Autograph Collection!!! Douglas Fairbanks Bette Davis Carmal Myers Lois Wilson +

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (807) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176278959800 Autograph Collection!!! Douglas Fairbanks Bette Davis Carmal Myers Lois Wilson +. The Whales of August (1987). Wicked Stepmother (1989). Sheer Luck (1931). The Mystery Train (1931). Swing High (1930). The Fourth Alarm (1930). Girls Gone Wild (1929). Why Sailors Go Wrong (1928). 9 vintage autographs on album pages with Carmel Myers / Douglas Fairbanks June Collyer Bette Davis (pencil) Marion Shilling Lois Wilson Nick Stuart Sally Eilers Elliott Nugent (pencil)
June Collyer June Collyer (circa 1930).jpg Born Dorothea Heermance August 19, 1906 New York City, New York, U.S. Died March 16, 1968 (aged 61) Los Angeles, California, U.S. Occupation Film actress Years active 1927-1958 Spouse(s) Stuart Erwin (1931-1967) (his death) 2 children June Collyer (born Dorothea Heermance, August 19, 1906 – March 16, 1968) was an American film actress of the 1920s and 1930s. Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Death 5 Partial filmography 6 References 7 External links Early life Born in New York City,[1] Collyer chose to use her mother's maiden name[2] when she decided to pursue acting. Her father was Clayton Heermance, an attorney in New York.[3] Career A debutante[4] chosen by Allan Dwan, Collyer had her first starring role in 1927 when she starred in East Side, West Side.[5] She did a total of eleven films during the silent film era, and unlike many of that period she made a successful transition to sound movies. In 1928 she was one of thirteen girls selected as "WAMPAS Baby Stars", an honor her future sister-in-law Marian Shockley would also receive later on in 1932. In 1930 Collyer starred opposite Louise Dresser and Joyce Compton in The Three Sisters, and that same year she starred with Claudia Dell in Sweet Kitty Bellairs. She starred in nineteen films from 1930 to 1936. She took a break in the 1940s, either by choice or due to her not receiving starring roles. During the 1950s she returned to acting, having a regular role on the television series The Stu Erwin Show (aka "Trouble With Father") from 1950 through 1955, starring with her husband, Stu Erwin. She played in one episode of the 1958 series Playhouse 90, then retired. Personal life Collyer was the sister of Bud Collyer,[6] and her sister-in-law was actress Marian Shockley. On July 22, 1931, in Yuma, Arizona,[7] she married actor Stu Erwin[5]; they remained wed until he died in December 1967, just a few months before her own death. She remained in Los Angeles. Death Collyer died at the age of 61 on March 16, 1968, of bronchial pneumonia.[5] She was interred at Chapel of the Pines Crematory. Her brother Bud survived her at the time of her death, but died the following year, also at the age of 61. Partial filmography East Side, West Side (1927) Woman Wise (1928) Hangman's House (1928) Me, Gangster (1928) The Love Doctor (1929) Not Quite Decent (1929) River of Romance (1929) The Three Sisters (1930) A Man from Wyoming (1930) Extravagance (1930) Charley's Aunt (1930) Kiss Me Again (1931) The Brat (1931) Alexander Hamilton (1931) Lost in the Stratosphere (1934) The Ghost Walks (1934) Murder by Television (1935) A Face in the Fog (1936) Sunday Night at the Trocadero (1937)June Collyer June Collyer (circa 1930).jpg Born Dorothea Heermance August 19, 1906 New York City, New York, U.S. Died March 16, 1968 (aged 61) Los Angeles, California, U.S. Occupation Film actress Years active 1927-1958 Spouse(s) Stuart Erwin (1931-1967) (his death) 2 children June Collyer (born Dorothea Heermance, August 19, 1906 – March 16, 1968) was an American film actress of the 1920s and 1930s. Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Death 5 Partial filmography 6 References 7 External links Early life Born in New York City,[1] Collyer chose to use her mother's maiden name[2] when she decided to pursue acting. Her father was Clayton Heermance, an attorney in New York.[3] Career A debutante[4] chosen by Allan Dwan, Collyer had her first starring role in 1927 when she starred in East Side, West Side.