Madonna: Hindsight Is 50/50—Bette Davis

Bette Davis

Born: April 5, 1908, Lowell, Massachusetts

Died: October 6, 1989

One of the most famous women who ever lived was born Ruth Elizabeth "Betty" Davis to a patent lawyer father and a mother who would go on to work as a photographer in New York after their divorce. Studios (good thing, since she spent so much time in all-girl boarding schools), Betty rechristened herself after Balzac's Cousin Bette.

Living in Manhattan afforded Davis the opportunity to take in plays and see all the latest films. In 1921, she saw Rudolph Valentino's Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse and her urge to be an actress was kindled. Later, the 1926 play The Wild Duck (starring Peg Entwistle, who later famously leapt to her death from the Hollywood since) convinced her that acting was her destiny.

She pursued acting via various schools and other programs (she was rejected by Eva LeGallienne but accepted by the John Murray Anderson School Of Theatre in a class with Lucille Ball) and landed her first paid gig—as a chorus girl in George Cukor's stock company production of Broadway. It wasn't long before she was on Broadway for real, as a member of the chorus in Broken Dishes. It also wouldn't be long before she was making films with Cukor.

Scouted while on the stage, Davis was given a chance to fly to Hollywood for a screen test at the age of 22. She and her mother were upset to find no hoopla once there, and David failed miserably. She was there anyway, so she was asked to play opposite over a dozen boys for their screen tests—allowing each of them to kiss her. She also failed a follow-up test.

Finally, she was signed to a contract, debuting in The Bad Sister in 1931. None of her early films were successful and she did not shine in them, so she was dropped. Her big break came in 1932—the year she married her high-school sweetheart—when George Arliss hand-picked her to star in The Man Who Played God. Her sterling appearance earned her a five-year contract, at the end of which she would be a major star.

Davis became known for her outsized personality, her pop-eyes and her clipped Eastern delivery. Her ability as an actress was widely praised when she took on a role no other actress wanted, the unglamorous, before-its-time starring role in Of Human Bondage. Davis wowed critics and audiences with her gutsy portrayal, including a highly unglamorous death sequence. She was passed over for It Happened One Night in favor of a B-movie, and was also passed over for an Oscar nomination for Of Human Bondage. The outcry was so great—similar to the case of Cher's snub for Mask—that she won the very next year for a lesser performance in a lesser film (Dangerous).

Davis's next films were mundane and bombed, leading her to attempt to make movies in the UK. Instead, her studio bosses sued her and she lost, forcing a hasty return. It wasn't until her Oscar-winning turn in Jezebel (1938) that she recaptured her earlier promise, though it was not enough to win her the part she hoped for, that of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind. With two Oscars to her name, Davis later told anyone who'd listen that she'd named the Oscar, a tale which has since been proven to be apocryphal.

In 1941, Davis became the first female president of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. She sold war bonds and was the only Caucasian who would perform with Hattie McDaniel's African-American USO troupe. Her dedication to the war effort was legendary—she invented the Hollywood Canteen, where soldiers mixed and mingled with celebrities, starring in a movie based on the phenomenon.

Like Joan Crawford, David was known for making quality "women's pictures." Perhaps one of her best-known films was 1942's melodrama Now, Voyager. Her personal life was nearly as fraught with emotion as her on-screen portrayals—she had divorced her first husband nad married a masseur (a masseur, not her masseur, in the same way Madonna did not have a child with her trainer, but with a trainer).

In the late 1940s, Davis's star waned as her films stopped making money. She gave birth to daughter B.D. at age 39 then continued making films, which in turn continued to underperform. Her campiest line—"What a dump!"—from 1949's Beyond The Forest could describe the state of her career at that time. Luckily, things were about to change.

In 1949, Davis was sent the best script she'd ever read—All About Eve, like the simultaneously produced Sunset Boulevard—was a brilliantly in-the-know story about showbiz that involved a aging Broadway diva with an oversized ego (Margo Channing) and the cunning young admirer (Eve Harrington) who seeks to be her assistant and, ultimately, to usurp her position in the theater and in life. Davis fell madly in love with co-star Gary Merrill and the film turned out to be probably the finest of her career, earning her an Oscar nomination. (She and Anne Baxter, who'd insisted on also being nominated in the Best Actress category, lost to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday.)

She and Merrill adopted a daughter (naming her Margot...) and son (Michael) and lived in England for a time, where she did theater. Her film output was dreary and her daughter Margot was institutionalized due to brain damage undetected at the time of her adoption. The couple was said to have indulged in alcohol, beating each other up pretty good. All of this would be fodder for B.D.'s later book about her mother. She also dabbled in numerous TV drama series and made some surprising singing appearances (here she is at 54 and 63 and 57 respectively):

In 1962, after a limited run on Broadway in Night Of The Iguana, Davis did the film What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?—her first (and last) co-starring vehicle with arch-nemesis Joan Crawford. She received a hefty salary plus 10% of all future earnings on the film, which went on to become a classic of cinema and a big, fat hit. Only 54 at the time, Davis played a garishly made up former child star who'd lost her mind after losing her audience. Glamorous, it wasn't. Successful, it was.

Lasting, it was not.

After Baby Jane, Davis worked steadily doing lesser films and sometimes effective TV and talk show appearances. One of her greatest performances came in the final chapter of her life, starring with Ann Sothern and Lillian Gish in The Whales Of August (1987). However, most of her other output from the mid-sixties onward was forgettable, bills-paying work. Her iconic status only increased, parlayed into a #1 hit song by Kim Carnes in 1980, "Bette Davis Eyes."

In 1985, daughter B.D. (who had gotten married at age 16 while her mother did press for Baby Jane at Cannes and later identified herself as a born-again Christian) wrote a scathing tell-all book, My Mother's Keeper, that rivaled Christina Crawford's Mommie Dearest for venom. Two differences—most of Davis's acquaintances claimed Hyman's book was phony, and Davis was still alive when it was published. She lived long enough to rebut it with her own best-selling book, This 'N' That, published in 1987.

A battle with breast cancer and a debilitating stroke, coming on the heels of a deal to star in the night-time soap Hotel alongside All About Eve co-star Anne Baxter, withered Davis beyond recognition in the '80s.

In spite of her physical limitations, she fought the good fight and became an icon of determination and strength. Madonna posthumously sent love to Davis in the lyrics of "Vogue" in 1990.

Bette Davis in The Scapegoat, filmed when she was 50.

Comments

[Marina]

Thanks for this wonderful review.

Bette Davis is my all time favorite, Hollywood actress.

I have come to admire her, more
than Kate Hepburn, who received
the most Oscars.