Bette Davis was an American actress with a career spanning more than 50 years and 100 acting credits. She was famed for playing ground-breaking unlikeable, cynical characters, and for pioneering female villainy in cinema. Her performances were so great she was the first actor to receive 10 Academy Award nominations. She was noted for her forceful and intense style of acting and gained a reputation as a perfectionist. She could be combative and confrontational with studio executives and film directors, sometimes with her co-stars, too. She often demanded the same high standards from others as she expected of herself. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech and ever-present smoking contributed to an often-mimicked but never matched public persona. Her raw strength kept her at the top of her game for half a century, today remembered as one of Hollywood’s legendary leading women. Her larger than life persona defined her and her remarkable life.
The Wildest Duck of All
Bette Davis was born Ruth Davis on April 5th, 1908, known from an early age as ‘Betty’. This was Lowell, Massachusetts. But in 1921, she moved to New York City. Using her children’s tuition money, she enrolled in the Clarence White School of Photography and bought her own apartment on 144th Street at Broadway. She worked as a portrait photographer but her life changed in 1926 when she saw a production of ‘The Wild Duck’, starring Peg Entwistle. She was just 18. She later recalled:
The reason I wanted to go into theatre was because of an actress named Peg Entwistle.
Bette auditioned for admission to Eva Le Gallienne’s Manhattan Civic Repertory but was rejected by Le Gallienne who described Bette’s attitude as ‘frivolous’ and ‘insincere’. Still, Bette stuck at it. She auditioned for George Cukor’s stock theatre company in Rochester, New York, although he too was not very impressed. He did, though, give Bette her first paid acting assignment – a one-week stint playing the part of a chorus girl in the play ‘Broadway’.
Her first professional role came in a 1929 production of ‘The Earth Between’, but the production was postponed by a year. That year, Bette was chosen to play Hedwig, the character she had seen Peg Entwistle play in ‘The Wild Duck’. After performing in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston, Bette made her Broadway debut in 1929 in ‘Broken Dishes’ followed by ‘Solid South’.
It was a small start but soon, it would take Bette to Hollywood.
Persistence through Failure and the Last Glimmer of Light
At just 22, Bette moved to Hollywood to screen test for Universal Studios. After seeing Mary Pickford in ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’, she decided to pursue a career as a film actress. And so she did. She and her mother packed their bags and got on a train to Hollywood. Bette was surprised that nobody from the studio was there at the train station to meet her. However, a studio employee was waiting for her but he left because he saw nobody who ‘looked like an actress’. Bette failed her first screen test. However, it was not the end of her. She was used in several screen tests for other actors. She later said:
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 her for the 1931 film, ‘A House Divided’. Bette was a mess. Dressed in an ill-fitting costume with a low neckline. Yet again, she was rejected. Bless her, she kept trying. The director shouted at her, accusing her of wearing a low-cut dress to ‘show her breasts’ to get the job. Universal Studios considered ending her employment, but cinematographer Karl Freund fought for Bette. He believed she had ‘lovely eyes’ and would be suitable for a 1931 movie, ‘Bad Sister’. Bette had made her film debut.
Still, the executives were being unpleasant toward her. They thought she did not ‘look’ like an actress, or had any sex appeal. Her acting ability hardly mattered. The movie was not a success and Bette’s next picture, ‘Seed’, was also a failure. But Universal liked her and so they renewed her contract. But after one year and six absolute failures, her contract was finally cancelled for good.
And so Bette decided to head back to New York, her acting ‘career’ in ruins. But then she met George Arliss. And he would change Bette’s life dramatically…
The Last Chance for the Breakout Star
George chose Bette for the lead female role in the Warner Bros. picture, ‘The Man Who Played God’. It was to be Bette’s last chance… and her breakout hit. The Saturday Evening Post wrote of Bette, ‘She is not only beautiful, but she bubbles with charm.’ Following the success of the movie, Warner Bros. signed Bette to a five-year contract. She remained with the studio for the next five years. Sex appeal? Who cares? She could act.
After more than 20 film roles, the role of the vicious Mildred Rogers in ‘Of Human Bondage’ earned Bette her first major critical acclaim. While many other actresses feared playing unlikeable roles, Bette did not shy away from such roles. She viewed it as an opportunity to showcase her range of acting skills. The character, spoilers, dies at the end and it is a brutal death. Consumption, poverty and neglect. Bette described this as ‘not pretty’ and she wanted to show that truthfully.
The film was a huge success. Bette hoped that, following the success, Warner Bros. would cast her in bigger roles, but that did not happen. Bette was also snubbed by the Academy Awards, something that caused great outrage at the time. The uproar led to a change in academy voting procedures the following year. For Bette, it needn’t matter. The film roles, and the critical acclaim, kept coming. E. Arnot Robertson said of Bette:
I think Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. She gives the curious feeling being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet.
At last, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role but she was still angry over being snubbed previously. She called her Academy Award win a ‘consolation prize’. For the rest of her life, Bette claimed that it was her who named the Academy Award the ‘Oscar’, named after her husband whose middle name was ‘Oscar’. She thought the backside of the statue resembled her husband’s backside.
The Academy Award denies this origin story of the word ‘Oscar’, but I like it.
To Bet It All on the Luck of the Gritty Realism of Dark Cinema
Convinced her career was being damaged by a series of average films, Bette accepted an offer in 1936 to appear in two British films. She knew she was in breach of her contract with Warner Bros. but… what the hell, eh? She fled to Canada to avoid legal papers being served to her. The case was finally heard in Britain. The British press turned on her, labelling her ‘ungrateful’ and ‘overpaid’. Poor Bette. She never had much luck.
