Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (; April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television, and theater. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters and was known for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue ten Academy Award nominations (and one write-in) for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and had her critical breakthrough playing a vulgar waitress in Of Human Bondage (1934). Contentiously, she was not among the three nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actress that year, and she won it the following year for her performance in Dangerous (1935). In 1936, due to poor film offers, she attempted to free herself from her contract, and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies. She was praised for her role in Marked Woman (1937) and won a second Academy Award for her portrayal of a strong-willed 1850s Southern belle in Jezebel (1938), the first of five consecutive years in which she received a Best Actress nomination; the others for Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942).
A period of decline in the late 1940s was redeemed with her role as a fading Broadway star in All About Eve (1950), which has often been cited as her best performance. She received Best Actress nominations for this film and for The Star (1952), but her career struggled over the rest of the decade. Her last nomination came for her role as the psychotic former child star Jane Hudson in the psychological horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). In the latter stage of her career, Davis played character parts in films like Death on the Nile (1978) and shifted her focus to roles in television. She led the miniseries The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978), won an Emmy Award for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979), and was nominated for her performances in White Mama (1980) and Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982). Her last complete cinematic part was in the drama The Whales of August (1987).
Davis was known for her forceful and intense style of acting and her physical transformations. She gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors, and co-stars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style, and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated. Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and three times divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 film, television, and theater roles to her credit. In 1999, Davis was placed second on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema, behind Katharine Hepburn.
Life and career
1908–1929: Childhood and early acting career
Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as "Betty", was born on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Harlow Morrell Davis (1885–1938), a law student from Augusta, Maine, and subsequently a patent attorney, and Ruth Augusta (née Favór; 1885–1961), from Tyngsborough, Massachusetts. Davis's younger sister was Barbara Harriet (1909–1979).
In 1915, after Davis's parents separated, Davis and her sister Barbara attended a spartan boarding school named Crestalban in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, for three years. To fund this her mother moved to New York City and found a job as a governess.
In the fall of 1921, Davis' mother rented an apartment on 144th Street and Broadway and moved the children to New York City. Her patrol won a competitive dress parade for Lou Hoover at Madison Square Garden. The young Betty later changed the spelling of her first name to Bette after Bette Fischer, a character in Honoré de Balzac's La Cousine Bette.
thumb|left|Bette Davis and [[Donald Meek in Broken Dishes (1929). "I was now a bona fide Broadway actress—in a hit," Davis wrote.]]
Davis attended Cushing Academy, a boarding school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, where she met her future first husband, Harmon O. Nelson, known as Ham. Bette Davis interviewed with Eva Le Gallienne to be a student at her 14th Street theater. However, Le Gallienne felt Davis was not serious enough to attend her school, and described her attitude as "insincere" and "frivolous".
Davis auditioned for George Cukor's stock theater company in Rochester, New York. Though he was not very impressed, he gave Davis her first paid acting assignment – a one-week stint playing the part of a chorus girl in the play Broadway. Ed Sikov sources Davis's first professional role to a 1929 production by the Provincetown Players of Virgil Geddes' play The Earth Between; however, the production was postponed by a year. In 1929, Davis was chosen by Blanche Yurka to play Hedwig, the character she had seen Entwistle play in The Wild Duck. After performing in Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, she made her Broadway debut in 1929 in Broken Dishes and followed it with Solid South.
1930–1936: Early years in Hollywood
After appearing on Broadway in New York, the 22-year-old Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930 to screen test for Universal Studios. She was inspired to pursue a career as a film actress after seeing Mary Pickford in Little Lord Fauntleroy. Davis and her mother traveled by train to Hollywood. She later recounted her surprise that no-one from the studio was there to meet her. In fact, a studio employee had waited for her, but left because he saw no-one who "looked like an actress". Davis failed her first screen test, but was used in several screen tests for other actors.
