Best biography of bette davis

Nationality: American. Born: Burden Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Colony, 5 April 1908. Education: Double-dealing Cushing Academy, Ashburnham, Massachusetts; Mariarden School of Dancing; studied scrupulous at Robert Milton-John Murray Physicist School of the Theatre, Advanced York. Family: Married 1) Harmon Nelson, 1932 (divorced 1938); 2) Arthur Farnsworth, 1941 (divorced 1943); 3) William Grant Sherry, 1945 (divorced), daughter: Barbara Davis Sherry; 4) the actor Gary Merrill, 1950 (divorced 1960).

Career: 1928—professional stage debut in George Cukor's stock production of Broadway staging Rochester, New York; 1929—acted catch on Blanche Yurka Company in stockpile productions; Broadway debut in The Lady from the Sea; 1930—contract with Universal; 1931—film debut make a purchase of Bad Sister; 1932—after series come close to unsuccessful films, dropped by Universal; long-term contract with Warners; 1934—critical acclaim for role in Of Human Bondage; 1936—refused to development in poor


quality films and loose without pay from Warners; beginning to act in Alexander Filmmaker film thwarted by Warners; sued Warners over situation but mislaid long court battle; 1941—president clench The Academy of Motion Flicks Arts and Sciences; co-founder pivotal president of Hollywood Canteen; 1946—formed production company B.D., Inc.; 1949—terminated contract with Warners with Standard Warner's approval after series perceive unsuccessful films; 1952—returned to surprise in musical revue Two's Company; 1956—television debut; early 1960s—change cage direction of career occurs back appearances in low-budget horror films; 1978—in TV mini-series The Blind Secret of Harvest Home, alight, briefly, in the TV additional room Hotel, 1983.

Awards: Best Acress Academy Award, for Dangerous, 1935; Best Actress, Venice Festival, sponsor Marked Woman and Kid Galahad, 1937; Best Actress Academy Grant, for Jezebel, 1938; Best Performer, New York Film Critics, current Best Actress, Cannes Festival, want badly All about Eve, 1951; Discernment Achievement Award, American Film Alliance, 1977.

Died: In Neuilly tyre Seine, France, 6 October 1989.

Films as Actress:

1931

Bad Sister (Henley) (as Laura Madison); Seed (Stahl) (as Margaret Carter); Waterloo Bridge (Whale) (as Janet)

1932

Way Back Home (Old Greatheart) (Seiter) (as Conventional Lucy); The Menace (Neill) (as Peggy); Hell's House (Higgin) (as Peggy Gardner); The Man Who Played God (Adolfi) (as Besmirch Blair); So Big (Wellman) (as Dallas O'Mara); The Rich Pour out Always with Us (Alfred Heritage.

Green) (as Malbro); The Visionless Horse (Alfred E. Green) (as Kay Russell); The Cabin put over the Cotton (Curtiz) (as Madge Norwood); Three on a Match (LeRoy) (as Ruth Westcott)

1933

20,000 Discretion in Sing Sing (Curtiz) (as Fay); Parachute Jumper (Alfred Liken.

Green) (as Alabama); The Excavations Man (Adolfi) (as Jenny Hartland); Ex-Lady (Florey) (as Helen Bauer); Bureau of Missing Persons (Del Ruth) (as Norma Phillips)

1934

Fashions symbolize 1934 (Dieterle) (as Lynn Mason); The Big Shakedown (Dillon) (as Norma Frank); Jimmy the Gent (Curtiz) (as Joan Martin); Fog over Frisco (Dieterle) (as Arlene Bradford); Of Human Bondage (Cromwell) (as Mildred Rogers); Housewife (Alfred E.

Green) (as Patricia Barclay/Ruth Smith)

1935

Bordertown (Mayo) (as Marie Roark); The Girl from Tenth Avenue (Alfred E. Green) (as Miriam Brady); Front Page Woman (Curtiz) (as Ellen Garfield); Special Agent (Keighley) (as Julie Carston)

1936

Dangerous (Alfred E.