She lost the case and returned to Hollywood in debt and without income. She was desperate to resume her career. Still, she took on Warner Bros. There were people out there who respected her for that. Similar cases were brought by other actresses at the time and they won. Bette was able to resume her career, playing the gritty roles that made her name.
In 1937, she portrayed a prostitute in a contemporary gangster drama. It was a success, so much that she was considered for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, along with most of Hollywood’s actresses it seems. A radio poll conducted at the time across America named Bette as the favourite. Yet again, Bette faced rejection, much to her dismay. She went on to make ‘Dark Victory’ (1939), winning her another Academy Award nomination. She cited her performance in this movie as her favourite.
Throughout the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Bette starred in hit after hit. By 1940, she was Warner Bros. most profitable star and finally, she landed many of the important female leading roles. In 1941, she became the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but her radical proposals and brash manner rubbed many people up the wrong way, as her manner often did.
However, World War II changed everything for Bette.
The Golden Star of War’s Fickle Nature
Following the attack on Pearl Harbour, Bette spent the early months of 1942 selling war bonds. In just two days, she sold $2 million worth of bonds as well as a photograph of herself for $250,000. She also performed for black regiments as the only white member of an acting troupe formed by Hattie McDaniel. She later transformed an old nightclub into the Hollywood Canteen, along with the likes of Cary Grant. Every night, Hollywood’s biggest stars volunteered to entertain servicemen. In 1944, Bette starred as herself in the film ‘Hollywood Canteen’, which used the canteen as a setting. She later said:
There are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud of. The Hollywood Canteen is one of them.
In 1980, Bette was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, America’s highest civilian award, for the Hollywood Canteen. But Bette was earning a rather different reputation. Her manner had always been forthright and demanding, but throughout her later career, she became increasingly erratic and acted ever more out of character. She became self-centred and toward the end of the 1940s, her film career started to decline. Even then, she continued to be nominated for Academy Awards.
‘The Story of Divorce’ (1951) won Bette critical acclaim and another Academy Award nomination. Some labelled her performance ‘her best yet’. She had the power to make any role come to life. The San Francisco Film Critics Circle gave Bette the award for Best Actress, just one year after they gave her the award for Worst Actress.
They say Hollywood is a cruel and fickle master and they may be right.
The Miracle of Life the Hard Way
Bette ended her 18-year relationship with Warner Bros. in 1949 and staged the first of several outstanding comebacks, many of which led to more Academy Award nominations. Time and time again, she was written off as ‘washed up’ but she kept reviving her career. In the early 1960s, Bette suffered a string of failures and her health started to decline. Even then, you couldn’t write Bette off. Her 1962 movie, ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ was one of the year’s biggest hits.
In the 1960s, Bette moved into television and continued her stage work into the 1970s. In 1977, she became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Following this, Bette found herself in demand once more. She accepted television roles and movie roles, including, ‘Death on the Nile’ (1978). The bulk of her work, however, was television. But in 1983, after filming the pilot episode of the series ‘Hotel’, Bette was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy.
In the two weeks following her surgery, she suffered four strokes, causing paralysis on the left side of her face and in her left arm. It also left her with slurred speech. She began a lengthy process of physical therapy but she continued to smoke 100 cigarettes a day like she had done since she was a teenager…
Miraculously, Bette returned to acting in the late 1980s. Though in poor health, Bette’s performances earned rave 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.’ She became an honouree of the Kennedy Centre Honours in 1987.
Bette’s final performance was the title role in ‘Wicked Stepmother’ (1989). Sadly, during the American Cinema Awards in 1989, Bette collapsed. She later discovered that her cancer had returned. She recovered enough to travel to Spain for a film festival but during her visit, her health deteriorated rapidly. She became incredibly weak. She travelled to France where, on October 6th, 1989, Bette Davis died at the age of 81. Cancer had taken her. The shock felt was so profound that many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.
She was entombed in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in LA. On her tombstone is written:
‘She did it the hard way.’
The Untypical Thespian Transcending Cinema’s Early Boundaries
Bette was one of the most special and brilliant actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She could transform any role into something striking. She was lauded for all her achievements, her roles were often unconventional. She sought roles as manipulators and killers in an era when actresses often preferred to play likeable characters. Bette excelled in the opposite: in playing the characters who were as tough as she was.
Today, many of her movies and her characters are regarded as some of the finest in cinematic history. She remains inspirational to so many actors alive today. Many people believe only Katharine Hepburn was a better actress. That said, Bette was the first person to earn five consecutive Academy Award nominations for acting, only since matched by Greer Garson. Bette also became the first person to receive 10 Academy Award nominations for acting. Only Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn and Jack Nicholson have surpassed Bette.
Bette was not your typical female starlet. She was a chain-smoking, dynamic trailblazer, transcending the boundaries of classic celebrity beauty to play the role of an independent and courageous modern woman. She was distinctive because she was inspirational, inspirational because she was something new. Something different.
Graham Greene summarised Bette Davis:
Even the most inconsiderable film… seemed temporarily better than they were because of that precise, nervy voice, the pale ash-blond hair, the popping, neurotic eyes, a kind of corrupt and phosphorescent prettiness … I would rather watch Miss Davis than any number of competent pictures.
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Post Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bette_Davis, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bette-Davis, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000012/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm, https://www.biography.com/actor/bette-davis, https://stacker.com/stories/13158/bette-davis-life-story-you-may-not-know
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