[5] She did a total of eleven films during the silent film era, and unlike many of that period she made a successful transition to sound movies. In 1928 she was one of thirteen girls selected as "WAMPAS Baby Stars", an honor her future sister-in-law Marian Shockley would also receive later on in 1932. In 1930 Collyer starred opposite Louise Dresser and Joyce Compton in The Three Sisters, and that same year she starred with Claudia Dell in Sweet Kitty Bellairs. She starred in nineteen films from 1930 to 1936. She took a break in the 1940s, either by choice or due to her not receiving starring roles. During the 1950s she returned to acting, having a regular role on the television series The Stu Erwin Show (aka "Trouble With Father") from 1950 through 1955, starring with her husband, Stu Erwin. She played in one episode of the 1958 series Playhouse 90, then retired. Personal life Collyer was the sister of Bud Collyer,[6] and her sister-in-law was actress Marian Shockley. On July 22, 1931, in Yuma, Arizona,[7] she married actor Stu Erwin[5]; they remained wed until he died in December 1967, just a few months before her own death. She remained in Los Angeles. Death Collyer died at the age of 61 on March 16, 1968, of bronchial pneumonia.[5] She was interred at Chapel of the Pines Crematory. Her brother Bud survived her at the time of her death, but died the following year, also at the age of 61. Partial filmography East Side, West Side (1927) Woman Wise (1928) Hangman's House (1928) Me, Gangster (1928) The Love Doctor (1929) Not Quite Decent (1929) River of Romance (1929) The Three Sisters (1930) A Man from Wyoming (1930) Extravagance (1930) Charley's Aunt (1930) Kiss Me Again (1931) The Brat (1931) Alexander Hamilton (1931) Lost in the Stratosphere (1934) The Ghost Walks (1934) Murder by Television (1935) A Face in the Fog (1936) Sunday Night at the Trocadero (1937) Marion Shilling Marion Shilling newmovie1031.jpg Born Marion Helen Schilling December 3, 1910 Denver, Colorado, U.S. Died November 6, 2004 (aged 93) Torrance, California, U.S. Occupation Actress Spouse(s) Edward Cook (1937–1998; his death); 2 children Marion Shilling (December 3, 1910 – November 6, 2004) was an American film actress of the 1930s. Contents 1 Biography 2 Recognition 3 Personal life 4 Death 5 Selected filmography 6 References 7 External links Biography Marion Helen Schilling[1] was born in Denver, Colorado in 1910. Her family moved to St. Louis when she was young. She graduated from Central High School there in 1928.[2] She started her acting career as a stage actress, starring in stage plays such as Miss Lulu Betts and Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. In 1929 she received her first screen role in Wise Girls.[3] After a couple of roles in other films, she starred opposite William Powell in the 1930 crime drama Shadow of the Law. That movie springboarded her into roles as a B-movie heroine. In 1931 she was one of thirteen girls selected as "WAMPAS Baby Stars", a list that included future Hollywood star Marian Marsh. From 1930 to 1936 she starred in forty two films, mostly westerns or mysteries. She often starred opposite Tom Keene and Guinn "Big Boy" Williams. In the 1934 film serial, The Red Rider, she starred opposite early western film legend Buck Jones, with a supporting cast that included William Desmond and football legend Jim Thorpe. Recognition In 2002, Shilling received a Golden Boot Award for her contribution to Western films.[4] Personal life Shilling retired in 1936, to marry and have a family. She was married to Edward Cook from 1937 until his death in 1998. They had two children, Edward and Frances.[1] Death She never returned to acting, and died from natural causes on November 6, 2004, in a hospital in Torrance, California, aged 93.[3] Selected filmography Year Film Role Notes 1929 Wise Girls Ruth Bence 1930 Lord Byron of Broadway Nancy 1930 The Swellhead Mamie Judd 1930 Free and Easy Singer and dancer Uncredited 1930 Shadow of the Law Edith Wentworth 1930 On Your Back Jeanne Burke 1931 Beyond Victory Ina 1931 Young Donovan's Kid Kitty Costello 1931 The Common Law Stephanie Brown 1931 June First Marion 21 min 1931 Sundown Trail Dorothy ′Dottie′ Beals 1931 Take 'em and Shake 'em 18 min 1931 Forgotten Women Patricia Young 1931 Easy to Get Marion 18 min 1932 Only Men Wanted 20 min 1932 Shop Angel Dorothy Hayes 1932 The County Fair Alice Ainsworth 1932 Rule 'Em and Weep Ramona 19 min 1932 Gigolettes 18 min 1932 A Man's Land Peggy Turner 1932 Niagara Falls 19 min 1932 A Parisian Romance Claudette 1932 The Heart Punch Kitty Doyle 1933 Curtain at Eight Anice Cresmer 1934 Fighting