[95], In 1961, Davis opened in the Broadway production The Night of the Iguana to mostly mediocre reviews, and left the production after four months due to "chronic illness". Her mother was the former Ruth Favor; her father, Harlow Morrell Davis, a Harvard Law School graduate who became a Government patent attorney. Nominated for 10 Oscars, Miss Davis was a perfectionist whose tempestuous battles for good scripts and the best production craftsmen for her films wreaked havoc in Hollywood executive suites. With her health stable, she traveled to England to film the Agatha Christie mystery Murder with Mirrors (1985). Davis also received her only BAFTA nomination for this performance. An autopsy revealed that his fall had been caused by a skull fracture he had suffered two weeks earlier. "[17] A second test was arranged for Davis, for the 1931 film A House Divided. The director John Cromwell allowed her relative freedom: "I let Bette have her head. I suppose I'm larger than life.''. Originally intended to pair Davis with Joan Crawford, Davis made it clear that she would not appear in any "dyke movie". Davis refused, as she had met Arthur Farnsworth, a New England innkeeper, and Vermont dentist's son. Bette was one of the founders of the Hollywood Canteen. Miss Davis decided in her teens that she wanted to become an actress, and her mother took her to New York in 1928, where she arranged for her to read for Eva Le Gallienne, whose Civic Repertory Theater was then one of the most popular touring companies. [81] Pauline Kael wrote that much of Mankiewicz' vision of "the theater" was "nonsense", but commended Davis, writing "[the film is] saved by one performance that is the real thing: Bette Davis is at her most instinctive and assured. Her last Oscar nomination was for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? "[131] While reviewing What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and walked out of his office.'' It was never a secret that Miss Davis was temperamental, opinionated and often difficult to get along with, but in 1985 a scandalous book about her, by her own daughter, shocked her critics as well as her fans. Time magazine noted that Davis was compulsively watchable, even while criticizing her acting technique, summarizing her performance in Dead Ringer (1964) with the observation, "Her acting, as always, isn't really acting: It's shameless showing off. Following Crawford's death in May, Davis is often quoted as having said the following: "You should never say … Or was it that she was 'Larger Than Life', a tough broad who had survived? Upon her return, she learned that Hyman had published My Mother's Keeper, in which she chronicled a difficult mother-daughter relationship and depicted scenes of Davis' over-bearing and drunken behavior.[4]. Just thought I would die. She appeared on British television in a special broadcast from the South Bank Centre, discussing film and her career, the other guest being the renowned Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky. As she grew older, Miss Davis continued making movies, many of them horror thrillers or melodramas, like ''The Anniversary'' (1968), in which she wore a patch over one eye. [69], Possessed (1947) had been tailor-made for Davis,[70] and was to have been her next project after Deception. [15] After performing in Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, she made her Broadway debut in 1929 in Broken Dishes and followed it with Solid South. I think that acting should be larger than life.'' Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) was Robert Aldrich's follow-up to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. [140], In 1962, Bette Davis became the first person to secure 10 Academy Award nominations for acting. The film's director Joseph L. Mankiewicz later remarked: "Bette was letter perfect. The director's dream: the prepared actress. Both were shattering experiences." In 1945, Davis married artist William Grant Sherry, her third husband, who also worked as a masseur. [94] Outside of acting and politics, Davis was an active and practicing Episcopalian. In a single year, 1939, Warners released no fewer than four blockbuster Davis movies: ''Dark Victory,'' ''Juarez,'' ''The Old Maid'' and ''The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,'', ''Jezebel'' began her halcyon years, she said, and ''in 1939 I secured my career and my stardom forever; I made five pictures in 12 months, and every one of them made money.''