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BETTE DAVIS
The disturbed heroine
One of her husbands, Gary Merrill, said that "whatever Bette would have chosen to do in life, she would have had to be the top or she couldn't have endured it." Probably no truer words have ever been spoken about Miss Davis. The question of whether she is really a great actress — in the theatrical, rather than the movie sense — has yet to be settled. But no one has ever been better than Davis at her best on the screen. She had tremendous nervous energy which communicated itself in a hundred small ways — the intensity of her voice, the famous mannerisms with the cigarette, the way in which her huge eyes skittered about, nervous, insecure, trying, it seemed, to discover a lurking peril, which never was far away in a Davis picture. Her responses had an electric intensity that verged on hysteria. One got the impression of a woman teetering along the brink of a breakdown — a break-_ down which never came because, in the end, by sheer will, she would pull herself together and, if not avert disaster, learn to live with it or to profit from it.
Miss Davis created a new screen type — the modern woman, neurotic, threatened, uncertain about her role in life, but determined to fight for happiness. Usually, she played a woman of considerable status — either an inheritor of wealth or the possessor of a prosperous career, a little bit mannish in manner, but beneath her aggressive exterior, frightened and lonely. There was a wild quality about this creation; you could never be absolutely certain what she might do next. But a strong man, a man as sure of his masculinity as the Davis character wanted to be sure of her femininity, could tame her.
As for Miss Davis herself, she was — and is — a woman of temperament and determination. Had she not possessed both qualities she would not have been a star at all, for although she had a youthful freshness, she was no beauty in the usual screen sense. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, April 5, 1908, she was reared in impoverished gentility; educated in private
Bette Davis in a role for which she was born, The Virgin Queen.
The first film after her strike against Warner
Brothers. She wanted better roles, got
one in 1937 gangster film, Marked Woman.
high schools and after graduation went to New York to study at the John Murray Anderson drama school. After the usual testing period in stock, she got two good parts on Broadway — in Broken Dishes and in The Solid South. Her first screen contract, with Universal, followed. She recalls that she had "about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville," and after a succession of dreary roles, she found herself out of a con