Miss D and Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis

by Kathryn Sermak

I have always been alone, really. I should have known enough to travel light; because no one could really come with me on my trip. I fought this knowledge for years and now I face it squarely.” She wrote that her economic independence made her less likely to tolerate the boredom of marriage, and that she had sent her children off to boarding schools because she did not want to use them as crutches. “My children will never see vulnerability and sacrificing,” she wrote. “I want them bound to no one, not even to me. And I am all right, I keep saying over and over. I’ll be fine! I keep saying over and over!

Don’t give up on her, Kath,” he told me. “She’ll make it. Nobody knows Bette Davis. She’s the toughest woman I know. One thing I know that the doctors do not, and this is my advice to you. Never bet against Bette Davis.”