From the Archives: Bette Davis Dies in Paris at 81
By VICTOR MERINA AND JUDITH MICHAELSON
| TIMES STAFF WRITERS OCT 08, 1989 12:00 AM
Lavish tributes flowed Saturday in a worldwide eulogy for Bette Davis, the tempestuous actress whose fiery talent and celebrated toughness made her one of Hollywood's most acclaimed and enduring stars.Davis, whose career spanned a half-century of American film, died Friday night of cancer in a suburban Paris hospital. She was 81. The two-time Academy Award winner, who began her career on the stage and later made the transition from movies to television, was in Europe to receive an award when she was admitted to a private hospital on the outskirts of the French capital. The news of Davis' death touched off an avalanche of praise from fellow actors and movie fans who called her a legendary figure in the entertainment industry.
"What a loss," echoed actress Olivia de Havilland, who worked with Davis in four films, including the 1964 "Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte."
"She was a remarkable person to work with, highly professional, innovative, brilliant and quick," said de Havilland, who lives in Paris. "She was very well-disciplined. I thought she had some marvelous personal qualities, and I was very fond of her."
During her career, the staccato-voiced Davis made 86 movies, won two Academy Awards as best actress and was nominated for eight more. Her last movie was the 1987 "Whales of August," a film she made despite being in failing health after suffering two strokes and a bout with breast cancer.
Before returning home, however, Davis fell ill and was taken to the American Hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly. Her death was reported Saturday in a terse statement.
"During a trip to Western Europe, the health of Miss Davis deteriorated," said hospital spokesman Philippe Duprat. "She was admitted at the hospital on Oct. 3. She died last night as a consequence of her illness."
Her attorney, Harold Schiff, said in Paris that his client had died of cancer. And in France, where her work is adored, Davis' death was front-page news.
In its Saturday afternoon editions, the newspaper Le Monde reported breathlessly that the "impossible has happened" and that "the screen b**** with the too-big eyes, the ambitious devourer of Hollywood, the she-wolf" was dead.
"One doesn't cry for Bette Davis," the newspaper continued reverently, "one salutes her."
Greatest Salute
In 1977, Davis received what may have been her greatest salute. Still spunky and working at 69, she became the first woman to receive the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.
"I suppose . . . they decided, 'Let's give it to a dame,' " she said with waspish delight upon receiving the honor.
Some dame.
Davis played them all, from the bitchy Southern belle in "Jezebel," which won her a second Oscar in 1939, to the dying heroine of "Dark Victory" a year later, to the frumpy Bronx housewife in "The Catered Affair" in 1956.
But for many, she would forever be Margo Channing, the past-her-prime actress of the 1950 film, "All About Eve," her 61st movie, with that line that glistens in the memory: "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night. "Whatever the role, Davis was herself always in control, refining emotion with intelligence. But the persona was better than the sum of her parts. More than beauty, she had style, wit and a fierce, unrelenting independence.
Those penetrating blue eyes, the page-boy hairdo with the sharp slash of bangs, the ability to use a cigarette like a weapon or a scepter, and the flinty voice—these became her trademarks.
The breeding invariably showed, whether on screen in throwing aside a mink coat, or off, when she fought tigress-like with studio heads and directors, for good roles. In an era when studio executives behaved like Big Daddies, she achieved her own liberation..
"If you don't dare to be hated," she told Playboy magazine in a lengthy interview in 1982, "you're never going to get there. Never!"
In her heyday—from the mid-1930s to the close of World War II—Davis was the highest paid woman in America. She was called "the first lady of the screen" and the "fourth Warner brother" and she was a regular on Oscar night. She was nominated as best actress in 1939 ("Dark Victory"), 1940 ("The Letter"), 1941 ("The Little Foxes"), 1942 ("Now, Voyager"), 1944 ("Mr. Skeffington"), as well as in 1950 ("All About Eve"), 1952 ("The Star"), and 1962 ("Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?").
Had Some Regrets
Despite numerous triumphs, she had some regrets—the missed Oscars and roles. She had wanted her first Oscar for the part of Mildred, the cruel waitress in Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" (1934) but instead won it as a consolation the following year for "Dangerous" in which she played a not-so-nice actress.
She wanted one for playing Judith Traherne, the dying heroine in "Dark Victory" who falls in love with her doctor, but 1939 was the year of "Gone With the Wind," and she had won her second Oscar only the year before. Her lifelong regret was that she could have been Scarlett O'Hara but refused the role in a dispute with her boss, Jack L. Warner.
Davis would have killed, she said, to have gotten the lead in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" or to have been Anna in "The King and I."
When she returned to Broadway after 22 years in 1952, it was for "Two's Company," and then, more notably, "The Night of the Iguana" in 1961.
In the 1970s, she turned to television and garnered showcase roles, more than holding her own with a newer generation of actresses. She won an Emmy in 1979 for "Strangers," playing the mother of an estranged daughter (Gena Rowlands) who has come home to die.
Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Mass. She was named for her mother, whom Bette in later years called Ruthie. Her daughter would later say that Ruthie was her dominating influence, at least through a first marriage.
Her father, Harlow Morrell Davis, had been a patent attorney. The parents were divorced when Bette was 7. She had a younger sister, Barbara.
Despite the rigidity of a strict New England upbringing, hers was a relatively happy and comfortable childhood, and she wrote of "those biting cold white days when Bobby and I would slide down the hill behind our house on our backsides without our sleds . . . the kitchen shiny and busy and expectant with custards and fruit pies."
Wonderful Cook
In later years her kitchen became her solace, her refuge, and she was remembered by her friends as a wonderful cook.
She and her sister were sent off to boarding school while her mother worked as a photographer. At 16, Bette entered the prestigious Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass., where, after participating in school theatricals, she decided to become an actress.
After graduation in 1926, she was taken by her mother to New York where she met Eva LaGalliene, then a reigning stage presence. LaGalliene was unimpressed. She told the aspiring actress that her attitude toward the theater was "not sincere. You are a frivolous little girl."
Trying to negate that judgment, Davis enrolled at a dramatic academy in New York and also worked briefly in Rochester in a play called "Broadway." The director was George Cukor, soon to become another Hollywood legend. He fired her.