In a 1971 interview with television talk show host Dick Cavett, she related the experience with the observation, "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 Davis, for the 1931 film A House Divided. Hastily dressed in an ill-fitting costume with a low neckline, she was rebuffed by the film director William Wyler, who loudly commented to the assembled crew, "What do you think of these dames who show their chests and think they can get jobs?".
thumb|upright|Bette Davis in [[Bureau of Missing Persons (1933)]]
Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, considered terminating Davis's employment, but cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for Bad Sister (1931), in which she subsequently made her film debut. Her nervousness was compounded when she overheard the chief of production, Carl Laemmle, Jr., comment to another executive that she had "about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville", one of the film's male co-stars. The film was not a success, and her next role in Seed (1931) was too brief to attract attention.
Universal Studios renewed her contract for three months, and she appeared in a small role in Waterloo Bridge (1931), before being lent to Columbia Pictures for The Menace, and to Capital Films for Hell's House (all 1932). After one year, and six unsuccessful films, Laemmle elected not to renew her contract.
Davis was preparing to return to New York when actor George Arliss chose Davis for the lead female role in the Warner Bros. picture The Man Who Played God (1932). For the rest of her life, Davis credited him with helping her achieve her "break" in Hollywood. The Saturday Evening Post wrote, "She is not only beautiful, but she bubbles with charm", and compared her to Constance Bennett and Olive Borden. Warner Bros. signed her to a seven-year contract, yet she remained with the studio for the next 18 years.
Davis's first marriage was to Harmon Oscar Nelson on August 18, 1932, in Yuma, Arizona. Their marriage was scrutinized by the press; his $100 a week earnings ($ per week in dollars) compared unfavorably with Davis's reported $1,000 a week income ($ per week in dollars). Davis addressed the issue in an interview, pointing out that many Hollywood wives earned more than their husbands, but the situation proved difficult for Nelson, who refused to allow Davis to purchase a house until he could afford to pay for it himself. Nelson was able to enforce his wishes because, at the time, the husband had the management and control of the community property, which included the wife's earnings, and the wife could not obtain credit without her husband's consent. Davis had two abortions during the marriage, each at Nelson's insistence.
Davis played Helen Bauer in the 1933 pre-Code drama Ex-Lady alongside Gene Raymond. However, the film was overshadowed by fellow actress Joan Crawford's divorce from her first husband, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., leading to its failure at the box office. Though Crawford had no malicious intent toward Davis, Davis was nonetheless angered by this turn of events, which led her to resent Crawford and began a lifelong feud between the two actresses.
The film was a success, and Davis's characterization earned praise from critics, with Life writing that she gave "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress". Davis anticipated that her reception would encourage Warner Bros. to cast her in more important roles, and was disappointed when Jack L. Warner refused to lend her to Columbia Studios to appear in It Happened One Night, and instead cast her in the melodrama Housewife. When Davis was not nominated for an Academy Award for Of Human Bondage, The Hollywood Citizen News questioned the omission, and Norma Shearer, herself a nominee, joined a campaign to have Davis nominated. This prompted an announcement from the Academy president, Howard Estabrook, who said that under the circumstances, "any voter...may write on the ballot his or her personal choice for the winners", thus allowing, for the only time in the Academy's history, the consideration of a candidate not officially nominated for an award. The uproar led, however, to a change in academy voting procedures the following year, wherein nominations were determined by votes from all eligible members of a particular branch, rather than by a smaller committee, with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse. The next year, A Midsummer Night's Dream became the only film to win a write-in Oscar, for Best Cinematography.
The next year, her performance as a down-and-out troubled actress in Dangerous (1935) received very good reviews and landed Davis her first Best Actress nomination and win. E. Arnot Robertson wrote in Picture Post that, "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 of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet". The New York Times hailed her as "becoming one of the most interesting of our screen actresses". She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, but commented that it was belated recognition for Of Human Bondage, calling the award a "consolation prize". For the rest of her life, Davis maintained that she gave the statue its familiar name of "Oscar" because its posterior resembled that of her husband, whose middle name was Oscar, although, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially makes reference to another story.
