I’m a hausfrau at Heart, says Bette Davis

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33778, 26 February 1975, Page 6

I’m a hausfrau at Heart, says Bette Davis

r By

JOSEPH GLASCOTT

T in Neu- YorA, for the "Sydney Morning Herald. ")

Serenity has found Miss Bette Davis only recently. Life has been so far from tranquil for th actress who was queen of the movie industry’ during Hollywood's heyday.

Her biography seems like a catalogue of crises: four

■marriages, a brain-damaged adopted daughter, serious illnesses, including osteomyelitis of the jaw in 1954 which almost ended her life and which required major facial surgery and momentous battles with her Hollywood studios. In 1936, early in her career, she made a historic challenge to the Hollywood 1 contract system. Com-:

plaining about poor film scripts, low salary and in- | adequate rest periods between films, she attempted to break her contract by sailing for England and making a picture there. Her studio, Warner Bros, contested the action and won. Miss Davis was forced to return and fulfil her con-1 tract, but she subsequently won her demands. Those explosive days are long behind Miss Davis, together with the juicy roles’ the two-time Academy I Award winner poured out! from the Hollywood produc- j tion line. At last count. Miss Davis I had appeared in 84 films. | Between her first screen appearances in 1931 (“Bad Sister” and “Seed”) and 1947. Miss Davis completed 56 pictures. In the five years after that to 1952, she made 'another 17. By that time she (had already earned her first :S3m from films. I While reigning for years’ las the Queen of Hollywood, ishe was never, a permanent iresident of the film capital. (She never really left her I home town in New England, .where she was born in 1908. ’

She has now moved a little further south to Westport in the adjoining State of Connecticut. With fewer and fewer screen and acting commitments, Miss Davis now

.does what she says she like; best, cooking and pottering around her antqiqtie-fillec house. “I’m a hausfrau al heart," she says. Scorning facelifts as the wrinkles crease her face. Miss Davis accentuates her homely image by entertaining visitors in a rocking chair.

FLAMBOYANT

But on the table in her* living room there is a Bette Davis trademark — a pewter mug filled with cigarettes that she smokes incessantly. A second mug contains large kitchen matches which shei lights flamboyantly on the underside of the table. She is very proud of her collection of antique furniture, and recounts how one

- parent-in-law. the mother of ) her second husband — the ■ Boston businessman Arthur Farnsworth, who died of a I skull injury three years after! ■’the 1940 wedding — objeet-l ■ ed to her son marrying an | ■ actress. The elder Mrs I . I Farnsworth feared that an I actress would not value her I I I son’s precious collection of I •’New England antiques. 'I During her fourth, and I last, marriage to the actor! Garry Merrill (the marriage I j ended in divorce 14 years I j ago), Miss Davis adopted! two- children, Michael Mer-| I rill and Margo Merrill. I I Margo was found to have I ■ suffered brain damage, and I (required special schooling. Miss Davis’s first mar- I riage to a Massachusetts I school friend, Harmon Oscar | Nelson, in 1932, ended in di- 1 vorce in 1938. Bette Davis has portrayed ! the whole gamut of woman- |

hood — or at least Hollywood’s idea of womanhood ■ — during her long career in) flms. But the Bette Davis that I most people remember more : vividly is the theatrical, vamping, Margot Channing, the ageing actres challenged

by her youthful understudy, in “All About Eve.” Hamming to the ultimate, roaring that peace and quiet are for libraries, and warning “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy

’night,” she climaxed herj (career by playing a role’ (which surely must have! (been written with Miss' Davis in mind. Bette Davis has never: been afraid of the grand’ gesture. As one critic said, she dis- ’ played in her film roles “the’ vitality that makes fools of I film aestheticians who argue: ithat restraint is the key! 'quality of great film acting.” ’

. No one, fortunately, ever ’told Bette Davis about | method acting. Only the; larger-than-life characters | portrayed by Miss Davis are remembered from many of 1 the second-rate scrints in which she appeared.

Miss Davis agrees that she played the dominant female against weak male characters in most of her films.

“That’s because they wouldn’t let me play agai ist a strong character,”* she says. “I was a star. Besides

i I liked to play parts that I showed women’s problems. | Therefore, in "Cabin in I the Cotton" (1932), she* tells ■ a hapless Richard Barthei--1 mess that she would like to kiss him. but she has just washed her hair and can’t. i The late Leslie Howard, i co-starring tn “Of Human Bondage" (1934). is taunted j bv Miss Davis wiping awav I his kisses from her painted mouth. In "Now Voyager' (1942) she takes a cigarette from Paul Henried and says she will settle for the stars rather than the moon. Few will easily forget het chilling, mad spinster >1 “What Ever Happened to. Baby Jane?" or her Margot of “All About Eve”. But many people seeing her show in New Zealand — in which she talks about her life and times — will remember fondly the Bette Davis of an even earlier era when Saturday night was “picture night" and Bette Davis was the temptress. And no one will believe her if she repeats her ( famous quote from a tele-, vision interview. “The best j thing I ever went to bedwith was a good book.” They didn’t go to bed in Bette Davis movies, but’ those fade-outs were devastating.