Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

82 SCREENLAND First Spotlight Girl — Bette Davis Continued from page 18 struggle which will be worth-while portraying. I trust her good taste not to permit her to play even the most sordid characterizations with vulgarity or cheapness, but with a certain spiritual valor which will lift them above the ordinary, and justify them. I would be ashamed, chagrined, mortified, shocked, surprised, disapproving and all these negative things about Bette's work if I felt that she were not doing the best that she could. I do not care what parts my daughter plays just as long as she does them honestly, intelligently, squarely. Who is going to enact the cruel, pitiless, wicked parts that show the world some important things that are the matter with it, if it is not someone who will and can ? Many a woman or girl who has never when I felt that she would profit from hearing something about it from me. I thinkthat is one reason why she is so direct and fearless. There are no dark and "not to be entered," mysterious corners in her mind. It is almost unbelievable that my blueeyed daughter with almost Puritanical New England background has her name in electric lights all over the world for playing a type of heartlessness exactly the opposite to her own natural, loving self. And that the world of critics have acclaimed her performance of a mean, low woman who> did not hesitate to hold a human soul in bondage as the best portrayal of mental cruelty ever pictured on the screen. I do not know how my daughter learned the pantomime, the leer, the shrug that pictures meanness of soul, of too much sex and cruelty — except today we know that Cora Sue Collins and Otalie Kruger, daughter of Otto Kruger, are fast friends. Cora Sue plays with her pal's daddy in a film you'll see soon. stopped to realize what vanity or possessive tyranny can do to another had an opportunity to see it with drastic reality in Bette's work with the incomparable Leslie Howard in "Of Human Bondage." Many a foolish woman in love with her husband's partner may come to realize the consequences that may come from playing with fire, as in "Bordertown." I am willing for Bette to play the roles of even the worst type of women on the screen today just as long as the story meets this requirement : that the "badness" receives its punishment in the end. Wickedness does not go unpunished in real life, although it may often seem to. "Badness" does not pay. A picture is immoral to my point of view when crime and viciousness or deceitfulness are left unpunished at the end. It is an added sin to send out pictures in which right does not triumph and evil go down in defeat, since most pictures are seen by children and by others whose sense of right and wrong may not yet be clearly established. Crime should never be glorified. I do not mind but it is strange when one stops to think of it, that Bette's greatest success today has been built on the very type of "bad" woman from the knowledge of whose very existence I tried to shield Bette as she grew up, although I must say I never hesitated to talk out the subject of "bad" women or any other topic with her thoughts automatically express themselves through certain patterns of movement, whoever thinks them. None of these things did she learn in any. school she ever went to. What it was that told her what sharp, vicious jabs of words, what acid, supercilious tone would shrivel the soul of a sensitive man and make his heart sick, I have not the slightest idea. Certainly nothing I ever taught her led to the intuition that with a fluttering of the eyelids and incoherent bewildered uttering of words she could convey the mental collapse of the unfaithful, murderous wife of "Bordertown." I do not pretend to know the alchemy of thoughtforces which enables one person to move others and influence them to undreamed of effects. But I do know good work, clean-cut work, intuitive work when I see it. I do feel the surge and fire of dramatic temperament. I have always known that Bette had a gift of performance which would some day surprise the world. I saw it proved when the first preview of "Of Human Bondage" was held in Santa Barbara, and Bette's husband "Ham" and I were held spell-bound, glued to our seats for one hour and a half while the picture unfolded. (Bette, as usual, had been too frightened to come to the preview ! ) Although her confidence in her work has grown, she still sits home in terror until the previews and premieres are past and she has seen what the final verdict is. I was visiting Bette for a few brief weeks. Bette's husband and I were both out when the studio telephoned to say that the picture would be shown at Santa Barbara, so we did not learn of it until 6 :30 that evening when we arrived at home. This gave us only an hour and a half to reach Santa Barbara, a hundred miles away. Having Bette's high-powered car was the only thing that made it possible for us to reach there in time. Without a morsel of dinner we took our seats just as the first close-up of Bette was flashed on the screen. For one hour and a half of horrible realism we sat riveted without speaking a word, with only a fleeting glance now and then at each other. We left the theatre in absolute silence. Neither of us knew what to think, for we felt the picture would make or break her. We felt that the acting was superb, but would the public like the unpleasant story as well as the people at the preview seemed to ? I think one of the reasons she was so highly successful in the picture with Leslie Howard and in "Bordertown" is that she is so honest and also so without vanity. While she loves to play beautiful parts in gorgeous clothes, she is just as willing to wear ugly clothes and look repulsive or whatever it is necessary to look to portray reality. If she had been willing to accept _a characterization which would only make people like her she would have missed the greatest chance for acting that has yet come to her. "Bette owes all to you," some of my old friends have said. This is not true. I have shielded her from as many humdrum duties as possible. She has been free to pursue her way unmolested by me. I do not hover around her at the studio, as I have already intimated. Her career has been possible only by her own indefatigable perseverance and her ability to live understanding^ every part that has been given her. (The most perfect of them all so far, or at least the one I like the best, was the poignant, heartbreaking role of Hedvig in Ibsen's "The Wild Duck," which Bette played with Blanche Yurka several years ago, on the stage.) One way in which I know I helped her to develop her imagination, her intuition, her dramatic fervor, was in aiding her with her reading. From the time she could hold a book she was spelling out words and trying to read. It was then — when she was just a tiny thing puzzling over her A. B. C.'s and fairy tales — that I learned there was a hidden land within my little daughter's heart of hearts into which neither I nor any one else would ever be permitted to enter, but outside of which I should always have to sit and wait for her. Not that she would meaningly shut anyone out, for no child was ever more open and friendly and generous than she; but that no one could possibly enter with her because it was a spot in which she became someone' else. It was the land into which she retired with the books she read. The land of make-believe where she became one with the little girl she was reading about, and for the time being was completely absorbed in everything the storybook child did. Many children are like that of course. Perhaps .you were ! And then the day would come when that far-away look would be gone, when her eyes would be all bright and dancing, and she would be jumping around, helping with