Bette Davis (52 page)

In Los Angeles, Leith Adams, curator of the Warner Bros. Archive at USC, made an immense contribution to this biography. Without his astonishing mastery of the complex network of Warner Bros, papers, I would never have been able to unearth the story of Davis's Warner years. Also at USC, Ned Comstock was, as always, an unfailingly intelligent and generous guide through the other special collections in the Doheny Library.

In Boston, Dr. Howard B. Gotlieb persuaded Davis to deposit her personal papers in Boston University's Department of Special Collections. In the intervening years, he has meticulously assembled the finest collection of Davis materials for which any biographer could dare to hope; and he has made those papers available under the most efficient and effective conditions possible. Also

at Boston University, I would like to thank Karen Mix, whose encyclopedic grasp of the Davis papers I benefited from throughout my research. Karen is a model archivist: knowledgeable, imaginative, and superbly organized.

Michael Merrill, Davis's son, graciously facilitated my work in his mother's papers at Boston University.

A number of Davis's oldest and closest friends have gone out of their way to enable me to write this book, even when it meant breaking a consistent habit of not giving interviews about their friend. Above all, I am grateful to Bette's dear friends Robin Brown and Ellen Batchelder, who shared their invaluable memories and perceptions with me. Besides talking to me at length on numerous occasions, Robin was always a telephone call away whenever I had a question that needed to be answered immediately. She also allowed me to examine her lifelong correspondence with Bette. Ellen Batchelder was not only unfailingly generous in providing me with details about every aspect of Bette's life; Ellen gave me the greatest gift any biographer could dream of, when she invited me to meet Bette Davis's girlhood friends at the first Newton High School reunion held after her death. Meeting these strong, vivid, remarkable women—Yankees all—enabled me to see Bette's life in a whole new light. My afternoon with the "Newton girls," and my individual interviews with them afterward, provided a lesson in the value of female friendship.

B.D. Hyman, Bette Davis's daughter, talked to me at length about her mother. I am tremendously grateful for her willingness to share her memories and insights with me, as well as to provide important leads for further research—including the names of several people whom she must have known would view her own actions toward her mother in a less than favorable light.

Dori Brenner, Vik Greenfield, Charles Pollock, and Peggy Shannon-Davis's close personal friends of later years—must also be singled out for their great warmth and generosity in tirelessly answering my questions and otherwise assisting my research. It is impossible adequately to acknowledge their unfailing kindness.

I am indebted to so many people who have given generously of their time to help me put this story together. They interrupted their busy schedules more times that I can count to answer my questions, share their memories and perceptions, or provide me with vast quantities of documentation. Bette Davis's life was long and complex, and I could never have told her story without the help of the following: Benny Baker, Ron Bernstein, Gay Bersteeg, Julian Blau-stein, Paula Laurence Bowden, Harry Carey, Jr., Ginny Cerilla, Connie Ce-zon, Larry Cohen, Peter Constandy, Fielder Cook, Frank Corsaro, Margaret Fitts Currier, George Davis, Michael DeGuzman, Melinda Dillon, Dr. Robert Dores, Liz Dribben, Rosalie Dunne, Julius Epstein, Leslie Epstein, Rudi Fehr, Elsa Feminella, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Helen Elwell Fox, Sam Gill, Carlos Goez, David Greene, Skip Guard, Faith Wing Hawkins, Gordon Hessler, Richard Hoyt, Waris Hussein, Jill Jackson, Mike Kaplan, Milton Katselas, Brigitte Kueppers, Adrienne Lambert, Richard Lamparski, Stephanie Landsman, Jerry London, Virginia Koops McGill, Jerry Merrill, Robert Ellis Miller, Janet Munch, Ann Nelson, Barry Oliver, Patrick O'Neal, Michael Parness, Vincent Price, Irving Rapper, Marion Rosenberg, Rick Rosenberg, George

Schaefer, Connie Sellecca, Vincent Sherman, Virginia Hodder Sherrill, Mr. and Mrs. William Grant Sherry, Ann Sothern, Dr. John Sussman. Daniel Tar-adash, Eleanor Harding Thomas, Renato Tonelli, Elizabeth Valkenier, Robert Valkenier, Betty White, Arthur Wilde, Meta Carpenter Wilde, Bob William, Catherine Wyler, Margaret "Talli" Wyler.

Finally, I must thank my husband, David, who somehow always manages to keep me alive through these other "lives."

fessional correspondence, personal diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, annotated scripts, and assorted personal memorabilia.

