Weird moment last night. I picked up a new biography of Bette Davis at the library yesterday and was looking forward to snuggling into bed with the book and a cup of cinnamon tea. So I'm reading along and there it was: "Bette Davis was born April 5, 1908." One hundred years ago to the day I happened to pick up the book and start to read. Well!
The book is called, "The Girl Who Walked Home Alone," by Charlotte Chandler. It's based on a series of interviews Chandler had with Bette in the early 80's. Here are just a few quotes:
"My favorite sexual fantasy used to be to make love on a bed covered with gardenias. I told this once to a man I was currently in love with, Johnny Mercer. So, one weekend, he reserved a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, and when I arrived, the bed was covered with gardenias. I wonder what the maid thought the next morning? All those wilted and crushed gardenias. One thing it accomplished was I never had that fantasy again. There's nothing that finishes a fantasy as surely as its becoming a reality."
"A bolt of lightning hit a tree in front of the house the moment I was born. Mother told me I happened between a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder."
"There are people who give you their unasked-for martyrdom, exacting a price far greater than any you want to pay. They suffer in silence longer than any words. The child goes through life feeling an inexplicable pain. For Bobby [her sister] and me, it was exactly the opposite. We were carefree because Ruthie [her mother] made it look easy. She had all the cares, and we were very free."
"The first time I truly knew I wanted to become an actress was when I was eighteen and saw Blanche Yurka's production of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. Ruthie had taken Bobby and me to Boston to see Miss Yurka play Gina. Lovely Peg Entwistle was Hedwig, and I so totally identified with her that afterwards I told Ruthie, 'Mother, someday I am going to play Hedwig. I am going to be an actress just like Peg Entwistle.' I was on the stage. When Hedwig dies, I died. When the lights came up in the theater, I knew what I had to do. Before that performance, I wanted to be an actress. When it ended, I had to be actress. Everything fell into place and I saw myself in focus for the first time. I knew then that nothing was going to stop me from becoming an actress. Nothing."
"Only when you've done your best in a bad film have you passed the crap test. I think the test of a real professional is doing your very best even when you feel what you've got to work with is crap. I'm very proud to say, I never failed the crap test."
"I'll never forget, when I did the insane scene in Bordertown, it was first time, I believe, that anyone in motion pictures didn't tear their hair out and look insane. So Mr. Wallis sent for me, and he said, 'You have to retake this scene. No one will know you're insane.' I said, 'Mr. Wallis, if you preview this, and nobody knows I'm insane, I'll redo it.' I never heard of it again. I knew instinctively it would work because I knew that every talented actor has to play two things at one time. You don't just play one thing, standing there head-on into a camera. There's something going on in the back of your head that makes you say this. And in your head, you've got to project this other thing that's going on. The camera catches thought. And if there's ever a moment with any actor where there's no thought, the audience does not know why, but they are just not interested."
"The studio system made stars. Nobody can be made a star again in the same way without that studio system. Ninety men in the publicity department. By the time Warner films came out, the whole world knew it. Today they don't know what a star is. A star is not just a big name that supposedly can act. A star runs the set. They make the whole cast feel comfortable. They are in charge of a set, a star is."
"They've called me difficult. Well, they were correct. But what it meant was I absolutely cared about getting it right, not wrong. There are lot of people who don't want to take any risk. Some of them are just bloody lazy. Lazy is more rampant than you can believe. Then there are the ones who don't know any better. I got into trouble because I was a perfectionist. It doesn't mean that I did things perfectly. It just means I wanted to. Being a perfectionist means you can't watch rushes without feeling sick, sick, sick. You can't see your own movies without wanting to go back and redo them. Then, if you ask and expect others to reach for your standards, they hate you. On those rare occasions in life when finally you do please yourself, no one notices. But until you are called 'difficult,' you aren't anyone."
"The time in my life of my most perfect happiness was with Willie [William Wyler] directing me in Jezebel. I had the film of a lifetime and proximity to Willie. My work and Willie. Willie and my work. I knew true happiness. I cherished the moment. The only flaw was that nagging doubt in the back of my mind, 'Could it last?' I've found that happiness is a way station, a place to refuel and go on again."
[About her affair with Howard Hughes:] "I was the only one who ever brought Howard Hughes to a sexual climax, or so he said at that time. It's true. That is to say, it true that he said it. Or, let's say I nelieved it when he told me that. I was wildly naive at the time. It may have been his regular seduction gambit. Anyway, it worked with me, and it was cheaper than buying gifts. Howard Huge, he was not. I liked sex in a way that was considered unbecoming for a woman in my time. They way I felt was only considered appropriate for a man. It was both a physical and emotional need. Of course it had advantages in the pleasure it brought me. No question about that. But it also made me a victim. Dependent."
"I haven't the foggiest which is my favorite film after Dark Victory. Oh, I suppose I'd have to choose Eve. Mankiewicz was truly a genius. I always thing it's better not to have your favorite film at the very beginning of your career, when you don't need it. When you're very young, you don't need it so much. Poor Orson Welles. Imagine having to top or equal Citizen Kane!"
"George [Brent] was notorious as one of the tightest men in Hollywood. He liked me, but he loved money. Oh, I always knew how to pick 'em! Once, he gave me a bracelet with B-E-T-T-E spelled out in diamonds, you know, the tiny diamond chips. He said he was glad I had such a short name. I laughed and said, 'Well, my name is really Ruth Elizabeth.' He didn't think that was funny at all."
"Charles Laughton came on the set one day when I was doing Elizabeth, and I said, 'Hi, Daddy!' because he'd done that wonderful Henry the Eighth. It was the first time I'd ever met him. I said, 'Mr. Laughton, I really have my nerve at this age to be playing Elizabeth at sixty or so.' And e said a marvelous thing to me which I never forgot. He said, '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.' He was right, and this is true, I think for all actors' careers."
"The cigarette was my character prop. Miss Crawford might have said it was my character. I used it for showing anger, to make a point or to emphasize a reaction, to show nervousness. There was no one who could put out a cigarette like I could. One thing I understood. If I played a character who smoked, she wasn't going to be a namby-pamby smoker and take a puff or two. She was going to chain-smoke her way through the film as any serious smoker worth her tobacco would. Once Dean Martin said, 'Nobody swings her butt the way Bette Davis does.' I think he was talking about my cigarette . . . "
"Have you ever regretted going to a party? First, let me tell you what makes a good party: It isn't the menu, it's the men you sit next to. If you want to have a good party, always invite beautiful women and intelligent men. If you want to have a lousy party, invite intelligent women and beautiful men."
"There comes a time in a famous and successful woman's life when there's no point in having false modesty about fame and success, and when she no longer can trust a man's protestations of desire purely for her. Too old. Even if you look young for your age, and I didn't - every one of my years showed - one of the disadvantages is everyone knows your age. Everyone. Television shows wish you a 'Happy Birthday!' Well, I can tell you it would be a far happier birthday if they didn't feel they had to wish me one and, incidentally, if they didn't have to mention specifically how many birthdays I had already had. I had enjoyed playing an old woman, when I was a young woman."
Oops! Oh well, here's to you, Miss Davis. Love always.
