Movie star spotlight: Bette Davis

[4boysmom32]

Mini Biography

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on April 5, 1908. Her parents divorced when she was 10. Her early interests were in dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage. She gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge. She studied drama in New York City and made her debut on Broadway in 1929. In 1930, she moved to Hollywood where she hoped things would get better for her in the world of acting. They did indeed. She would become known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. She was first under contract to Universal Studios, where she made her first film, called Way Back Home (1931). After the unsuccessful film The Bad Sister (1931), made the same year, she was fired, which was wildly unpopular. She then moved on to Warner Brothers. Her first film with them was Seed (1931). More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. 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. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award nomination for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. Bette would receive six more nominations, including one for her role as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950). While she was a genuine star in the '30s and '40s, the '50s and early '60s saw her in the midst of films that all lost money. Then came What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) in which she played a deranged former child star and a rather spooky one at that. 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. 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." Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer.

Personal Quotes

[on longtime rival Joan Crawford] I wouldn't piss on her if she was on fire.

[in 1982] Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should ALL be bigger than life.

Getting old is not for sissies.

I see - she's the original good time that was had by all.

Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you're not a star.

At 50, I thought proudly, 'Here we are, half century!' Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black afro wig, wore black clothes, and hung a black wreath on my door.

I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.

I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.

[on rival Joan Crawford] She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.

[on her character in All About Eve (1950)] Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she be? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What's good about that?

Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.

Success only breeds a new goal.

What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.

I have never known the great actor who... didn't plan eventually to direct or produce. If he has no such dream, he is usually bitter, ungratified and eventually alcoholic.

There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.

I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man's happiness as it is to a woman's. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon.

The male ego, with few exceptions, is elephantine to start with.

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.

I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.

An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring. I ought to know.

[referring to her parents' divorce when she was 7] Of course I replaced my father. I became my own father and everyone else's.

I will never be below the title.

If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it.

Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.

[about Katharine Hepburn's tie for the 1968 Oscar with Barbra Streisand] I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.

[referring to her fourth husband, Gary Merrill] Gary was a macho man, but none of my husbands was ever man enough to become Mr. Bette Davis.

[when told that "at one time" she had a reputation for being difficult] At one time?! I've been known as difficult for 50 years, practically! What do you mean "at one time"? Nooo, I've been like this for 50 years. And it's always always to make it the best film I can make it!

Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why [Joan Crawford] always plays ladies.

[when told not to speak ill of the dead] Just because someone is dead does not mean they have changed!

[on sex] God's biggest joke on human beings.

[commenting on the death of long-time nemesis Joan Crawford] You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.

[commenting about her mother, an aspiring actress] I had to be the monster for both of us.

If Hollywood didn't work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world.

I have been uncompromising, peppery, infractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile and offtimes disagreeable. I suppose I'm larger than life.

[Joan Crawford] and I have never been warm friends. We are not simpatico. I admire her, and yet I feel uncomfortable with her. To me, she is the personification of the Movie Star. I have always felt her greatest performance is Crawford being Crawford.

[after having blown the same line several times in Hollywood Canteen (1944), in which she plays herself] I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think I just can't play myself. I don't know how! But, if you give me a drink - give me a cigarette - give me a gun - I'll play any old bag you want me to. I just can't play myself!

Beyond the Forest (1949) was a terrible movie! It had the longest death scene ever seen on the screen.

I was a person who couldn't make divorce work. For me, there's nothing lonelier than a turned-down toilet seat.

[before taking her final flight in 1989] I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.

I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone baked.

When I die, they'll probably auction off my false eyelashes.

My favorite person to work with was Claude Rains.

[on John Wayne] I certainly would have given anything to have worked with John Wayne. He's the most attractive man who ever walked the earth, I think.

[on Errol Flynn] He was just beautiful . . . Errol. He himself openly said I don't know really anything about acting, and I admire his honesty because he's absolutely right.

[on director Lindsay Anderson] I think he's a very talented man, but I think he's a difficult man to work with. He really prefers theatre and not film, and that's a little depressing, I must say.

[on Errol Flynn] He was not an actor of enormous talent -- he would have admitted that himself -- but in all those swashbuckling things he was beautiful.

[in 1977, on why she was still working] So I am up to my ears in taxes and debts, and that's why I come out of my house in Connecticut every few years and work. I can hole up for just so long, then I gotta get out and stir things up again. It's half for income and half for me.

[during tension on the set of The Whales of August (1987) about her esteemed costar Lillian Gish] She ought to know about close-ups! Jesus, she was around when they invented them!

[lighthouse112]

One of my favorite movies with Bette Davis is What ever happend to baby Jane!!

[roseisrose]

 

 

[sophiesmom07]

 You know she is my absolute favorite classic movie actress! I love her in so many movies, but my faves are Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Now Voyager and All this and Heaven too.  She could portray characters so selfish  and cunning and then turn around and play the girl next door.

[roseisrose]

 

Quoting sophiesmom07:

 You know she is my absolute favorite classic movie actress! I love her in so many movies, but my faves are Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Now Voyager and All this and Heaven too.  She could portray characters so selfish  and cunning and then turn around and play the girl next door.

 exactly!

There is no one else like her and there never will be