Davis had not expected to win the award, so she had worn only a plain dress. At the 8th Academy Awards, where she received the award, fellow attendee Joan Crawford said to her, "Dear Bette! What a lovely frock." She had attended with her second husband, Franchot Tone, with whom Davis had been in love, but Crawford had married in 1935. Both of these events led to more contention between the two actresses, who had already clashed in 1933. Later on, when they shared dressing rooms near to each other, Crawford tried to make a truce with Davis by sending her gifts, all of which Davis returned.
Warner Bros vs. Bette Davis
In the spring of 1936, Davis asked Warner Bros. to loan her out to RKO to make Mary of Scotland. Warner Bros. refused and assigned Davis two films that were written specifically for her: God's Country and the Woman, and Mountain Justice. However, as God's Country and the Woman was going into production, Davis refused to work, and demanded a salary increase on her contract with Warner Bros. At the time, Davis was earning $1,250 per week. Jack Warner offered Davis an increased salary of $2,250 per week, which Davis refused. Davis's agent, Mike Levee, said: "She's a very stubborn young lady. I asked her how much she wanted, and she said $3,500 a week, plus all radio rights and permission to make outside pictures. I told her, 'Whoa, that's too much!'"
Meanwhile, due to Davis's refusal to continue with God's Country and the Woman, Warner Bros. was incurring excessive production costs because the film was being made in Technicolor, and the Technicolor cameras were rented. In late June, the studio put Davis on suspension for refusal to work, and replaced her in the film with Beverly Roberts.
During negotiations with Warner Bros. regarding her salary and signing Davis for the female lead in Danton, Davis abruptly traveled to England with her husband, Harmon Nelson, on a "vacation". However, in England, Davis signed a contract with British film production company Toplitz, to make the film I'll Take the Low Road in England with Maurice Chevalier for a $50,000 salary.
On September 9, 1936, Warner Brothers filed a legal injunction against Davis in England which forbade her from appearing in film productions without their consent. While on a shopping spree in Paris, Davis publicly declared to the press that she intended to defy Warner Bros' legal injunction and make the film in England.
On October 14, 1936, the British court held a hearing regarding the studio's injunction against Davis. Mr Justice Branson issued his decision on October 19, ruling in favor of Warner Bros. Justice Branson dismissed Davis's representative's claims that she was an "underpaid slave" held under a "life sentence", and ruled that Davis was in breach of her contract to Warner "for no discoverable reason except that she wanted more money".
Davis was ordered to pay Warner Bros. $80,000 in restitution,
1937–1941: Success with Warner Bros.
thumb|upright|left|Davis in [[Jezebel (1938 film)|Jezebel (1938)]]
In 1937, Davis starred with Humphrey Bogart in Marked Woman, a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano, and a film regarded as one of the most important in her early career. She was awarded the Volpi Cup at the 1937 Venice Film Festival for her performance.
Davis's portrayal of a strong-willed 1850s Southern belle in Jezebel (1938) won her a second Academy Award for Best Actress. This was the first of five consecutive years in which she received the Best Actress nomination. During production, Davis entered a relationship with director William Wyler. She later described him as the "love of my life", and said that making the film with him was "the time in my life of my most perfect happiness". The film was a success.
This led to speculation in the press that she would be chosen to play Scarlett O'Hara, a similar character, in Gone with the Wind. Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O. Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite. Warner offered her services to Selznick as part of a deal that also included Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but Selznick did not consider Davis as suitable, and rejected the offer. Davis, on the other hand, did not want Flynn cast as Rhett Butler. Newcomer Vivien Leigh was cast as Scarlett O'Hara, de Havilland landed a role as Melanie, and both of them were nominated for the Oscars, with Leigh winning.