. [64], Her next film, A Stolen Life (1946), was the only film that Davis made with her own production company, BD Productions. For a period of time in the 1930s, the Academy revealed the second- and third-place vote getters in each category: Davis placed third for best actress above the officially nominated Grace Moore. Davis later commented: "There are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud of. The others were for Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941) and Now, Voyager (1942). American. [29] 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,[30] with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse. Christopher Bray reviews Dark Victory: the Life of Bette Davis by Ed Sikov "Infants behave the way I do, you know. "[82], Davis won a Best Actress award from the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award. She also played supporting roles in the Disney films Return from Witch Mountain (1978) and The Watcher in the Woods (1980). [130] In 2006, Premiere magazine ranked her portrayal of Margo Channing in the film as fifth on their list of 100 Greatest Performances of All Time, commenting: "There is something deliciously audacious about her gleeful willingness to play such unattractive emotions as jealousy, bitterness, and neediness. The film was an American adaptation of the Mexican film La Otra, starring Dolores del Río. [87], The family traveled to England, where Davis and Merrill starred in the murder-mystery film Another Man's Poison (1951). Despite the acrimony of their divorce years earlier, Gary Merrill also defended Davis. They all had to lie on top of me and give me a passionate kiss. By the end of the decade, Davis had appeared in the British films The Nanny (1965), The Anniversary (1968), and Connecting Rooms (1970), none of which were reviewed well and her career again stalled. "[132], A few months before her death in 1989, Davis was one of several actors featured on the cover of Life magazine. She was indeed. '', '' 'Please don't leave. "[125], Davis attracted a following in the gay subculture, and frequently was imitated by female impersonators such as Tracey Lee, Craig Russell, Jim Bailey, and Charles Pierce. Davis, who died on Oct. 6 of cancer at age 81, had been estranged from her daughter, Barbara Davis Hyman of Charlottesville, Va., since Hyman’s book, … ''And I said, 'I'll bet it's a pip!' She was married four times, divorcing thrice and widowed once as her second husband died unexpectedly thus raising her children largely as a single parent. Davis filmed The Story of a Divorce (released by RKO Radio Pictures in 1951 as Payment on Demand). "[12] She auditioned for admission to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory, but was rejected by Le Gallienne, who described her attitude as "insincere" and "frivolous". Classic Hollywood star Bette Davis’ fourth and final husband Gary Merrill was frequently violent after heavy drinking, according to James Spada, a biographer of Davis’ who authored Bette Davis: More Than a Woman in 2013. The Davis that audiences often think of is the Davis of “All About Eve” (1950), and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” (1962), the “bitch roles” that proved so popular, and the more ghoulish-looking Bette that became her lot with ill health and advancing age. 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. [74] To add to her disappointment, she was not confident in the abilities of her leading man – James Davis in his first major screen role. Miss Davis had previously been married to Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr., a band leader, and she said in 1982 that on his insistence she had two abortions. She was the first leading-lady villainess ever played on a screen for real. '', ''I know what I want as my epitaph,'' she said. During what she was to call her ''darkest decade,'' the 1950's, while the the Merrills' marriage continued to disintegrate, Miss Davis again played Elizabeth I in ''The Virgin Queen'' and a year later, in 1956, appeared in Paddy Chayefsky's ''A Catered Affair'' as Ma Hurley, a Bronx housewife, which she sometimes said was her favorite role. But I always fell in love. [56], Davis showed little interest in the film Now, Voyager (1942), until Hal Wallis advised her that female audiences needed romantic dramas to distract them from the reality of their lives. Daughter Barbara (credited as B.D. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, but despite a long period of ill health she continued acting in film and on television until shortly before her death from breast cancer in 1989. She was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. The televised event included comments from several of Davis' colleagues, including William Wyler, who joked that given the chance, Davis would still like to re-film a scene from The Letter to which Davis nodded. Miss Colbert was unable to begin the film on schedule because she ''hurt her back, thank God,'' as Miss Davis liked to recall it. Never, never, never! [93], In 1960, Davis, a registered Democrat, appeared at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where she met future President John F. Kennedy, whom she greatly admired.