Nickname: The Fifth Warner Brother
Height: 5’2″
Spouses:
Gary Merrill (1950 – 1960) (divorced)
William Grant Sherry (1945 – 1950) (divorced); 1 daughter
Arthur Farnsworth (1940 – 1943) (his death)
Harmon Nelson (1932 – 1939)
While Bette Davis was the star pupil at John Murray Anderson’s Dramatic School in New York, another of her classmates was sent home because she was “too shy”. It was pronounced that this girl would never make it as an actress. It was Lucille Ball.
(October 1997) Ranked #15 in Empire (UK) magazine’s “The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time” list.
In 1952, she was asked to perform in a musical, “Two’s Company.” After several grueling months at rehearsals, her health deteriorated due to osteomylitis of the jaw and had to leave the show only several weeks after it opened. She was to repeat this process in 1974 when she rehearsed for the musical version of “The Corn Is Green”, called “Miss Moffat” but bowed out early in the run of the show for dubious medical reasons.
On her tombstone is written “She did it the hard way”.
She suffered a stroke and a mastectomy in 1983.
Attended Northfield Mt Hermon high school.
Interred at Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills), Los Angeles, California, USA, just outside and to the left of the main entrance to the Court of Remembrance.
Mother of ‘Barbara Merrill’
Turned down the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind (1939).
Immortalized in the 1980’s song “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes.
(19 July 2001) Director Speilberg, Steven won the Christie’s auction of Bette Davis’ 1938 Best Actress Oscar for Jezebel for $578,000. He then gave it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
When Bette learned that her new brother-in-law was a recovering alcoholic, she sent the couple a dozen cases of liquor for a wedding present.
Bette was elected as first female president of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in October 1941. She resigned less then two months later, publicly declaring herself too busy to fulfill her duties as president while angrily protesting in private that the Academy had wanted her to serve as a mere figurehead for the company.
She considered her debut screen test for MGM to be so bad that she ran screaming from the projection room.
Her first husband Arthur Farnsworth was killed in an accidental fall in which he took a blow to the head.
Her real true love was director William Wyler but he was married and refused to leave his wife.
In “Marked Woman” (1937) Davis is forced to testify in court after being worked over by some Mafia hoods. Disgusted with the tiny bandage supplied by the makeup department, she left the set, had her own doctor bandage her face more realistically, and refused to shoot the scene any other way.
When she first came to Hollywood as a contract player, Universal Pictures wanted to change her name to Bettina Dawes. She informed the studio that she refused to go through life with a name that sounded like “Between the Drawers”.