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Bette Davis
1908–1989 · 81 years Tier II
She lost the lawsuit, and it made the rest of her career
Her parents separated when she was seven, and her mother Ruthie put both girls in a spartan boarding school at Lanesborough, in the Berkshires, then went to New York and worked as a governess to pay for it. To earn more, Ruthie trained at a photography school and set up as a portrait photographer. In 1921 she moved the children to an apartment on 144th Street. Ruth Elizabeth Davis had been Betty since infancy, and took the spelling Bette from a Balzac character. At 18 she watched Peg Entwistle play Hedwig in The Wild Duck and settled on the theater. Eva Le Gallienne interviewed her for a place in her school and turned her down as frivolous. Three years later Davis was playing Hedwig herself.
Universal did nothing with her. Warner Bros. signed her in 1932, and Of Human Bondage in 1934 made the case: she was left off the ballot and voters wrote her in anyway, finishing third. She won Best Actress for Dangerous in 1935 and for Jezebel in 1938, then took five consecutive nominations from 1938 to 1942, a run only Greer Garson has matched. She played the adulterous killer in The Letter, the dying heiress in Dark Victory, Elizabeth I at 30 with her hairline and eyebrows shaved off, Regina Giddens, Margo Channing, and finally Baby Jane Hudson. She was the first performer to reach 10 acting nominations. With John Garfield she founded the Hollywood Canteen in 1942 and served as its president until the war ended.
In 1936 she was earning 1,250 dollars a week and wanted 3,500 plus the right to make outside pictures. Warner offered 2,250. She refused two assigned films, was suspended, sailed for England and signed with a British producer instead. Warner obtained an injunction. On October 19, 1936, Mr Justice Branson dismissed the argument that she was an underpaid slave serving a life sentence and found that she had broken her contract for no discoverable reason except that she wanted more money. She paid 80,000 dollars in restitution and the studio's costs, and the British press called her overpaid and ungrateful. She went back to Burbank and made Jezebel. The defeat bought her the scripts, and by 1949 she was the highest-paid woman in the country at 10,285 dollars a week.
She had a mastectomy in 1983 and four strokes within a fortnight, and went back to work with half her face paralyzed. In 1985 her daughter B. D. Hyman published My Mother's Keeper, describing her as drunk and overbearing. Davis wrote that she would never recover from the book as completely as she had from the stroke, and cut Hyman out of the will. She died of metastasized breast cancer outside Paris on October 6, 1989, at 81. She lies at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills under an epitaph Joseph Mankiewicz had suggested to her: she did it the hard way. Steven Spielberg later bought her two Oscars at auction and handed them back to the Academy.
Lifespan
Bette Davis's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
Of Human Bondage
film
The vulgar waitress that broke her out, and the write-in campaign that followed 1934 -
Jezebel
film
Her second Academy Award, and the start of her best decade 1938 -
The Letter
film
An adulterous killer, in a role Katharine Cornell had originated onstage 1940 -
Now, Voyager
film
Her seventh Oscar nomination, and the two-cigarette scene 1942 -
All About Eve
film
Margo Channing. Best Actress at Cannes and from the New York critics. 1950 -
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
film
Her last Academy Award nomination, at 54 1962
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1915 aged ~7 Her parents separate and she is sent to boarding school Her mother moved to New York and worked as a governess to pay the fees.
- 1929 aged ~21 Makes her Broadway debut in Broken Dishes Eva Le Gallienne had refused her a place three years earlier as insincere and frivolous.
- 1934 aged ~26 Of Human Bondage draws a write-in campaign for Best Actress She finished third, ahead of an official nominee.
- October 19, 1936 aged 28 A London court rules for Warner Bros. against her She owed 80,000 dollars in restitution plus the studio's legal costs.
- January 1941 aged 32 Becomes the first woman president of the Academy, and resigns The committee balked at her proposals and she refused to be a figurehead.
- 1942 aged ~34 Founds the Hollywood Canteen with John Garfield Forty-two industry unions and guilds backed it. She was president through the war.
- August 1943 aged 35 Her husband Arthur Farnsworth collapses on a Hollywood street and dies An autopsy traced it to a skull fracture from a fall two weeks earlier. The finding was accidental death.
- 1983 aged ~75 A mastectomy, then four strokes within two weeks The left side of her face and her left arm were paralyzed. She worked again anyway.
- October 6, 1989 aged 81 Dies of breast cancer outside Paris at 81
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