Oscar Profile #58: Bette Davis

Born April 5, 1908, Ruth Elizabeth “Betty” Davis changed the spelling of her nickname to “Bette” after taking a liking to the title character in Balzac’s Cousin Bette.

The aspiring actress was turned down by Eva Le Gallienne’s acting school because she was deemed to have been too frivolous, but she was accepted by John Murray Anderson’s school and made her Broadway debut in 1929. The following year she traveled to Los Angeles with her mother and given a contract at Universal where she was given minor parts in such films as 1931’s Waterloo Bridge. Dropped by Universal, she was selected by George Arliss to play the female lead in The Man Who Played God which led to a contract with Warner Bros.

Although memorable in several Warner Bros. films including So Big! and Three on a Match, she was still not happy with the roles given her. On loan to RKO for Of Human Bondage, she received rave notices leading into a number of write-in votes for 1934’s Best Actress Oscar. Back at Warner Bros., she was nominated and won for the inferior Dangerous the following year. Still not happy with the roles she was being offered, Davis sued to get out of her contract with Warners but lost. Nevertheless, Jack Warner heard her and for the next ten years gave her the pick of roles at the studio.

Married to musician Harmon Nelson in 1931, they divorced in 1938, the year of Jezebel, the film for which she received her second official Oscar nomination and her second win. Now entering her most prolific period, she would be nominated another five times in the next six years.

In four major box office hits in 1939, she was Oscar nominated for the first of them, Dark Victory in which she played a socialite dying of a brain tumor. She was also memorable as Empress Carlotta in Juarez, as an unwed mother whose daughter is raised by her rival cousin in The Old Maid and as the Virgin Queen in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.

Married to non-professional Arthur Farnsworth in 1940, he died suddenly in 1943. In the meantime she gave more terrific performances in such films as All This, and Heaven Too; The Letter (securing another Oscar nomination); The Little Foxes (yet another Oscar nod); Now, Voyager (still another) and Watch on the Rhine. She received mostly scathing notices for 1944’s Mr. Skeffington, but managed to pull off a seventh official Oscar nomination for the film anyway.

The first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1941, she sparred with the Board of Governors over changes she wanted to implement and resigned in frustration. Jean Hersholt, who replaced her, promptly put her recommendations into effect.

In 1942 she and John Garfield started the Hollywood Canteen, a popular watering hole for servicemen on leave.

Married to another non-professional, William Sherry in 1945, the couple had one child and divorced in 1950. During this period her career began to unravel. Although praised for her performances in 1945’s The Corn Is Green and 1946’s A Stolen Life, her subsequent films were so bad that her career appeared to be over.

Released form her Warner Bros. contract, Joseph L. Mankiewicz resurrected her career when he gave her the role of her life as the Broadway diva the 1950 Fox film, All About Eve when original star Claudette Colbert had to pull out because of back problems. She won numerous awards for the performance and received her eighth Oscar nomination as well. She received a ninth for the tearjerker The Star two years later.

Married to All About Eve co-star from 1950 to 1960, the couple had two children. Her roles during this period were mostly forgettable. In 1961 she had a major role as Apple Annie in Frank Capra’s last film, Pocketful of Miracles, but startled the industry by publishing a “job wanted” ad in the industry bible, Variety. The result was a major comeback in the camp horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? opposite Warner Bros. rival Joan Crawford, for which she became the first performer ever to be nominated for ten Academy Awards.

Now more popular than ever, she starred in several more films and played a wealth of memorable roles in TV movies before suffering a debilitating stroke in the early 1980s. Recovering from that, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. In Spain to accept a career achievement award from the San Sebastian Film Festival at the end of the decade, she was too weak to return home and died in France on October 6, 1989 at 81.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934), directed by John Cromwell

Bette Davis’ no-holds barred portrayal of the sluttish waitress who makes life miserable for crippled star Leslie Howard was like nothing the world had seen before. Here was a pretty, Hollywood starlet deglamorizing herself to uncompromisingly play a pathetic lowlife audiences loved to hate. It propelled her to superstardom and set the bar for future film actresses through the decades. The failure of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to nominate her for an Oscar that year caused such a furor that the Academy allowed write-in votes. Assuming Davis would win, actual winner Claudette Colbert was boarding a train for New York when she was escorted back to Hollywood to accept her Oscar for It Happened One Night.

JEZEBEL (1938), directed by William Wyler

Playing a willful Southern belle who men fight duels over in Antebellum Louisiana, Davis continued her penchant for playing unlikeable characters, albeit one, in this case anyway, who redeems herself in the end. Having won an Oscar for 1935’s Dangerous, generally regarded as having been given in compensation for not winning for the previous year’s Of Human Bondage, her second win in four years for this film was considered well-earned. It is not true, however, that Warner Bros. gave her the role in compensation for her not being given the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. This film was in production long before the casting decision had been made on Scarlett.

NOW, VOYAGER (1942), directed by Irving Rapper

Irene Dunne had been the original choice to play the fat, timid, homely old maid who blossoms into a marvel of sophistication after her recovery from a nervous breakdown. Davis reluctantly took the part when Dunne turned it down, but it proved to be tailor-made for her talents, so much so that it is now impossible to imagine Dunne or anyone else playing the role. Her scenes opposite Gladys Cooper as Davis’ bitchy, manipulative mother, represents some of the best acting either actress has ever put on the screen. Her smoldering romantic scenes opposite Paul Henried are pretty good, too.

THE CORN IS GREEN (1945) , directed by Irving Rapper

Never one to take the glamour route when the script called for something else, David insisted on playing the part of the forthright elderly schoolteacher originated on stage by Ethel Barrymore as just that, a forthright elderly woman, and not a woman closer to her own real age of 37 so that there would be no misinterpretation of her character’s wanting to impart knowledge on young John Dall and not have an affair with him as might have the case if she had played the part decked out as a glamorous movie star as the studio had wanted. The result was her last great performance at Warner Bros.

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) , directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Her career all but over, Davis was asked by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz to play the part of Broadway diva Margo Channing when original star Claudette Colbert had to bow out due to back problems. The result was one of the most popular films of all time, earning a then record fourteen Oscar nominations including one for Davis, her eighth, for what is easily the pinnacle of her career. The film has many unforgettable lines, not the least of which is Davis’ “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Had she never made another film, before or since, Davis would still be enshrined one of the screen’s immortals based on that performance alone. Fortunately for us, there is more, much more.