to Live Mary Carson 1934 The Red Rider Marie Maxwel 1934 Inside Information Anne Seton 1934 Thunder Over Texas Helen Mason 1934 Elinor Norton Publisher's Staff Uncredited 1934 The Westerner Juanita Barnes 1935 Blazing Guns Betty Lou Rickard (as Marian Shilling) 1935 A Shot in the Dark Jean Coates 1935 Stone of Silver Creek Martha Mason 1935 The Keeper of the Bees Louise 1935 Society Fever Victoria Vandergriff 1935 Captured in Chinatown Ann Parker 1935 Rio Rattler Mary Adams 1935 Gun Play Madge Holt 1936 Gun Smoke Jean Culverson (as Marian Shilling) 1936 I'll Name the Murderer Smitty 1936 The Clutching Hand Verna Gironda 1936 The Idaho Kid Ruth Endicott 1936 Romance Rides the Range Carol Marland 1936 Cavalcade of the West Mary Christman Lois Wilson (June 28, 1894 – March 3, 1988) was an American actress who worked during the silent film era. She also directed two short films and was a scenario writer.[2] Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Filmography 5 References 6 External links Early life Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilson's family moved to Alabama when she was still very young. She earned a degree from Alabama Normal College (now the University of West Alabama), and became a school teacher for young children, soon leaving to pursue a film career. In 1915 Wilson moved to California after winning a beauty contest put on by Universal Studios and the Birmingham News. This pageant was the predecessor to the Miss Alabama/Miss America pageant system, and Wilson is considered the first Miss Alabama. Upon arriving in Hollywood, she auditioned and was hired by the Victor Film Company for several small film roles.[citation needed] In 1916, she visited Chicago, where she met pioneer female film director Lois Weber, who gave her a small part in her film The Dumb Girl of Portici, which starred famed ballerina Anna Pavlova. Weber then took her to Los Angeles, where she was groomed for stardom and began playing leads opposite actors such as J. Warren Kerrigan and Frank Keenan.[3] Career After appearing in several films at various studios, Wilson settled in at Paramount Pictures in 1919, where she remained until 1927. She was a WAMPAS Baby Star of 1922, and all told appeared in 150 movies. Her most recognized screen portrayals are Molly Wingate in The Covered Wagon (1923) and Daisy Buchanan in the silent film version of The Great Gatsby (1926). She acted opposite male stars such as Rudolph Valentino and John Gilbert.[citation needed] Wilson played both romantic leads and character parts. Despite making a successful transition to sound, Wilson was dissatisfied with the roles she received in the 1930s, and she soon retired in 1941, making only three films after 1939. Lois ventured to Broadway and television following her final role in The Girl from Jones Beach (1949) with Ronald Reagan. Wilson played in the network soap operas The Guiding Light in 1952 and The Edge of Night. She portrayed featured character roles. Wilson was also the model of the official poster for "America Welcomes the World", the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Celebration, in 1926.[4] Personal life She was once described as having a screen image of "the soft, marrying kind of woman"; in real life, however, she never married. She was chosen by Paramount Pictures to represent the motion picture industry at the British Empire Exposition of 1924. She was described as "a typical example of the American girl in character, culture and beauty". Lois Wilson died of pneumonia at the Riverside Hospital for Skilled Care in Reno, Nevada at the age of 93.[2] She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Her funeral service was conducted at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, California. Filmography The following is a list of films that Lois Wilson either directed, acted in, wrote or produced: Silent The Hypocrite (1915) Lost The New Adventures of Terence O'Rourke (1915) The Palace of Dust (1915) (*short) When a Queen Loved O'Rourke (1915) (*short) The Road to Paradise (1915) (*short) Langdon's Legacy (1916) Married on the Wing (1916) The Pool of Flame (1916) The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916); Extant The Gay Lord Waring (1916) Hulda the Silent (1916) A Son of the Immortals (1916) The Decoy (1916/I) (*Mutual film) The Silent Battle (1916) He Wrote a Book (1916) (*short) The Beckoning Trail (1916) Arthur's