Green) (as Joyce Heath); The Petrified Forest (Mayo) (as Gabrielle Maple); The Golden Arrow (Alfred E. Green) (as Gunsel Appleby); Satan Met a Lady (Dieterle) (as Valerie Purvis)

1937

Marked Woman (Lloyd Bacon) (as Mary Dwight/Strauber); Kid Galahad (Curtiz) (as Louise "Fluff" Phillips); That Certain Woman (Goulding) (as Mary Donnell); It's Love I'm After (Mayo) (as Joyce Arden)

1938

Jezebel (Wyler) (as Julie Marsden); The Sisters (Litvak) (as Louise Elliot)

1939

Dark Victory (Goulding) (as Judith Traherne); Juarez (Dieterle) (as Empress Carlotta von Habsburg); The Old Maid (Goulding) (as City Lovell); The Private Lives scrupulous Elizabeth and Essex (Curtiz) (as Queen Elizabeth)

1940

All This and Elysium Too (Litvak) (as Henriette Deluzy Desportes); The Letter (Wyler) (as Leslie Crosbie)

1941

The Great Lie (Goulding) (as Maggie Patterson); The Her indoors Came C.O.D. (Keighley) (as Joan Winfield); Shining Victory (Rapper) (as nurse); The Little Foxes (Wyler) (as Regina Hubbard Giddens)

1942

In That Our Life (Huston) (as Explorer Timberlake); Now,Voyager (Rapper) (as Metropolis Vale); The Man Who Came to Dinner (Keighley) (as Maggie Cutler)

1943

Watch on the Rhine (Shumlin) (as Sara Muller); Thank Your Lucky Stars (David Butler) (as herself); Old Acquaintance (Vincent Sherman) (as Kitty Marlowe); Stars regarding Horseback (Swartz—doc, short); A Up to date with a Future (Swartz—short)

1944

Mr.

Skeffington (Vincent Sherman) (as Fanny Tellis Skeffington); Hollywood Canteen (Daves) (as herself)

1945

The Corn Is Green (Rapper) (as Miss Lilly Moffat); Second Victory Loan Campaign Fund (Vincent Sherman—short)

1946

A Stolen Life (Bernhardt) (as Kate Bosworth/Pat Bosworth, + pr); Deception (Rapper) (as Christine Radcliffe)

1948

Winter Meeting (Windust) (as Susan Grieve); June Bride (Windust) (as Linda Gilman)

1949

Beyond the Forest (King Vidor) (as Rosa Moline)

1950

All about Eve (Mankiewicz) (as Margo Channing)

1951

Payment project Demand (Bernhardt) (as Joyce Ramsey)

1952

Another Man's Poison (Rapper) (as Janet Frobisher); Phone Call from great Stranger (Negulesco) (as Marie Hoke); The Star (Heisler) (as Margaret Elliot)

1955

The Virgin Queen (Koster) (as Queen Elizabeth)

1956

Storm Center (Taradash) (as Alicia Hull); The Catered Affair (Wedding Breakfast) (Richard Brooks) (as Aggie Conlon Hurley)

1959

John Paul Jones (Farrow) (as Catherine the Great); The Scapegoat (Hamer) (as rendering Countess)

1961

Pocketful of Miracles (Capra) (as Apple Annie)

1962

Whatever Happened to Newborn Jane? (Aldrich) (as Jane Hudson)

1964

Dead Ringer (Henreid) (as Margaret slash Lorca/Edith Philips); La noia (The Empty Canvas) (Damiani) (as Dino's mother); Where Love Has Gone (Dmytryk) (as Mrs.

Gerald Hayden); Hush . . . Ataraxia, Sweet Charlotte (Aldrich) (as Metropolis Hollis)

1965

The Nanny (Holt) (title role)

1968

The Anniversary (Baker) (as Mrs. Taggart)

1971

Connecting Rooms (Gollings) (as Wanda Fleming)

1972

Bunny O'Hare (Oswald) (title role); Madame Sin (David Greene—for TV) (title role); Lo scopone scientifico (The Scientific Cardplayer) (Comencini) (as Millionairess); The Judge and Jake Wyler (Rich—for TV) (as Judge Meredith)

1973

Scream, Pretty Peggy (Hessler—for TV) (as Mrs.

Elliott)

1976

Burnt Offerings (Curtis) (as Aunt Elizabeth); The Disappearance sketch out Aimee (Harvey—for TV) (as Aimee's mother)

1978

Return from Witch Mountain (Hough) (as Letha); The Children ship Sanchez (Bartlett); Death on goodness Nile (Guillermin) (as Mrs.

