Bette Davis: More Than a Woman by James Spada

Author:James Spada [Spada, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography: Queen of Hollywood
ISBN: 0553095129
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 1993-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Ethel Vance’s novel Winter Meeting hadn’t exactly set bestseller lists on fire, but it had been a succès d’estime, and Bette liked its story of Susan Grieve, a virginal spinster, and her unlikely love affair with a handsome young navy war hero who intends to enter the ministry. What appealed to her most was Vance’s explorations of the differences between the Protestant Grieve, a minister’s daughter, and the Catholic sailor, and the awkwardness and confusion Susan feels at her first sexual experience as she nears forty.

Bette felt the project might be as prestigious as Ethan Frome or Mrs. Lincoln, and she was impressed when Bretaigne Windust, a well-regarded Broadway director, signed on to helm the project, his first film. William Grant Sherry recalled a visit Windust made to the Sherrys in Laguna Beach. “He was such a gentleman, and the more I listened to him, I realized what good taste he had. He explained to me that he knew there was something about Bette that hadn’t been brought out, by any director.” What Windust wanted to highlight in Bette was a new “softness” and “femininity.” Unfortunately, this new concept amounted to little more than lighter makeup and a pulled-back hairdo topped with Mamie Eisenhower bangs that served mostly to make Bette look spinsterish.

Bette suspected that Windust’s attempts to “soften her image” had been prompted by Jack Warner and were meant to make her look younger. She realized she was right her first day on the set. “Ernie Haller had set up enormous banks of lights behind huge silk screens just outside of camera range,” she recalled. “As a young actress I had seen these same screens on the sets of Ruth Chatterton and Kay Francis, when they were nearing forty, and I knew what they meant. I went back to my dressing room and cried my eyes out.”

As filming progressed, Bette became just as unhappy with her leading man. Jim Davis, a handsome six-foot-three-inch thirty-three-year-old with a handful of minor films to his credit, was handed a starring role opposite Bette Davis primarily because his $500-a-week salary fit well into the Winter Meeting budget. He tested for the role; Bette liked what she saw and approved him—over the objections of her husband. “Davis was a nice-looking guy, and big,” Sherry recalled, “but he was a little awkward. I said to Bette, ‘I think you can do better,’ but she said, ‘Oh, I think he’ll be all right.’ I didn’t know too much about this, so I backed off.”

Sherry’s instincts proved correct—Jim Davis was indeed stiff and awkward in Winter Meeting, and there was little chemistry between him and Bette. She blamed the “over-analytical approach” of Windust for the fact that Davis “never again during filming showed any signs of the character he portrayed in the tests that made me want him for the part. No help I tried to give him could offset the effect of the detailed direction of Windust. He was lost and openly admitted it.”

The script of Winter Meeting was unusually talky, and Windust, from a Broadway background, saw no problem in that.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.