Though she was not a great beauty, Bette Davis reigned as Hollywood's most enduring female star because she was more interested in acting than in celebrity status. With her magnificent eyes and intense style, Bette Davis captivated critics, won a devoted fan following, and used all of the above to fight her employers in the most important actor/studio battles of the 1930s. Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis, Bette always wanted to be an actress, and like the dedicated performer she would always be, Davis worked at her craft in small theater companies in New England until she made it to Broadway in a hit play, Broken Dishes, in the late 1920s.
With talkies all the rage, Hollywood was raiding Broadway for actors with good speaking voices. Bette Davis's screen test with Samuel Goldwyn's company went nowhere, but Universal gave the actress a second chance and offered her a contract. She wasn't welcomed with raves, however. Carl Laemmle, who ran Universal, is said to have dryly commented that Bette Davis had "as much sex-appeal as Slim Summerville." Bette Davis was, nonetheless, under contract. Laemmle eventually used her as the good sister in Bad Sister (1931), and she played a series of minor parts in a string of forgettable movies. When Universal dumped her, Warners was waiting in the wings. GEORGE ARLISS, their early sound star, wanted her to act opposite him in The Man Who Played God (1932).
Her long association with WARNER BROS. had begun, and it would be a tempestuous relationship marked by suspensions, court battles, and some of the best-made movies of the late 1930s and 1940s. After several minor films, she sunk her teeth into the part of the young tramp in The Cabin in the Cotton (1932), riveting the attention of moviegoers everywhere. Her "Bette Davis eyes" were never more in evidence than in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1933), in which she was radiant, costarring with SPENCER TRACY. It looked like her career was about to take off, but a series of poor films stalled her rise to stardom. Then came the first battle with Jack Warner.
RKO wanted her for Of Human Bondage (1934), but Warner refused to loan her to the rival studio. Bette Davis knew it was a fabulous part, and she fought for the right to play it, eventually having her way. In the end, Warners benefited handsomely. Besides the considerable fee they were paid for Bette Davis's services at RKO, the movie was a hit, catapulting the actress to stardom. The only surprise was that she wasn't nominated for an Oscar. In 1935, Bette Davis starred in Dangerous and won her first Oscar as Best Actress, but in typical Bette Davis style, she bluntly said that she thought KATHARINE HEPBURN should have won instead for Alice Adams.
Warner took advantage of her stardom to rush her into several mediocre films, the exception being The Petrified Forest (1936). She knuckled under and made the movies, until she was cast in a particularly dreadful film called God's Country and the Woman. Bette Davis refused to appear in the movie and was suspended and fined $5,000 per week, but she would not budge. Instead, she decided to make a movie in England. Warners claimed she was in violation of her contract and the two slugged it out in court, with Warners the victor. In the end, though, Bette Davis was the real winner. Warner Bros. received terrible press and to smooth relations with the public actually gave Bette Davis the money to pay the court damages. The studio also made an effort to give her better scripts. Perhaps most importantly, Bette Davis had established the precedent for actors fighting studios for better scripts and winning.
After her court battle, the actress made (among others) Marked Woman (1937), an early feminist film that costarred HUMPHREY BOGART. But the role Bette Davis really wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in GONE WITH THE WIND (1939). Warners didn't have the rights to the book, but DAVID O. SELZNICK, who did, was initially open to the idea of having Bette Davis play the female lead. Jack Warner offered Bette Davis on the condition that Selznick would also use ERROL FLYNN as Rhett Butler, and Selznick refused. As a consolation, Warner gave Bette Davis her own version of Gone With the Wind, Jezebel (1938), beating Selznick's film to the theaters and winning Bette Davis her second Oscar.
In 1939, Bette Davis scored again with Dark Victory, a movie in which her character dies bravely. The film was so popular that it started a trend for movies with unhappy endings. Her success in the following years was so ironclad that she was constantly among the top 10 stars in audience polls; in 1940, she was number one, knocking SHIRLEY TEMPLE out of the top spot. With highly regarded hit films such as All This and Heaven Too (1940), The Letter (1940), and The Great Lie (1941), Bette Davis was at the top of her career. She stayed there with The Little Foxes (1941), Now Voyager (1942), Watch on the Rhine (1943), and Mr. Skeffington (1944).
But then Bette Davis faltered, making fewer quality movies in the later 1940s. It appeared as if her career was irrevocably, if quietly on the skids, until she made what many consider to be her best film, JOSEPH L. MANKIEWICZ's All About Eve (1950). This wisecracking, witty film about show business reestablished Bette Davis as Hollywood's preeminent female star, and despite poor film projects throughout the rest of the 1950s, the stature of her performance in that film kept her career alive until 1961, when the offers finally stopped coming her way.
In an unprecedented move, Bette Davis took out full-page advertisements in the trade papers stating that she was available for work. The resulting publicity was a tonic, but more importantly, she was offered the lead role together with JOAN CRAWFORD in ROBERT ALDRICH's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). The two grand dames of Hollywood chewed up the scenery in this psychological suspense thriller, and audiences loved it. The film resurrected Bette Davis's career and led to yet another Academy Award nomination, but according to Bette Davis, Joan Crawford actively campaigned against her, causing her to lose the Oscar.
The mid-1960s saw Bette Davis continue in horror films that were similar to Baby Jane, such as The Nanny (1965) and Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Even when such films ran their course, Bette Davis continued to find work, principally in TV movies. Though she didn't have a film vehicle to match her talents from the mid-1960s on, Bette Davis had a nice turn or two in movies such as Burnt Offerings (1976) and Death on the Nile (1978). In 1977, Bette Davis was the first woman to be given the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. Yet at age 76, she wasn't finished achieving. Despite a stroke, she gallantly fought back to continue her acting career, appearing in a starring role with LILLIAN GISH in the critically acclaimed The Whales of August (1987). She died of cancer in 1989.
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