patrol leader. Her patrol won a competitive dress parade for Lou Hoover at Madison Square Garden.

1930–1936: Early years in Hollywood

After appearing on Broadway in New York, the 22-year-old Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930 to screen test for Universal Studios. She had been inspired to pursue a career as a film actress after seeing Mary Pickford in Little Lord Fauntleroy. Davis and her mother travelled by train to Hollywood. She later recounted her surprise that nobody from the studio was there to meet her. In fact, 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. In a 1971 interview with Dick Cavet, she related the experience with the observation, “I was the most Yankee-Est, most modest virgin who ever walked the earth. They laid me on a couch, and I tested fifteen men … They all had to lie on top of me and give me a passionate kiss. Oh, I thought I would die. Just thought I would die.” A second test was arranged for Davis, for the 1931 film A House Divided. Hastily dressed in an ill-fitting costume with a low neckline, she was rebuffed by the film director William Wyler, who loudly commented to the assembled crew, “What do you think of these dames who show their chests and think they can get jobs.

Warner Bros’ legal case against Bette Davis

In the spring of 1936, Davis asked Warner Bros. to loan her out to RKO to make Mary of Scotland. Warner Bros. refused, and assigned Davis to two films that were written specifically for her: God’s Country and the Woman, and Mountain Justice. However, as God’s Country and the Woman was going into production, Davis refused to work, and demanded a salary increase on her contract with Warner Bros. At the time, Davis was earning $1,250 per week. Jack Warner offered Davis an increased salary of $2,250 per week, which Davis refused. Davis’s agent, Mike Levee, said: “She’s a very stubborn young lady. I asked her how much she wanted, and she said $3,500 a week, plus all radio rights and permission to make outside pictures. I told her, ‘Whoa, that’s too much!

Meanwhile, due to Davis’s refusal to continue with God’s County and the Woman, Warner Bros. was incurring excessive production costs because the film was being made in technicolor, and the technicolor cameras were on loan-out.In late June, the studio put Davis on suspension for refusal to work, and replaced her in the film with Beverly Roberts.

During negotiations with Warner Bros. regarding her salary and signing Davis for the female lead in “Danton”, Davis abruptly traveled to England with her husband, Harmon Nelson, on a “vacation”. However, in England, Davis signed a contract with British film production company Toeplitz, to make the film “I’ll Take the Low Road” in England with Maurice Chevalier for a $50,000 salary.

1937–1941: Success with Warner Bros.

The same year, she starred with Humphrey Bogart in Marked Woman (1937), a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano, a film regarded as one of the most important in her early career. She was awarded the Volpi Cup at the 1937 Venice Film Festival for her performance.

Davis’s portrayal of a strong-willed 1850s Southern belle in Jezebel (1938) won her a second Academy Award for Best Actress, and was the first of five consecutive years in which she received the Best Actress nomination. During production, Davis entered a relationship with director William Wyler. She later described him as the “love of my life”, and said that making the film with him was “the time in my life of my most perfect happiness”.The film was a success, and Davis’s performance as a spoiled Southern belle earned her a second Academy Award.

This led to speculation in the press that she would be chosen to play Scarlett O’Hara, a similar character, in Gone with the Wind. Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O. Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite. 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,while Davis did not want Flynn cast as Rhett Butler. Newcomer Vivien Leigh was cast as Scarlett O’Hara, de Havilland landed a role as Melanie, and both of them were nominated for the Oscars, with Leigh winning.

Death

Davis 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 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 traveled to France, where she died of metastasized breast cancer on October 6, 1989, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Davis was 81 years old. A memorial tribute was held by invitation only at Burbank Studio’s stage 18 where a work light was turned on signaling the end of production.

She was entombed in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, alongside her mother Ruthie and sister Bobby, with her name in larger letters. On her tombstone is written: “She did it the hard way”, an epitaph that she mentioned in her memoir Mother Goddam as having been suggested to her by Joseph L. Mankiewicz shortly after they had filmed All About Eve.

Memorials

A few months before her death in 1989, Davis was one of several actors featured on the cover of Life magazine. In a film retrospective that celebrated the films and stars of 1939, Life concluded that Davis was the most significant actress of her era, and highlighted Dark Victory (1939) as one of the more important films of the year. Her death made front-page news throughout the world as the “close of yet another chapter of the Golden Age of Hollywood”. Angela Lansbury summarized the feeling of those of the Hollywood community who attended her memorial service, commenting, after a sample from Davis’s films was screened, that they had witnessed “an extraordinary legacy of acting in the twentieth century by a real master of the craft” that should provide “encouragement and illustration to future generations of aspiring actors”.

The United States Postal Service honored Davis with a commemorative postage stamp in 2008, marking the 100th anniversary of her birth. The stamp features an image of her in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve. The First Day of Issue celebration took place September 18, 2008, at Boston University, which houses an extensive Davis archive. Featured speakers included her son Michael Merrill and Lauren Bacall. In 1997, the executors of her estate, Merrill and Kathryn Syrmak, her former assistant, established The Bette Davis Foundation, which awards college scholarships to promising actors and actresses.

In 2017, Syrmak published the memoir Miss D & Me: Life With the Invincible Bette Davis, a book Davis had requested Syrmak write, detailing their years spent together.

In Popular Culture

In 1981, the song “Bette Davis Eyes”, performed by Kim Carnes, won two Grammy Awards (Song of the Year and Record of the Year) and spent a total of nine weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100. Davis wrote letters to Carnes and the writers of the song, Donna Weiss and Jackie DE Shannon, to thank them for making her “a part of modern times”, and said that her grandson now looked up to her. After their Grammy wins, Davis sent them roses.

Other mentions in songs to Davis Reference are made in Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row”, in the song “Celluloid Heroes” by the Kinks, in the 1990 Madonna song “Vogue”, in “Silver Screen Romance” by American rock band Good Charlotte, and in “Girl on TV” by the boy band Loather is also the line “I don’t know how you came to get the Bette Davis knees, but worst of all young man, you’ve got industrial disease” in the hit song ‘Industrial Disease’ by the band Dire Straits (1982).

Davis attracted a following in the gay subculture, and was frequently imitated by female impersonators such as Tracey Lee, Craig Russell, Jim Bailey, and Charles Pierce. Attempting to explain her popularity with gay audiences, the journalist Jim Emerson wrote: “Was she just a camp figurehead because her brittle, melodramatic style of acting hadn’t aged well? Or was it that she was ‘Larger Than Life’, a tough broad who had survived? Probably some of both.”

In House of Wax (2005), in her attempt to blend in with the other wax figures in the local movie house, the lead female character has to sit through a scene from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane .

Academy Awards

Davis in the trailer for Dark Victory (1939), in which she gave one of her 11 Oscar-nominated performances. Davis established several Oscar milestones. Among them, she became the first person to earn five consecutive Academy Award nominations for acting, all in the Best Actress category (1938–1942).Her record has only been matched by one other performer, Greer Garson, who also earned five consecutive nominations in the Best Actress category (1941–1945), including three years when both these actresses were nominated.

In 1962, Bette Davis became the first person to secure 10 Academy Award nominations for acting—though one could argue her 10th nomination was in 1952, and her 11th in 1962, as her write-in nomination for “Of Human Bondage” remains a source of contention (she came in 3rd in the voting, ahead of official nominee Grace Moore). Since then only three people have surpassed this figure—Meryl Streep (with 21 nominations and three wins), Katharine Hepburn (12 nominations and 4 wins), and Jack Nicholson (12 nominations and 3 wins)—while Laurence Olivier matched her (10 nominations and 1 win)

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