Desperate Resolve (1916) (*short) The White Man's Law (1916) A Soul at Stake (1916) (*short) The Decoy (1916) (*Universal film) Her Chance (1916) (*short) The Morals of Hilda (1916) Green Eyes (1916) (*short) Alone in the World (1917) Lost(*short: wrote, directed) The Whispered Name (1917) (*short) Black Evidence (1917) (*short) Won by Grit (1917) (*short) Flames of Treachery (1917) (*short) Treason (1917) Parentage (1917) Alimony (1917) A Man's Man (1918) His Robe of Honor (1918) The Turn of a Card (1918) One Dollar Bid (1918) Maid o' the Storm (1918) A Burglar for a Night (1918) The Bells (1918) Prisoners of the Pines (1918) Three X Gordon (1918) The Drifters (1919) Lost Come Again Smith (1919) Lost The End of the Game (1919) Survives Gates of Brass (1919) Lost The Best Man (1919) Lost A Man's Fight (1919) Lost Love Insurance (1919) Lost Why Smith Left Home (1919); Incomplete; Library of Congress The Price Woman Pays (1919) Lost It Pays to Advertise (1919) Lost Too Much Johnson (1919) Lost Who's Your Servant?(1920) Lost Thou Art the Man (1920) Lost The City of Masks (1920) Lost What's Your Hurry? (1920); Extant; Gosfilmofond A Full House (1920) Lost Burglar Proof (1920) Lost Midsummer Madness (1920); Extant;Library of Congress What Every Woman Knows (1921); Lost The City of Silent Men(1921) Lost The Lost Romance (1921); Incomplete; Library of Congress The Hell Diggers (1921) Lost Miss Lulu Bett (1921); Extant; Library of Congress The World's Champion (1922); Incomplete; Library of Congress Is Matrimony a Failure? (1922) Lost Our Leading Citizen (1922) Lost Manslaughter (1922); Extant;Library of Congress, George Eastman House, other... Broad Daylight (1922) Lost Without Compromise (1922) Lost The Covered Wagon (1923); Extant; Paramount Pictures Bella Donna (1923); Extant;Gosfilmofond Only 38 (1923) Lost A Man's Man (1923) Lost To the Last Man (1923)Extant; Gosfilmofond Ruggles of Red Gap (1923) Lost The Call of the Canyon (1923); Extant; Gosfilmofond 2010 Pied Piper Malone (1924); 'Extant; Gosfilmofond Icebound (1924); Lost Another Scandal (1924) Lost The Man Who Fights Alone (1924) Monsieur Beaucaire (1924); Extant; Library of Congress North of 36 (1924); Extant; Library of Congress Contraband (1925); Lost The Thundering Herd (1925); Lost Welcome Home (1925); Extant; Library of Congress Marry Me (1925); uncredited; Lost Rugged Water (1925); Lost The Vanishing American (1925); Extant; Library of Congress The King on Main Street (1925); Extant Irish Luck (1925)Extant Bluebeard's Seven Wives (1925); Lost Let's Get Married (1926); Extant; Library of Congress The Show-Off (1926); Extant; Library of Congress The Great Gatsby (1926); Lost New York (1927); Lost Broadway Nights (1927); Lost) The Gingham Girl (1927) Alias the Lone Wolf (1927); Extant; UCLA Film & TV, per IMDb French Dressing (1927); Lost Coney Island (1928) Miss Information (1928); *short Ransom (1928); Lost Sally's Shoulders (1928) Sound On Trial (1928); Lost Conquest (1928); Lost Object: Alimony (1928 Columbia) Lost A Bird in the Hand (1929); *short; Incomplete; reel#2 Kid Gloves (1929); Lost; IMDb The Gamblers (1929); Lost Her Husband's Women (1929); *short The Show of Shows (1929)Extant Wedding Rings (1929); Lost For Love or Money (1930) (*short;Extant UCLA unpreserved nitrate) The Furies (1930) Lost Lovin' the Ladies (1930)Extant; Library of Congress Temptation (1930)Extant; Library of Congress Once a Gentleman (1930) Lost Seed (1931) The Age for Love (1931) Lost Law and Order (1932)Extant The Expert (1932)Extant; Library of Congress The Rider of Death Valley (1932)Extant Drifting Souls (1932)Extant Divorce in the Family (1932)Extant The Crash (1932)Extant The Devil Is Driving (1932)Extant The Secrets of Wu Sin (1932)Extant Obey the Law (1933)Extant; Library of Congress Laughing at Life (1933) Deluge (1933)Extant In the Money (1933) Female (1933)Extant The Show-Off (1934)Extant No Greater Glory (1934) School for Girls (1934) There's Always Tomorrow (1934) Ticket to a Crime (1934) Bright Eyes (1934) Life Returns (1935) Public Opinion (1935) Born to Gamble (1935) Society Fever (1935) Cappy Ricks Returns (1935) Your Uncle Dudley (1935) The Return of Jimmy Valentine (1936) Wedding Present (1936) Laughing at Trouble (1936) Bad Little Angel (1939) Nobody's Children (1940) For Beauty's Sake (1941) The Girl from Jones Beach (1949) Nick Stuart (April 10, 1904 - April 7, 1973) was an Austro-Hungarian-born