Jezebel marked the beginning of the most successful phase of Davis's career, and over the next few years, she was listed in the annual Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money-Making Stars, which was compiled from the votes of movie exhibitors throughout the U.S. for the stars who had generated the most revenue in their theaters over the previous year.
thumb|Davis with [[Errol Flynn in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). At the time she played 60-year-old Elizabeth I, she was only 30 years old.|261x261px]]
In contrast to Davis's success, her husband Ham Nelson had failed to establish a career for himself, and their relationship faltered. In 1938, Nelson obtained evidence that Davis was engaged in a sexual relationship with Howard Hughes, and subsequently filed for divorce, citing Davis's "cruel and inhuman manner". He also claimed she read books and her film manuscripts too often. "I was married to Ham only in name...When we were together, there was nothing left between us," biographer David Thomson quoted her saying. "Any happy days we had had were in our memories almost entirely before we married. The terrible distance when we were together was harder to bear than when we were apart. We no longer communicated with each other at all. And our sex life had disappeared, a woman who's been with just one man for a long time is practically a virgin again." She was emotional during the making of her next film, Dark Victory (1939), and considered abandoning it until the producer Hal B. Wallis convinced her to channel her despair into her acting. The film was among the high-grossing films of the year, and the role of Judith Traherne, a spirited heiress suffering from a malignant brain tumor, brought her an Academy Award nomination. In later years, Davis cited this performance as her personal favorite. Dark Victory paired her with frequent future leading man George Brent, and featured Ronald Reagan and Humphrey Bogart in supporting roles.
Davis appeared in three other box-office hits in 1939: The Old Maid with Miriam Hopkins, Juarez with Paul Muni, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Errol Flynn. The last was her first color film, and her only color film made during the height of her career. To play the elderly Elizabeth I of England, Davis shaved her hairline and eyebrows. During filming, Davis was visited on the set by the actor Charles Laughton. She commented that she had a "nerve" playing a woman in her 60s, to which Laughton replied: "Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut." Recalling the episode many years later, Davis remarked that Laughton's advice had influenced her throughout her career.
thumb|upright|Davis with [[Spencer Tracy at the 1939 Academy Awards|left]]
By this time, Davis was Warner Bros.' most profitable star, and she was given the most important of their female leading roles. Her image was considered with more care; although she continued to play character roles, she was often filmed in close-ups that emphasized her distinctive eyes. All This, and Heaven Too (1940) was the most financially successful film of Davis's career to that point.
The Letter (1940) was considered "one of the best pictures of the year" by The Hollywood Reporter, and Davis won admiration for her portrayal of an adulterous killer, a role originated onstage by Katharine Cornell. During this time, she was in a relationship with her former co-star George Brent, who proposed marriage. Davis refused, as she had met Arthur Farnsworth, a New England innkeeper, and Vermont dentist's son. Davis and Farnsworth were married at Home Ranch, in Rimrock, Arizona, in December 1940, her second marriage.
In January 1941, Davis became the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but antagonized the committee members with her brash manner and radical proposals. Davis rejected the idea of her being just "a figurehead only". Faced with the disapproval and resistance of the committee, Davis resigned and was succeeded by her predecessor Walter Wanger.
Davis starred in three movies in 1941, the first being The Great Lie, with George Brent. It was a refreshingly different role for Davis as she played a kind, sympathetic character. William Wyler also directed Davis for the third time in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1941), but they clashed over the character of Regina Giddens, a role originally played on Broadway by Tallulah Bankhead (Davis had portrayed in film a role initiated by Bankhead on the stage once beforein Dark Victory). Wyler encouraged Davis to emulate Bankhead's interpretation of the role, but Davis wanted to make the role her own. She received another Academy Award nomination for her performance, and never worked with Wyler again.
thumb|upright|Davis often played unlikable characters such as Regina Giddens in [[The Little Foxes (film)|The Little Foxes (1941).]]
1942–1944: War years
In 1943, Davis told an interviewer that she had molded her film career on her motto, "I love tragedy," and ironically, until Pearl Harbor, she had been recognized as the American favorite of Japanese moviegoers—because to them, she "represented the admirable principle of sad self-sacrifice."
