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The Girl Who Walked Home Alone

Simon & Schuster

Introduction

"I have few regrets, not because I've done everything in my life perfectly, but because my mother, Ruthie, instilled in me the idea that I should never think about what I've missed, only about what I'm missing."

From the time she was a little girl, Bette felt that life had something exceptional waiting for her, and that it would find her or that she would find it.

"None of us knows what our future will be, but you might say I was born with two crystal balls.

"I wanted the lioness's share. I had to be the best. I'm an overachiever. I always had the will to win. I felt it baking cookies. They had to be the best cookies anyone ever baked. But there was a price to pay.

"If a man is dedicated to his work, he's more of a man. If a woman feels that way, she's less of a woman. Those same qualities that women find so absolutely wonderful in a man, men don't find so wonderful in a woman.

"I'm the one who didn't get the man, which is the more interesting character on the screen, but in real life sometimes I wish I could justhave been the girl who got the man, and kept him. I got four husbands and several lovers, but I didn't keep any of them. I was invited to the White House, but no man stayed to share my white cottage."

She enjoyed being Bette Davis but sometimes it was a burden. "People wished to see the character they saw on the screen, or there were looks of disappointment on their faces.

"They actually expect you to be certain characters they saw in the films. They think I'm a difficult person because of the parts I've played. They're disappointed in you if you don't say those lines. They don't want you to be out of character.

"I expect you to tell everyone that I'm not that person. Anyway, I'm not just that person.

"I feel your audience, if you are a star, comes to see you with certain preconceptions and expectations. They do not want you so predictable that everything you are going to do is predictable, but they do want you to be at least within fifty percent of the character they are expecting. Speaking loosely, I would estimate about seventy-five percent is generally good. The trick is to go as far as you can, but not too far.

"Of course, I understand that a public person gives up a certain right to privacy, but I never wanted to be in the 'slime light.' 'Press' is all too often made up of two words, 'pry' and 'mess.' They're too busy looking for 'bedlines.'

"No one has been able to get any headlines, or bedlines, from me, thank you very much. I've never been the kiss-and-yell type.

"I've never understood wanting to put public people under the microscope. I do not understand this celebrity culture in which we live. Why are we so fascinated with the private lives of public people?

"Why are we peephole people?

"I've always hated being gossiped about. When I heard that people were talking about me, I consoled myself with what my mother, Ruthie, used to say: 'Birds peck at the best fruit.'

"Sometimes I'm asked, 'Have you ever had a face-lift?' No. Isn't it perfectly obvious? Or, 'Is that your real hair, Miss Davis?' Yes, indeed it is. And these are my real eyes, my real teeth, and my real tits."

Despite the negative aspects of fame, Bette cherished and enjoyed her own celebrity. She felt she had earned it. "I'm proud to say that I've paid my dues," she told me.

"Joe Mankiewicz [writer-director of All About Eve] once told me, 'Bette, on your tombstone will be inscribed, "She did it the hard way."' When he said that, I took it as a very large compliment. I was totally flattered. Totally. I thought it meant I hadn't slept my way to the top, that I was a real actress. I liked that. Of course, I'm not ready for my epitaph, yet!

"Then, I rethought what Joe said. Now I think what he meant was that if there was a hard way to do something, I'd choose it - for myself and everyone around me. But I had my standard for the film. Excellence. I couldn't let anything get in the way of that. I never made it harder for anyone else than I did for myself. You know, I'm not quite as feisty as people think.

"Someday I mean to call dear Joe and ask him what he meant. Joe is the kind of person who would do crossword puzzles in ink. One thing he was right about. I probably don't really enjoy anything if it's too easy. I enjoy challenges. When something is difficult, it doesn't stop me; it challenges me to go on.

"The one word I'd never want on my tombstone is 'quitter.'

"I still pray to God that somebody will send a good script my way. Every phone call, I hope. I wait for the mail. Today, in 1980, you have to be very lucky.

"It used to be that there were so many films, and writers thought about and wrote parts for you, and the studio bought properties for you. Now, you have to fit the part, a part that wasn't created for you that you can do."

On a day in March 1980, in New York City, my phone rang. I picked it up and I heard a distinctive woman's voice saying my name. The voice was one I had been familiar with all my life, though only from movie theaters and on television. It was Bette Davis. She explained that my number had been given to her by our mutual friend, publicist John Springer.

She said that she had read Hello, I Must Be Going, my recent book about Groucho Marx, and she wanted to know if I would be free to have lunch with her. She suggested we meet at her apartment, and then go to a restaurant.