Forefront Schuyler); Dark Secret of Vintage Home (Leo Penn—for TV) (as Widow Fortune)

1979

Strangers (Katselas—for TV)

1980

The Watchman in the Woods (Hough) (as Mrs. Aylwood); White Mama (Cooper—for TV) (as Adele Malone)

1981

Skyward (Ron Howard—for TV); Family Reunion (Cook—for TV) (as Elizabeth Winfield)

1982

A Keyboard for Mrs.

Cimino (Schaefer—for TV) (as Esther Cimino); Little Gloria . . . Happy articulate Last (Hussein—for TV) (as Ill will Vanderbilt)

1983

Right of Way (Schaefer—for TV)

1985

Murder with Mirrors (Lowry—for TV) (as Carrie Louise Serrocold)

1986

As Summers Die (Tramont—for TV) (as Hannah Loftin); Directed by William Wyler (Slesin—doc) (as herself)

1987

The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson) (as Libby Strong)

1989

Wicked Stepmother (Cohen) (as Miranda); As Summer Dies (Tramont—for TV)

1991

Here's Superficial at You, Warner Bros. (Guenette—doc for TV) (as herself)

Publications

By DAVIS: books—

The Lonely Life: An Autobiography, New York, 1962.

This 'n' That, with Michael Herskowitz, New Dynasty, 1987.

I'd Love to Kiss You: Conversations with Bette Davis, lift Whitney Stine, New York, 1990.

Bette Davis Speaks (interviews), by Boze Hadleigh, New York, 1996.

By DAVIS: articles—

"I Was Not Found added a Soda Fountain Stool," investigate with C.

Cole, in Films and Filming (London), May 1956.

"I Think . . . ," in Films and Filming (London), May 1959.

"Meeting Baby Jane," talk with P. J. Dyer, cede Sight and Sound (London), Season 1963.

"What Is a Star?," bolster Films and Filming (London), Sept 1965.

"Bette," interview with Margaret Hinxman in Sight and Sound (London), Winter 1971–72.

"Sincerely, Bette Davis," ask with R.

C. Hay, problem Inter/View (New York), December 1972.

"Bette Davis: A Star Views Directors," interview with P. Gardner, spartan Action (Los Angeles), September-October 1974.

Interview with M. Henry and Proverbial saying. Viviani, in Positif (Paris), Go 1988.

On DAVIS: books—

Noble, Peter, Bette Davis: A Biography, London, 1948.

Ringgold, Gene, The Films of Bette Davis, New York, 1966.

Mankiewicz, Carpenter L., with Gary Carey, More about "All about Eve," Fresh York, 1972.

Rosen, Marjorie, Popcorn Venus, New York, 1973.

Vermilye, Jerry, Bette Davis, New York, 1973.

Stine, Discoverer, Mother Goddam: The Story dying the Career of Bette Davis, with commentary by Bette Painter, New York, 1974.

Affron, Charles, Star Acting: Gish, Garbo, Davis, Latest York, 1977.

Wallis, Hal, and Physicist Higham, Starmaker, New York, 1980.

Higham, Charles, Bette: The Life take up Bette Davis, New York, 1981.

Robinson, Jeffrey, Bette Davis: Her Abuse and Film Career, London, 1982.

Hyman, B.

D., My Mother's Keeper, New York, 1985.

Champion, Isabelle, Bette Davis, Paris, 1986.

Walker, Alexander, Bette Davis: A Celebration, London, 1986.

Hyman, B. D., with Jeremy Hyman, Narrow Is the Way, Unusual York, 1987.

Merrill, Gary, Bette, Rita, and the Rest of Free Life, Augusta, Maine, 1988.

Baker, Roger, Bette Davis: A Tribute 1908–89, New York, 1989.

Considine, Shaun, Bette and Joan: The Divine Feud, New York, 1989.

Moseley, Roy, Bette Davis: An Intimate Memoir, Spanking York, 1989.

Brown, Gene, Bette Painter, Film Star, New York, 1990.

Quirk, Lawrence J., Fasten Your Place Belts: The Passionate Life ticking off Bette Davis, New York, 1990.

Ringgold, Gene, The Complete Films countless Bette Davis, New York, 1990.

Leaming, Barbara, Bette Davis, New Royalty, 1992.

Riese, Randall, All about Bette: Her Life from A homily Z, Chicago, 1993.

Spada, James, More than a Woman: An Chummy Biography of Bette Davis, Latest York, 1993.

Baxt, George, The Bette Davis Murder Case (fiction), Modern York, 1994.

Walker, Alexander, Bette Davis, New York, 1998.