The dozens of scrapbooks, composed and copiously annotated by Ruthie, Bette, B.D., and various assistants, are an extremely rich resource for the biographer. Documenting Davis's life from first to last, the scrapbooks constitute an astonishing archive of the most intimate memories and emotions. For Bette, the scrapbook form often functioned in place of a diary, allowing her to juxtapose word and image to record the details of her daily emotional and professional life as she was experiencing them. Bette's extensive handwritten annotations frequently disclose a private side of her very different from the carefully calculated public persona she constructed for interviews and her two published memoirs. With regard to the scrapbooks Bette assembled in youth, my conversations with a number of her girlhood friends enabled me to decipher some of the more cryptic private references and allusions. In addition to Davis's ongoing commentary, the scrapbooks are invaluable for the wide range of documents Bette preserved in them: marriage licenses, divorce papers, contracts, and other legal records. There are revealing letters from her father and mother, as well as from other family members, friends, lovers, husbands, and professional associates. In a number of the scrapbooks, the annotations of Bette's mother, Ruthie Davis, and daughter B.D. Hyman reveal much about these two most important characters in Bette's story.

Given the sustaining role that photography played in Ruthie Davis's life, it should come as no surprise that the Davis archive contains thousands of photographs, from all periods of Bette's life and career. In the course of more than half a century, a camera seems to have been an omnipresent feature of every household Bette occupied, providing the biographer with an extraordinary visual record of the tiniest details of Davis's daily existence from childhood to old age. Best of all, perhaps, Ruthie and Bette's shared obsession with photography often resulted in images that disclose every bit as much about the person taking the picture as about the thing being photographed.

Finally, the annotated scripts in the Davis papers are an indispensable source of information about the art of the actress. Bette's handwritten notes and marginalia provide a rare glimpse into how she approached a part, how she shaped a character, how she envisioned a scene in terms of the whole, and how she worked with her various directors on stage and screen.

For Davis's film career, the other major repository of documents is the labyrinthine Warner Bros, archive at USC. Fortunately for the biographer, it was the rule at Warner Bros, in Bette's day that everything must be carefully written down and preserved. Every phone conversation and contract negotiation, every script idea and altercation on the set, was committed to writing for possible future reference. Letters, legal papers, interoffice memos: everything was meticulously preserved, making it possible for the biographer to trace Davis's every second on and off the set, her every move at the studio in the course of eighteen stormy years there. The Warner files contain all of Davis's many letters to Jack Warner, Hal Wallis, and others. There are letters from her directors, including William Wyler, Edmund Goulding, and Irving Rapper, detailing their work and conflicts with her. And there are vast quantities of

notes by Warner lawyers and by Jack Warner himself, assessing Davis's motives, strengths, and weaknesses during her various violent collisions with studio authority, both in and out of court. Each of Davis's films possesses detailed production and legal files, as well as voluminous daily production reports that allow the biographer to pinpoint creative problems, decisions, and conflicts. The Warners collection contains legal, personal, stoiy, research, publicity, and contract files on Davis and all the actors, directors, and production people whom she encountered at the studio. Providing as they do a multiplicity of perspectives on the making of each of Davis's films, the thousands of documents in these files afford an up-close look at film history as it was actually unfolding.

Other archives and offices consulted for this biography included: Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts (Theatre and Dance Collections); Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.; U.S. Social Security Administration, Washington, D.C.; University of California at Los Angeles, Theatre Arts Library; U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C; Records Office, Northfield Academy; Records Office, Mount Pleasant Cemetery; Records Office, Mount Auburn Cemetery; Suffolk County Probate Court, Boston, Mass.; Superior Court, Yuma, Ariz.; Los Angeles Superior Court, Civil Division, Los Angeles, Cal.; Superior Court, Santa Ana, Cal.; Los Angeles County Coroner, Los Angeles, Cal.; Clark County Recorder, Las Vegas, Nev.; Vital Statistics Branch, Sacramento, Cal.; County Records Center, Los Angeles, Cal.; Vital Records Office, Hartford, Conn.; Office of Vital Records, Vermont; Registry of Vital Records, Boston, Mass.; Santa Monica Superior Court, Santa Monica, Cal.; Cumberland County Superior Court, Portland, Me.

NOTES FOR CHAPTERS I-4

At Boston University, vital information on Bette's youth and family background came from scrapbooks #1; #6; #32; #55; and #57. Also consulted were Bette's "Baby Book"; "Ruthie's Book"; Ruthie's 1934 gift scrapbook to Bette, "The Tales of a Simple (?) Life! Lived and Sojourned in sixty three places!"; uncatalogued scrapbook "G"; Rev. Paul Favor's unpublished memoir of the Favor family; and Ruthie Davis's two unpublished memoirs of life jwith Bette and Bobby.

Other essential background came from my conversations with Bette's Newton High School classmates at their 1990 reunion, the first since her death. Additional data came from the Newton High School yearbooks for 1923 and 1924.

For an understanding of Ruthie's Delsarte training and all it meant to her, I examined her 1892 chautauqua Delsarte manual: Emily Bishop, "Americanized Delsarte Culture." Of many books on dance consulted, four proved par-Jticularly useful: Edwin Denby, Dance Writings; Elizabeth Kendall, Where She Danced; Ted Shawn, Every Little Movement; and Suzanne Shelton, Ruth St. Denis. The Kendall book was especially important for its discussion of the points of contact between interpretive dance and pictorialist photography.

Background on the Yankee view of divorce came from Judson Hale, The Education of a Yankee.

Other facts came from the following documents; death certificate, William A. Favor, December 4,1911; death certificate, Eliza M. Davis, May 31,1906; death certificate, Harlow Morrell Davis, January 3, 1938; birth certificate, Ruth Favor, September 16, 1885; birth certificate Ruth Elizabeth Davis, April 5, 1908; birth certificate, Barbara Harriet Davis, November 5, 1909; marriage certificate, Harlow Davis and Ruth Favor, July 1, 1907; announcement of Harlow Davis and Ruth Favor marriage; program of Lowell High School Annual Exhibition in Calisthenics, May 21, 1901; Betty Davis's report card, Grade 4, Winchester Public School; Minnie Stewart Davis's tombstone, Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Augusta, Maine; program of Cushing Academy Graduation, June 28, 1925; program for Repertory Theatre, Boston, 1925, The Wild Duck\ Bette's script for Booth Tarkington's Seventeen; letter from Harlow Davis to Bette, n.d.; letter from H. M. Grant to Ruthie Davis, June 2, 1924; letter from Warren Blake to Bette, summer 1925; letter from "Dr." Steve to Bette, January 24, 1926; Harlow Morrell Davis's Last Will and Testament, July 27, 1926.

NOTES FOR CHAPTERS 5-6

At Boston University, vital information on Bette's early stage career came from scrapbooks #1; #2; #3; #4; #12; #32; #55; and Ruthie's 1934 gift scrap-book to Bette.

Other material came from the following documents: letter from M. Olga Rogers (John Murray Anderson School) to Ruth Davis, May 21, 1928; letter from Ruthie Davis to Bette, April 27, 1928; letter from James Light to Bette, November 17, 1928; telegram from James Light to Bette, November 27,1928; telegram from James Light to Bette, January 3, 1929; telegram from James Light to Bette, February 4,1929; telegram from Marie (Robin Brown) to Bette, November 5, 1929; telegram from Charlie (Ansley) to Bette, November 1, 1929; telegram from Ruthie Davis to Bette, April 30, 1928; postcard from Marion to Harlow Davis, 1930; letter from Bette to Harlow Davis, May 6, 1929; telegram from Bobby Davis to Bette, October 15, 1930; letter from Rev. Paul Favor to his wife, Gail, March 6, 1929; card from Bette to Harlow Davis, 1929; note from Harlow Davis to Bette, 1929; letter from Bette to Harlow Davis, April 5, 1929; letter from Harlow Davis to Bette, March 25, 1929; letter from Harlow Davis to Bette, April 8, 1929; Bette's response to Harlow's April 8, 1929, letter, n.d.; telegram from Harlow Davis to Bette, March 5, 1929; note from Blanche Yurka to Bette, 1929; note from Charles Ansley to Bette, 1929; card from Charles Ansley to Bette, October 15, 1928; telegram from Marie Simpson (Robin Brown) to Bette, October 15, 1928; letter from Harlow Davis to Bette, March 25, 1929; note from Ruthie Davis to Bette, July 21, 1929; telegram from Ham Nelson to Bette, October 1930; telegram from Arthur Hopkins to Bette, May 16, 1930; Bette's annotated script of The Wild Duck; typescript of Bette's first interview, April 1929; Bette's first radio speech, handwritten on United Shoe Machinery Corporation stationery, 1929; Bette's contracts with the John Murray Anderson-Robert Milton School of Theatre

and Dance, October 19, 1927, and February 6, 1928; program of Examination Plays of the Junior Dramatic Class, January 27-28, 1928; Memorandum of Agreement, Provincetown Playhouse, March 2, 1929; Bette's contract with the Actors' Theatre Inc. (Blanche Yurka), April 4, 1929.