So who was Bette Davis?

 

Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis, on April 5th. 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts.

She was nicknamed, "The First Lady of Film."

Her performances in Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938) earned her Oscars. She is best known for her character Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950).

One of her classmates at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School in New York was Lucille Ball.

Bette Davis was the first woman to be president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1941).

She was the first actress to receive ten Academy Award nominations and the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.

She is mentioned by name in Madonna's #1 hit "Vogue."

She was nominated for an Academy Award 5 years in a row for movies in 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1942. She shares the record for most consecutive nominations with Greer Garson.

Bette claimed that she gave the Academy Award statue the nickname "Oscar" because she felt it resembled her husband, whose middle name was Oscar.

Her Early Career 

After more than twenty film roles, the role of the vicious and slatternly Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage (1934) earned Davis her first major critical acclaim.Many actresses feared playing unsympathetic characters, and several had refused the role, but Davis viewed it as an opportunity to show the range of her acting skills.

Her costar, Leslie Howard, was initially dismissive of her, but as filming progressed his attitude changed and he subsequently spoke highly of her abilities.

The director, John Cromwell, allowed her relative freedom, and commented, "I let Bette have her head. I trusted her instincts."

She insisted that she be portrayed realistically in her death scene, and said, "the last stages of consumption, poverty and neglect are not pretty and I intended to be convincing-looking".

The film was a success, and Davis's confronting characterization won praise from critics, with Life Magazine writing that she gave "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress."

When she was not nominated for an Academy Award, The Hollywood Citizen News questioned the omission and Norma Shearer, herself a nominee, joined a campaign to have Davis nominated. This prompted an announcement from the Academy president, Howard Estabrook, who said that under the circumstances "any voter...may write on the ballot his or her personal choice for the winners", thus allowing, for the only time in the Academy's history, the consideration of a candidate not officially nominated for an award.

Claudette Colbert won the award for It Happened One Night but the uproar led to a change in Academy voting procedures the following year, whereby nominations were determined by votes from all eligible members of a particular branch, rather than by a smaller committee, with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

Davis appeared in Dangerous (1935) as a troubled actress and received very good reviews. E. Arnot Robertson wrote in Picture Post, "I think Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. She gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet". The New York Times hailed her as "becoming one of the most interesting of our screen actresses."

She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, but felt it was belated recogniti Starbucks Demon From Hell Posted to A Little Of Everything by jeffryvance on August 18, 2007 Click to Play | View Details