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WHAT REALLY HAPPENE
BETTE DAVIS7
MARRIAGE?
/
&■
broken to pull meekly in double harness, and Ham, whose people for generations had no other basis of comparison for happy marriage, was frankly baffled and stunned. He had no preparation for coping with a personality that grew like Bette's, and, for the past year, he has simply given up.
If he didn't love her so much, and feel pretty certain that she loved him, and if he didn't have a lot of die-hard in his own temperament, he wouldn't have lasted this long.
lOR Ham is very definitely a person in his own right. He is no "Mr. Bette Davis" and no one has ever even dared imply it. The fact that he has refused consistently to submerge his own identity, as the husbands of so many stars do, is the very item that is going farthest toward helping him win this battle and possibly avoid divorce. If not, at least, to keep Bette's respect and friendship.
But for the past year all the hundreds of things impinging on Bette's importance in the screen firmament have crowded between them with added momentum, forcing him further and further away from her.
She knows it, and says so. Between trying to be alert to Bette's multitude of interests, which alone would require a superman, and build up his own business as an actor's agent, Ham was just plain worn out. He was as near a complete nervous and mental collapse as a man can be.
And Bette had all the impatience with this that any young and extremely vital and healthy person has toward defections in others. Ham had never before been seriously disturbed by her life; why should he be now? He had never been ill — he didn't look ill — why was he acting (Continued on page 87)
Bette's no doll-faced, spineless yes-woman. If she's a challenge to her friends, she is more than that to her husband