American actor and bandleader. His career spanned five decades, during which he appeared in over 50 films, more than half of them features, as well as film shorts, serials, and even one television appearance. He rose to stardom in such films as Girls Gone Wild and Chasing Through Europe, prior to expanding his business interests by creating a talent agency, and a popular upscale club in Hollywood. After being introduced to music by Guy Lombardo, he established his own band, "The Man with the Band from Movieland", which played for over twenty years. When he dissolved the band in 1961, he opened a haberdashery in Biloxi, Mississippi. He met his first wife, Sue Carol, while working on a film, and the two had a daughter, actress Carol Lee Ladd. While his first marriage was short-lived, his second marriage to Martha Burnett lasted over thirty years, until his death from cancer in 1973. Contents 1 Early life and family 2 Career 2.1 Film 2.2 Agency days 2.3 Entrance into music and later acting career 3 Later life and death 4 Filmography 5 References 6 External links Early life and family Nick Stuart and wife Sue Carol in 1930 Stuart was born Niculae Pratza on April 10, 1904, in Abrud (Abrudbánya), Transylvania, then part of Austria-Hungary. He emigrated to the United States as a child in 1913,[1][2] growing up in Dayton, Ohio.[3] Sue Carol, with her new baby, Carol Lee Stuart was married twice. The first time was to Sue Carol on November 28, 1929;[4] the two had a child, actress Carol Lee Ladd (born July 18, 1932).[5] The "Lee" in Carol Lee was named for Carol's best friend, Dixie Lee, the wife of Bing Crosby.[6] Initially, the couple attempted to hide their marriage from the public, with the help of the Crosbys. Stuart would make public appearances with Dixie Lee, while Bing Crosby would feign romantic interest with Sue Carol in public.[7] While on a personal appearances tour in 1931, the couple had $35,000 of jewelry stolen. The jewelry was taken from their parked car on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.[8] Less than a year after the birth of their child, reports began to circulate that their marriage was in trouble.[9] By August 1933 Stuart and Carol were estranged and living separate lives,[10][11] and divorced in 1934.[12][13][14] After the divorce, Stuart was romantically linked with several other women, including nightclub singer Bobbe Arnst (recently divorced from Johnny Weissmuller),[15][16] and Dorothy Lee.[17] Career Film In the mid-1920s Nick Prata (as he was then known) began working in the film industry, doing odd jobs around the set for Fox Film, such as prop boy, script clerk, and assistant cameraman.[18][19] While working as an assistant on Raoul Walsh's What Price Glory? in 1926, Prata was given a screen test, after which his name was changed to Nick Stuart.[18] Shortly after, he became Howard Hawks's personal assistant.[2] He appeared in minor roles in two film shorts, before being given an opportunity to act in a featured role by Hawks, in 1927's, The Cradle Snatchers.[20] After the success of The Cradle Snatchers, Stuart would star in several shorts, many of which again paired him with his Snatchers co-star, Sally Phipps, which included Gentlemen Prefer Scotch,[21] and Cupid and the Clock (based on a short story by O. Henry).[22] The two would star in Stuart's next three films in 1927 and 1928: High School Hero, Why Sailors Go Wrong, and News Parade. Stuart's next role was that of Sandy, starring alongside Victor McLaglen in William K. Howard's The River Pirate in 1928.[23] Stuart and Sue Carol had been linked together romantically since early in 1928, and would co-star in Stuart's next project, Girls Gone Wild.[24][25] Sue Carol greeting Nick Stuart at Union Station in Los Angeles, after his return from location filming in Europe for Chasing Through Europe. Stuart and Phipps appeared together in his next film, although Phipps was in a secondary role. Stuart's co-star in 1929's Joy Street, was Lois Moran, who had also been his love interest in The River Pirate.[26] Stuart and Phipps were again slated to co-star in Chasing Through Europe, the sequel to their successful film, News Parade.[27] However, she was replaced by June Collyer in July 1928,[28] who was replaced in turn by Sue Carol in September.[29] Stuart and Carol appeared in several films together over the next few years, including 1933's Secret Sinners.[30] Agency days In 1933 Stuart, along with David Kay, opened an agency in Hollywood, which represented actors, writers, and directors.[31] Later that year, their company signed an agreement with the Canadian film company, British Commonwealth Productions, to cast all of their films. The first film they cast was The Crimson West (released in the United States as Fighting Playboy), which would be the first full-length talking film produced in Canada.[32] The following year, he became the founder of the Bath and Tennis Club in Hollywood. The club was modeled on upscale clubs in the east, particularly those in Palm Beach and Long Island, New York, and included recreational facilities for tennis, squash, swimming, badminton, and handball.[33][34] Entrance into music and later acting career In the midst of his film career, after Guy Lombardo got him interested in music, Stuart began his own big band,[2] and became known as "The Man with the Band from Movieland".[3][35] Stuart had become friendly with Lombardo when he and his wife, Carol, had helped Lombardo's brother adopt a child in 1932.[36] By 1937, Stuart's band had achieved a modicum of fame, and had appeared in several film shorts,[37] including 1938's Twenty Girls and a Band.[38] After the creation of his band, Stuart would only sporadically appear in films over the next 20 years.[39] In the 1940s, he appeared in two of the Bowery Boys films, starring Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall, Mr. Muggs Steps Out (1943),[40] and Pride of the Bowery (1946).[41] Stuart's last starring role would be in the 1946 film, Gunsmoke.[42] From 1946 through 1963 Stuart would appear in only four more films,[39] although he appeared in several film serials, such as The Lost Planet (1953), Blackhawk: Fearless Champion of Freedom (1952), and King of the Congo (1952).[43] Stuart's one and only television appearance came in a featured role in the final episode of Navy Log, which aired on September 11, 1958.[44] In the 1960s, he would make his final appearance in a small role in Sydney Pollack's drama This Property Is Condemned, starring Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, and Charles Bronson.[45] Later life and death Stuart married Martha Burnett in 1942,[46] with whom he remained married until his death in 1973. Stuart dissolved his band in 1961, after which he opened a haberdashery in Biloxi, Mississippi, located in the Broadwater Beach Hotel.[2] Stuart died from cancer on April 7, 1973 in Biloxi, Mississippi.[47] He was buried in Southern Memorial Park in Biloxi, where his wife would be buried next to him upon her death in 1991.[48] Filmography (Per AFI database, and imdb.com. Feature films except as noted.)[39][43] The Cradle Snatchers (1927) High School Hero (1927) News Parade (1928) The River Pirate (1928) Why Sailors Go Wrong (1928) Chasing Through Europe (1929) Girls Gone Wild (1929) Joy Street (1929) Why Leave Home? (1929) The Fourth Alarm (1930) Happy Days (1930) Swing High (1930) The Mystery Train (1931) Sheer Luck (1931) Trapped (1931) Sundown Trail (1931) Fighting Playboy (1933)[49][50] Secret Sinners (1933) Police Call (1933) A Demon for Trouble (1934) Secrets of Chinatown (1935)[51] Put on the Spot (1936) Rio Grande Romance (1936) Blake of Scotland Yard (1937) Pride of the Bowery (1940) Mr. Muggs Steps Out (1943) Gunsmoke (1946) Journey Together (1946)[52] Blackhawk: Fearless Champion of Freedom (1952 - serial) King of the Congo (1952 - serial) The Lost Planet (1953 - serial) The Great Adventures of Captain Kidd (1953 - serial) Killer Ape (1953) The French Line (1954) It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) This Property Is Condemned (1966) Sally Eilers Sally Eilers Photoplay133.jpg Eilers in the January 1933 edition of Photoplay Magazine Born Dorothea Sally Eilers December 11, 1908 New York City, U.S. Died January 5, 1978 (aged 69) Woodland Hills, California, U.S. Occupation Actress Years active 1927–1950 Spouse(s) Hoot Gibson (1930–1933) Harry Joe Brown (1933–1943); 1 child Howard Barney (1943–1946) Hollingsworth Morse (1949–1958) Children 1[1] Dorothea Sally Eilers[2] (December 11, 1908 – January 5, 1978) was an American actress. Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Death 5 Partial filmography 6 References 7 External links Early life Eilers was born in New York City to a Jewish-American mother, Paula or Pauline Schoenberger, and a German-American father, Hio Peter Eilers (an inventor).