In 1942, numerous Hollywood entertainment industry members joined forces to form the Hollywood Canteen. Davis and John Garfield were the driving force who were credited with founding the canteen, along with the aid of 42 unions and guilds in the industry, plus thousands of celebrity volunteers from the Hollywood Victory Committee and beyond. The Canteen offered food, dancing and entertainment for servicemen and was staffed by members of the entertainment industry. Davis served as Canteen president through the end of the war.
In 1983, Davis received the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal from the Department of Defense for her work with the Hollywood Canteen.
She appeared as herself in the film Hollywood Canteen (1944), which used the canteen as the setting for a fictional story. Warner Bros. donated 40% of proceeds from the film to both the Hollywood Canteen and the Stage Door Canteen in Manhattan.
Davis showed little interest for the role of repressed spinster Charlotte Vale in the drama film Now, Voyager (1942), until Hal Wallis advised her that female audiences needed romantic dramas to distract them from the reality of their lives. It became one of the better known of her "women's pictures". In one of the film's most imitated scenes, Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes as he stares into Davis's eyes, and passes one to her. Film reviewers complimented Davis on her performance, the National Board of Review commenting that she gave the film "a dignity not fully warranted by the script". She received her seventh Oscar nomination for Now, Voyager. That same year, she was also cast against type opposite Monty Woolley in the hit comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942).
thumb|left|upright|Davis in [[Now, Voyager (1942), one of her most iconic roles]]
During the early 1940s, several of Davis's film choices were influenced by the war, such as Watch on the Rhine (1943), by Lillian Hellman, and Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), a lighthearted all-star musical cavalcade. Davis performed a novelty song, "They're Either Too Young or Too Old." Old Acquaintance (1943) reunited her with Miriam Hopkins in a story of two old friends who deal with the tensions created when one of them becomes a successful novelist. Davis felt that Hopkins tried to upstage her throughout the film. Director Vincent Sherman recalled the intense competition and animosity between the two actresses, and Davis often joked that she held back nothing in a scene in which she was required to shake Hopkins in a fit of anger.
In August 1943, Davis' husband, Arthur Farnsworth, collapsed while walking along a Hollywood street and died two days later. An autopsy revealed that his fall had been caused by a skull fracture he had suffered two weeks earlier having accidentally fallen down a flight of stairs. A finding of accidental death was reached. Highly distraught, Davis attempted to withdraw from her next film Mr. Skeffington (1944), but Jack Warner, who had halted production following Farnsworth's death, persuaded her to continue. Although she had gained a reputation for being forthright and demanding, her behavior during filming of Mr. Skeffington was said to be erratic and out of character. She alienated Vincent Sherman by refusing to film certain scenes and insisting that some sets be rebuilt. She improvised dialogue, which made the writer Julius Epstein rewrite scenes at her whim. Davis later explained her actions with the observation "When I was most unhappy, I lashed out rather than whined." Some reviewers criticized Davis for the excess of her performance; James Agee wrote that she "demonstrates the horrors of egocentricity on a marathonic scale". Despite these reviews, Mr. Skeffington was another box-office hit and earned Davis another Academy Award nomination.
1945–1949: Career setbacks
thumb|upright|In [[The Corn Is Green (1945 film)|The Corn Is Green (1945)]]
In 1945, Davis married artist William Grant Sherry, her third husband, who also worked as a masseur. She had been drawn to him because he claimed he had never heard of her and so was not intimidated by her.
The same year, Davis made The Corn Is Green (1945), based on the play by Emlyn Williams. Davis played Miss Moffat, an English teacher who saves a young Welsh miner (John Dall) from a life in the coal pits by offering him education. The part had been played in the theater by Ethel Barrymore (who was 61 at the play's premiere), but Warner Bros. felt that the film version should depict the character as a younger woman. Davis disagreed, and insisted on playing the part as written, and wore a gray wig and padding under her clothes, to create a dowdy appearance. The critic E. Arnot Robertson observed: