Afterlives of the Rich and Famous by Sylvia Browne

Author:Sylvia Browne [Browne, Sylvia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins US

Bette Davis

The incomparable actress Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her parents divorced when she was ten years old, and from that point on she and her younger sister, Barbara, were raised by their mother, Ruth. In 1921 Ruth moved to New York City with her two daughters and became a portrait photographer, and it was there that Bette Davis’s acting aspirations began taking shape. While attending Cushing Academy in Massachusetts, she saw a production of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, which she credited with solidifying her aspirations into a total, heartfelt commitment.

After graduating from Cushing Academy, Bette auditioned for and was promptly rejected by Eva Le Gallienne’s Manhattan Civic Repertory—she was thought to be “insincere and frivolous.” She moved on to John Murray Anderson’s dramatic school, where she was a resounding success, and in 1929 she made her Broadway debut in Broken Dishes, followed by Solid South. It was in 1930 that Hollywood called, in the form of a contract with Universal Studios. The fact that her extraordinary eyes and highly distinctive looks didn’t fit the Hollywood mold was demonstrated by the studio representative who was sent to meet her train from New York, but left without her, because he couldn’t find any young woman among the disembarking passengers who looked like a movie star.

After nine months, six unsuccessful films, and mixed reactions to this unique newcomer (including a comment from one executive that she had “about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville,” a pleasant but notoriously homely actor), Bette was released from her Universal contract. Warner Bros. signed her to a five-year contract thanks to her critically acclaimed performance in The Man Who Played God in 1932, and she often credited its star, George Arliss, who’d chosen her as his female lead, with providing her with her first real break in Hollywood.

She won two Academy Awards in the 1930s—for Dangerous in 1935 and Jezebel in 1938—but she ultimately sued Warner Bros. for refusing to let her out of her contract, believing she wasn’t being offered the quality roles she deserved. She lost the lawsuit, and the 1940s passed with a series of films that declined in success until her Warner Bros. contract finally ended in 1949. Her career jump-started again in 1950 with her brilliant Oscar-nominated performance in All About Eve, and that decade brought her a succession of films as well, but by 1961 the offers had tapered off to nothing. In response, she placed a “Situations Wanted” ad in the trade paper Variety, as a joke, she claimed, that read in part, “Thirty years experience as an actress in Motion Pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumor would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway.).”

Kidding or not, Bette enjoyed yet another comeback in the 1960s, and in the 1970s she added a TV miniseries to her volume of work, won an Emmy for her appearance in Strangers: The Story of a Mother and

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