The very next day I went to the Lombardy Hotel, on East 56th Street, just off Park Avenue in Manhattan. I took the elevator up to Bette's floor, the fourteenth, where the long hall leading to her apartment, 1404, was dimly lit. There, at the far end, framed in the proscenium arch of the doorway with the light behind her, was Bette Davis, a cinematic vision.

"This way. Here I am."

She leaned in a graceful pose against the door, her soft shoulder-length hair casually framing her face. Her black dress was not tight, but clinging softly, with a draped effect. Her skirt was knee-length, revealing shapely legs in ultrasheer nylons and black high heels. I had the illusion that I was walking into a 1940s Warner Brothers movie.

"I always like to have the door open and be waiting for the person who's coming so they don't have to arrive and meet a closed door. Don't stand there. Come in."

My attention was drawn to the slashes of bright red lipstick, but even more striking were her eyes. They were accentuated by blue eye shadow and layers of false lashes with brown, not black, mascara. It was the eyes that dominated.

I was to learn later that Bette customarily took this kind of care with her appearance when meeting someone for the first time. If for no other reason than that she had to put so much effort into a first meeting, she didn't have many of those. She shared with Mae West the belief that the first impression was the one that counted most and always remained. The next time, one met more of a private person and less of a star, someone who had put in fewer hours of preparation. By the third meeting, she could be quite casual, without her false eyelashes, without the carefully coiffed wig, but never without her bright red lips.

She insisted on hanging up my jacket, which I had left on a chair. "We don't want it to get wrinkled," she said. "What a beautiful Hermes scarf you're wearing. Absolutely beautiful."

Gleefully, she accepted the gift-wrapped box of Swiss chocolates I had brought her, tearing the paper in her haste to open the package, exclaiming, "I love gifts!"

The furnished hotel apartment would have seemed drab had it not been filled with small personal touches - books, flowers, a music box, all of which she had added to create the ambience of a home. "As a child, I didn't have a secure home and possessions. We were always moving."

Being "a homebody," she immediately had to make a place into her own, wherever she was, even if only for a few days, to make it seem she lived there. "When I travel, I bring things from my home with me, so I can establish a familiar relationship with my environment.

"Playing house is a childhood game I've never put away. My home has always meant so much to me. It was my kingdom, though it turned out to be my queendom. William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon may have been the most famous house in America, a palace, but when I was invited to dine at San Simeon, there wasn't any soap in the bathroom.

"Wherever I am, I think of the place I'm in as my home, and I can't bear sloppiness or disorganization. I feel sorry for people who waste their time hunting for things. My father could go into his bedroom in pitch darkness and find his socks, always in a pair. I like order, but I'm not crazy-clean like Miss Joan Crawford. Miss Crawford couldn't even use a bathroom unless she'd gotten down on her knees and scrubbed it clean first.

"I like to dust. Have you ever noticed the objects look back at you in a different way after you've dusted them?

"I don't like waste. It's my New England background, of which I'm very proud. I'm a Yankee. Even playing house as a child, I kept a very neat house.

"I'm always collecting things. I don't consider myself materialistic, but things do make me feel good. Reassured. It's easier to know them than people, because objects accept you as you are."

She introduced me to Sir Rufus, a rabbit music box, wearing a black velvet tailcoat lined with white satin. "Would you like to meet Sir Rufus? I love music boxes." She wound him up and played his tune for me.

"He's absolutely ready for a party, at all times," she said. "Do you recognize his song? It's Irving Berlin's 'Always,' my favorite. How I miss those sentimental melodies. We live in such an unsentimental time.

"I love the past, but I don't live in it. I have always thought about the ahead.

"The worst thing about the past is to lament the fact that today's so different, whenever it doesn't compare favorably ...

"It's interesting how memories pop into your head as you get older, the little kind of vignettes that in the midst of washing the dishes come to you, so that they are not really in the past, but in the present, with us."

She was pleased that I had accepted her invitation so quickly, "without being coy or playing games."

Rather than going out for lunch, she proposed we have something in her apartment. She said she wanted a quiet atmosphere for our conversation, and she had prepared our lunch herself rather than having to wait for room service. Then she announced she was "absolutely starving."

As she moved toward the kitchen, I asked if I could do anything.

"Absolutely not," she called back. "Absolutely not!" I was later to understand that everything about Bette was absolute.

A few minutes later, she returned with a nicely set tray of bread, crackers, and assorted cold cuts. There were little porcelain dishes of butter, mustard, and mayonnaise. The paper napkins had something written on them.