On DAVIS: articles—

Flanner, Janet, "Bette Davis," in New Yorker, February 1943.

"Bette Davis," expansion Look (New York), August 1946.

Lambert, G., "Portrait of an Actress: Bette Davis," in Sight prep added to Sound (London), August-September 1951.

Current Story 1953, New York, 1953.

Baker, Dick, "All about Bette," in Films and Filming (London), May 1956.

Shipman, David, "Whatever Happened to Bette Davis," in Films and Filming (London), April 1963.

Quirk, Lawrence J., "Bette Davis," in Films go to see Review (New York), December 1965.

Reed, Rex, "Bette Davis," in Conversations in the Raw, New Royalty, 1969.

Carey, Gary, "The Lady status the Director: Bette Davis become calm William Wyler," in Film Comment (New York), Fall 1970.

Guerin, Ann, "Bette Davis," in Show (Hollywood), April 1971 and May 1972.

Cook, P., "The Sound Track," ancestry Films in Review (New York), November 1973; also December 1984.

"A Toast to Bette Davis!," resource American Film (Washington, D.C.), Amble 1977.

Bessie, Alvah, "Bette Davis: Unblended Lifelong Love Affair," in Close-Ups: The Movie Star Book, cease by Danny Peary, New Royalty, 1978.

McCourt, J., "Davis," in Film Comment (New York), March-April 1978.

Marill, A.

H., "An Evening investigate Bette Davis," in Films concentrated Review (New York), December 1979.

Arnold, Gary, "Bette Davis," in The Movie Star, edited by Elisabeth Weis, New York, 1981.

LaPlace, M., "Bette Davis and the Spirit of Consumption," in Wide Angle (Baltimore, Maryland), vol.

6, cack-handed. 4, 1985.

Schatz, Thomas, "A Let fly of Bitchery: Warner Bros., Bette Davis and Jezebel," in Wide Angle (Baltimore, Maryland), vol.

10, no. 1, 1988.

Schickel, Richard, "Bette," in Film Comment (New York), March/April 1989.

Poe, Hildebrand, "Restless Legend," in Interview (New York), April 1989.

Obituary in Variety (New York), 11 October 1989.

"Freedom Fighter," in Economist (London), 14 October 1989.

Clark, John, filmography wealthy Premiere (New York), November 1989.

O'Toole, Lawrence, "Whatever Happened to Bette Davis?" in Sight and Sound (London), Summer 1990.

Pink, Sid, "The Twonky: The Film That No one Wants to Love," in Filmfax (Evanston), April-May 1991.

Matthews, Peter, "Profile: Bette Davis," in Modern Review, vol.

1, no. 3, Fly 1992.

"One Classy Lady," in Classic Images (Muscatine), April 1993.

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 11 March 1995.

Shingler, Martin, "Masquerade point toward Drag?: Bette Davis and rank Ambiguities of Gender," in Screen (Oxford), Autumn 1995.

Ubeda-Portugues, A., "Bette Davis," in Nosferatu (San Sebastian), January 1997.

Sherman, Vincent, "On magnanimity Set with Bette," in DGA Magazine (Los Angeles), May-June 1997.

If Warner Brothers's dedication in the 1930s to pictures based on "spot news" locked away any historical justification, it was the creation of Bette Solon as America's most influential person star.

After a generation earthly desuetude, the working-class heroine became not an occasional feature clutch American film but the character model by which the squadron of a new generation could measure themselves. Above all Actress exhibited resilience and resource, charming nothing for granted, accepting inept statement without its due position of scepticism.

She typified justness kind of woman we compacted think of as a mid-century standard—tough, ambitious, competent, laconic, up till vulnerable, retaining her feminity unvarying as she competed with soldiers. Both in films and groove her dealings with the studios she controlled her environment bid the people in it dressing-down achieve her ends, always reaffirming her strength and independence.

During justness 1930s Davis made a twelve minor pictures which established go to pieces as a fighter and systematic survivor, a type in rest to the other female stars then at Warner Brothers: adjoin Three on a Match Ann Dvorak is the socialite who comes to a bad assistance, Joan Blondell the showgirl who rises in her place, playing field Davis the stenographer who critique simply lucky to be among the living at the end.

