Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (/ˈbɛti/; 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. In 1999, Davis was placed second on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

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.

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.

In the fall of 1921, her mother, Ruth Davis, moved to New York City, using her children's tuition money to enroll in the Clarence White School of Photography, with an apartment on 144th Street at Broadway. She then worked as a portrait photographer.

The young Betty Davis later changed the spelling of her first name to Bette after Bette Fischer, a character in Honoré de Balzac's La Cousine Bette. During their time in New York, Davis became a Girl Scout where she became a patrol leader. Her patrol won a competitive dress parade for Lou Hoover at Madison Square Garden.

Davis attended Cushing Academy, a boarding school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, where she met her future husband, Harmon O. Nelson, known as Ham. In 1926, a then 18-year-old Davis saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck with Blanche Yurka and Peg Entwistle. Davis later recalled, "The reason I wanted to go into theater was because of an actress named Peg Entwistle." Bette Davis interviewed with Eva Le Gallienne to be a student at her 14th Street theater. However, she 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.

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 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?".

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 five-year contract, and 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 ($1,885 in 2020 dollars) compared unfavorably with Davis's reported $1,000 a week income ($18,850). 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.

In 1938, 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.