"Usually, I have my own linen napkins," she said, "but for the moment, I only have these paper napkins. They say, 'Happy Hour, five to seven.'" She laughed. "Imagine scheduling a time to be happy."

She put the tray down. "I got all the food at a very nice deli down the street.

"If you're a movie star, people think you're very rich. And they expect you to pay accordingly and to tip accordingly. And you don't even know what tip they're expecting. I understand that, and I try to tip more, so room service isn't something I feel I can afford. Besides, I really would rather prepare our lunch myself."

The apartment had vases filled with fresh flowers. "Do you like flowers?" She didn't wait for my answer. "Of course you do. All of us women do." A gardenia was floating in a glass bowl. "I love gardenias. They're so sexy.

"I always liked men who sent me flowers, but I have to admit most of the flowers I've enjoyed in my life, I've bought for myself. A great many of them, I grew. I'm a country mouse, you see.

"I'm rather good at flower arrangement, if I do say so myself. I find flowers very calming. In my professional life, I've enjoyed some complications and challenges. Even chaos. But in my home, there I demand order. It's easy to achieve because the furniture never gets hysterical and seldom moves around on its own. If you have order in your home, it offers a refuge and helps you face disorder in the outside world."

After lunch, Bette served tea, meticulously prepared by her from loose tea leaves, not bags as she pointed out, with cookies, which she called "biscuits," a word she preferred after her several visits to England.

As we were having our tea, she suggested we "get down to business." Business, as it turned out, was a book she hoped I would write about her as I had written about Groucho and the Marx Brothers. If the idea interested me, which it did, she suggested our making a start on the project while she was in New York and "totally" available.

"Do you ever have writer's block?" she asked.

"No, never," I answered. "Only publishing block."

She said she envied my being a writer, because as such I was a "blank page" person and could write on it by myself, while she had to wait for a phone call in order to be able to perform. "A watched telephone never rings, you know.

"I can tell you I learned it well after my leaving Warner Brothers looked like a debacle instead of a triumph. I detest waiting for the telephone to ring. I still shudder when I think about waiting for Willie to call. That's William Wyler. He was the love of my life in case you don't know."

She said that she didn't believe in pretending. "The only limit is to stay within good taste; however, remember this is the '80s, not the '50s. I want to set the record straight. I don't want to seem namby-pamby. I've reached that time in life when I can afford to be more totally frank and forthcoming now that most of me is in the past."

She wanted a "summing up" in the manner of Somerset Maugham's The Summing Up.

"I read what I could of Maugham before I did Of Human Bondage. In those days I was too busy career-building to read much, but I've always liked reading, especially Maugham. Later when I was what you call between jobs, I read everything of Maugham. Everything." She believed that playing Mildred in Maugham's Of Human Bondage was "an absolute turning point" in her career, and that The Letter was one of her best films.

"I feel I have something to say that can be of use to other people, especially women, not because I did it right, but because maybe someone can learn something from my mistakes. I think it's possible to learn more from mistakes than from successes, but it's good if anyone can learn from someone else's without having to make them all for yourself.

"Do you want to know the secret of my success? Easy. Brown mascara. I always wear brown mascara.

"Fair actresses should never use black mascara if they want their eyes to show up. It's the opposite of what they think, that black mascara will make them show up more.

"Of course, there's nothing like blue eye shadow to show up blue eyes, but that's obvious. The secret is, if you are fair, black mascara and dark eye shadow will make you look like a clown, or a harlot.

"I feel a woman should write the book about me. No question about it." She said she wouldn't feel as comfortable speaking to a man. "No man has ever really understood me. Come to think of it, no man has ever even tried. Well, except maybe for the female impersonators. Physically and vocally, they studied me, outside-in."

Bette was a great favorite among impersonators who did impressions of the stars because she had such strongly individual characteristics. She considered their attention "a compliment, highly flattering." She particularly enjoyed Charles Pierce's Bette Davis, and called him"supremely talented."

"For a long time, the impersonators didn't do me. I was worried about it. It meant I didn't have a distinct style.

"People think I don't like those impersonators who do me. Well, they're wrong. I like it very much, as long they are very good. The only time I don't like it is if they aren't good, or worse if they're better than I am. I watch them to learn about myself. Until I saw Arthur Blake, I never knew I moved my elbows so much.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Girl Who Walked Home Alone by Charlotte Chandler Copyright © 2006 by Charlotte Chandler. Excerpted by permission.
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