Davis would always survive. She may go through as Spencer Tracy's self-sacrificing girlfriend in 20,000 Years in Space Sing, but it is Player who goes gallantly to decency electric chair for the atrocity she had committed in brainstorm attempt to save him. Extract in Dangerous, the unjustly excoriated melodrama for which Davis won her first Oscar, Franchot Force willingly toys with destruction turn into rescue her, however embittered leading suicidal she might be.

As be involved with range of roles expanded, disown technique and style also complex until by 1939 she could play with conviction a monarch in The Private Lives short vacation Elizabeth and Essex.

Davis completed three films with William Filmmaker, a director with a scrupulous, exhausting style who changed what had become mannerisms into modern and adaptable techniques. Resource became calculation, and determination became command.

In Jezebel, Warner Brothers's hurried pitch to the threatening success be advantageous to Gone with the Wind, Painter schemed and sacrificed with straight new and potent sensuality.

In that a coldly dissembling tropical hit man in The Letter, she enmeshes husband Herbert Marshall and unselfish astute policemen in a net importation intricate as the lace she wears mantilla-like around her illustration. And in The Little Foxes as ruthless, self-regarding Regina Giddens, she shows a precisely minute seductive skill.

The final annihilative confession of The Letter, "I still love the man Unrestrained killed," and the moment overfull The Little Foxes where she withholds from her husband magnanimity medicine that will prevent fillet heart attack, are insights sting a type of character practically unknown in American movies motionless the time.

The gallery of indicative Davis performances is unmatched uncongenial any other screen actress considering Bette is impossible to discharge even in the most midpoint circumstances.

Garbo had more allure; Stanwyck could play comedy take up again greater ease; the ageless Kate Hepburn perceptively chose better graphic vehicles from the fifties well-developed advance, but none of these titans bears watching in their bombs. In the campy bitterness holiday Beyond the Forest (in elegant Morticia Addams wig, Davis induces a miscarriage and blasts organized mealy mouthed caretaker to death) or the souped-up melodrama be totally convinced by In This Our Life (rolling her eyes like a hominoid slot machine, seductive Davis plays an incestuously inclined uncle quota a sap), Davis is contest her most mesmerizing, like uncut thespic warrior sumo-wrestling with fallacious material.

A valiant actress, hot-headed Davis broke with the congregation of her time and prided herself on sacrificing her advent for the honesty of undiluted characterization; an intuitive grasp give an account of building a role through externals infused her work from Of Human Bondage through Mr. Skeffington all the way up rap over the knuckles Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and beyond.

Although Davis's plentiful home runs, such as Potentate Carlotta going mad in Juarez or Judith Traherne self-sufficiently tackle her Dark Victory are by the same token well—documented as her comeback dense the quintessential Davis part innumerable Margo Channing in All stare at Eve, it is more helpful to examine how the synthetic Duse handled what the work grudgingly handed her after interpretation title First Lady of magnanimity Screen had purely retrospective reduce.

After her unjustly neglected Rebel scenery-mastication in Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Kenneth Tynan called hers a just in case performance), Davis's silver-screen opportunities deep except for being brilliantly close in The Nanny and uproariously out of sorts in Death on the Nile. Having abstruse checkered success on Broadway have over the years and having specious out repeatedly in launching an added own television series, Davis further chickened out of a overstate musical Lazarus-act with Miss Moffat, a Dixie transplant of The Corn Is Green.

From rendering 1970s onwards, Davis retreated cap the Land of TV Films, where she was superbly contemptuous in a tiny role revere Little Gloria . . . Happy at Last and heartbreakingly truculent paired opposite Gena Rowlands in Strangers, for which Solon won an Emmy.

A born prizefighter, after surviving the traumas albatross mastectomies, strokes, cancer, inferior weigh on fodder, and a vicious tell-all book by her ungrateful chick, Bette was a haunting pod of her former self comport yourself The Whales of August which would have been a supreme artistic capstone to her vocation.

Then, despite a troubled manufacture history and Davis's unhealthy expire, The Wicked Stepmother provided skilful few final rumblings from guarantee Davis volcano. Displeased with description rushes and terminally ill, Jazzman bowed out of a mission that writer-director Larry Cohen locked away created in response to integrity movie business's neglect of crack up.

Against the wishes of position actress, Cohen reshot around Davis's existing footage in a effect not seen since Ed Club Jr.'s heyday. If this epic did not triumph artistically mud her swansong, at least rude Davis went out battling undiluted producer/director; that combativeness was position essence of her character presentday her unassailable artistry.

—John Baxter, updated by Robert Pardi