Bette Davis

by Alexander Walker

After fifty-five years in the film industry, during which she made over ninety films, Bette Davis was considered the indisputable grand dame of Hollywood. Alexander Walker, who knew Bette Davis for twenty years, has pieced together her early life through to her promising career on the New York stage. The subsequent film career was by no means an instant success. The turbulent relationship between Bette Davis and Warner Brothers is legendary but gradually she managed to seize the opportunities to show her astonishing range. In this book, Alexander Walker identifies the extraordinary qualities that enabled Bette Davis to survive the Hollywood system and become one of its most durable actresses.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Alexander Walker was a film critic and author of a number of biographies and books on the film industry.

Reviews

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Television arrived in Australia in the 1950's
our Visual World was MIGHTILY expanded
...along with our minds and our knowledge.
Names unknown and Talents never before seen
were laid before us and devoured.
Our Parents, thrilled to be reliving their Cinema Youth,
introduced us to Al Jolson...his film biography and his LP discs;
Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in "The African Queen";
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films with their fantastic dancing.
We got our first taste of Shakespeare in Hollywood's superb 1935 rendition of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"...my primary school classes
were fascinated with the same film in the early 2000's.

BUT...then there was Bette Davis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"I HATE her. She has POPPY eyes!!!"I proclaimed.
(She was playing the inspirational Welsh teacher of the future actor Emlyn Williams in the film of his play "The Corn is Green" released in 1945.)

Many of the people we saw were still BIG in film and would be for years to come. We unwittingly learned Film History and appreciated our Parents' Past. The War was still a Fresh Memory.I thought everyone would be over it when 1955 came.(They're STILL talking about it, making films and documentaries, writing novels and memoirs.)

Happily, just yesterday, I bought the DVD of Bette Davis' 1938 Academy Award winning performance in "Jezebel". I saw it once only on the telly in the late 1950's...and have NEVER FORGOTTEN...the film or her!!
I'm still on the look out for her riveting performance in "The Letter" based on the Somerset Maugham short story.
I don't notice the eyes now.
But someone who really DID penned the song "Bette Davis Eyes"!!!
She IS rather beautiful...and one of the Cinema's Greatest Actresses.

Alexander Walker's brief 135 page book concentrates on her films and her career of making them; and of the powerful will and personality behind them; of how she fought the Studio System; of how women relied on her to represent their lives. For six decades.
In 1942's film "Now, Voyager" she played a young woman breaking free from her possessive mother. Copious fan mail arrived for Bette... especially from the daughters of possessive mothers AND from possessive mothers repenting their possessiveness!!!

She learned that women relied on her and that her range of acting could
help, warn, counsel in the broad spectrum of women's lives and experiences. From a snappy aging Elizabeth the First in love in "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" to an actress dealing with the limits of her career at its peak in "All About Eve",she had something to offer.

ALL her films are listed in the book's final pages with Title, Director, Scenario and Source, Photography, Editor, Cast, Running Time, When Released and Producer.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of an odd little book, a quick tribute to Davis's legacy. A few errors (proofing and factual) put me off a bit.