[3] She had one sibling, a brother, Hio Peter Eilers Jr. When Eilers was young, she moved to Los Angeles with her parents, and in 1927 she graduated from Fairfax High School.[4] She went into films because so many of her friends were in pictures. She studied for the stage, specializing in dancing. Her first try was a failure, so she tried typing, but then went back into pictures and succeeded.[citation needed] Career She made her film debut in 1927 in The Red Mill,[5] directed by Roscoe Arbuckle. After several minor roles as an extra, in 1927-1928 she found work with Mack Sennett as one of his "flaming youth" comedians[2] in several comedy short subjects, along with Carole Lombard, who had been a school friend. In 1928, she was voted as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, a yearly list of young actresses selected by publicity people in the film business, with selection based on the actresses' having "shown the most promise during the past 12 months."[6] Eilers was a popular figure in early-1930s Hollywood, known for her high spirits and vivacity. Her films were mostly comedies and crime melodramas such as Quick Millions (1931) with Spencer Tracy and George Raft. By the end of the decade, her popularity had waned, and her subsequent film appearances were few. She made her final film appearance in Stage to Tucson (1950).[7] Personal life She was married four times, beginning with Western actor Hoot Gibson.[8] She and her second husband, Harry Joe Brown, had one child, a son, Harry Joe Brown Jr. (1934-2006). She lived in a mansion in Beverly Hills, California[9] designed by architect Paul R. Williams.[9] Eilers was a Democrat who supported Adlai Stevenson's campaign during the 1952 presidential election[10]. Like her mother, Eilers adhered to Judaism[11]. Death During her final years, Eilers suffered poor health, and died from a heart attack on January 5, 1978, in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 69. She was cremated and her remains were interred in a small niche in the Freedom Mausoleum, Columbarium of Understanding, Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, California.[12] Partial filmography The Red Mill (1927) (uncredited) Sunrise (1927) Paid to Love (1927) The Cradle Snatchers (1927) The Campus Vamp (1928) (short subject) Fazil (1928) The Good-Bye Kiss (1928) The Crowd (1928) Dry Martini (1928) Broadway Babies (1929) Weary River (1929) Sailor's Holiday (1929) The Long Long Trail (1929) The Show of Shows (1929) She Couldn't Say No (1930) Let Us Be Gay (1930) Doughboys (1930) Trigger Tricks (1930) Roaring Ranch (1930) Clearing the Range (1931) Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931) Quick Millions (1931) The Black Camel (1931) A Holy Terror (1931) Over the Hill (1931) Reducing (1931) Bad Girl (1931) Disorderly Conduct (1932) Hat Check Girl (1932) Dance Team (1932) Hold Me Tight (1933) Made on Broadway (1933) Sailor's Luck (1933) Second Hand Wife (1933) Central Airport (1933) State Fair (1933) Walls of Gold (1933) She Made Her Bed (1934) Three on a Honeymoon (1934) Pursuit (1935) Alias Mary Dow (1935) Carnival (1935) Remember Last Night? (1935) Don't Get Personal (1936) Talk of the Devil (1936) (British) Without Orders (1936) Strike Me Pink (1936) Danger Patrol (1937) We Have Our Moments (1937) Lady Behave! (1937) Tarnished Angel (1938) Condemned Women (1938) Everybody's Doing It (1938) The Nurse from Brooklyn (1938) Full Confession (1939) They Made Her a Spy (1939) First Aid (1943) (short subject) A Wave, a WAC and a Marine (1944) Strange Illusion (1945) Coroner Creek (1948) Elliott Nugent (September 20, 1896 in Dover, Ohio – August 9, 1980 in New York City) was an American actor, playwright, writer, and film director. Contents 1 Biography 2 Partial filmography 3 References 4 External links Biography Nugent, the son of actor J. C. Nugent,[1] successfully made the transition from silent film to sound. He directed The Cat and the Canary (1939), starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. He also directed the Hope films Never Say Die (1939) and My Favorite Brunette (1947).[2] Nugent was a college classmate (and lifelong friend) of fellow Ohioan James Thurber. Together, they wrote the Broadway play The Male Animal (1940)[1] in which Nugent starred with Gene Tierney. He also directed the 1942 Warner Bros. film version of The Male Animal, starring Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland.[citation needed] Nugent was the brother-in-law of actor Alan Bunce of Ethel and Albert fame. Partial filmography Headlines (1925) Wise Girls (1929) So This Is College (1929) Not So Dumb (1930) The Sins of the Children (1930) The Unholy Three (1930) (also writer, with J. C. Nugent) Romance (1930) as Harry The Last Flight (1931) The Mouthpiece (1932) (director) Life Begins (1932) (co-director) Whistling in the Dark (1933) (director) Three-Cornered Moon (1933) (director) If I Were Free (1933) (director) Two Alone (1934) (director) Strictly Dynamite (1934) (director) (unbilled) She Loves Me Not (1934) (director) Enter Madame (1935) (director) Splendor (1935) (director) Wives Never Know (1936) (director) It's All Yours (1937) Professor Beware (1938) (director) Give Me a Sailor (1938) (director) Never Say Die (1939) (director) The Cat and the Canary (1939) (director) Nothing But the Truth (1941) (director) The Male Animal (1942) (director) The Crystal Ball (1943) (director) Up in Arms (1944) (director) My Favorite Brunette (1947) (director) Welcome Stranger (1947) (director) My Girl Tisa (1948) (director) Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949) (director) The Great Gatsby (1949) (director) The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950) (director) My Outlaw Brother (1951) (director) Just for You (1952) (director) Bette Davis, who won two Academy Awards and cut a swath through Hollywood trailing cigarette smoke and delivering drop-dead barbs, died of breast cancer Friday night at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She was 81 years old and lived in West Hollywood, Calif. Miss Davis was en route to her home from the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, where she had been honored for her acting career. She arrived in Paris on Tuesday and was to fly to Los Angeles, but was taken instead to the hospital, on the outskirts of Paris. Her lawyer, Harold Schiff, said she had undergone a mastectomy in 1983. ''The doctors had told us the cancer had spread, that it was terminal,'' he said. ''The doctors had said let her go on going about her business.'' #2 Oscars, 10 Nominations For more than a half century, Bette Davis reigned as a Hollywood star in the grandest meaning of the term. With her huge and expressive eyes, her flamboyant mannerisms and her distinctive speaking style, she left an indelible mark on her audiences in a wide variety of roles. Nominated for 10 Oscars, Miss Davis was a perfectionist whose tempestuous battles for good scripts and the best production craftsmen for her films wreaked havoc in Hollywood executive suites. ''I was a legendary terror,'' she once recalled. ''I was insufferably rude and ill-mannered in the cultivation of my career. I had no time for pleasantries. I said what was on my mind, and it wasn't always printable. I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and ofttimes disagreeable. I suppose I'm larger than life.'' Continue reading the main story She was indeed. Few in the entertainment industry could deny that Bette Davis possessed all the legendary indestructibility of the New England Yankee that she was. Starting as a stage actress, she won spectacular fame as a screen star and, as she grew old, shifted effortlessly to high-paying television roles. Miss Davis's two Oscars for best performance by an actress were won in 1935, for ''Dangerous,'' and in 1938, for ''Jezebel.'' But perhaps she is best recalled for her tour de force as Margo Channing, the tough-talking but soft-hearted stage actress in ''All About Eve,'' for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She made almost 100 films. Her 10 nominations for Oscars are the most any actress has received. And she received many other honors, including the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute and the Cesar Award of the French film industry. In 1987 she received the Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievements in the performing arts. The Kennedy Honors coincided with the release of ''The Whales of August,'' a film in which Miss Davis co-starred with Lillian Gish and for which she won wide critical praise. She appeared in that movie and in television and film roles despite having had a mastectomy and a series of strokes while hospitalized in 1983. ''It was my terror that I'd never work again,'' she said afterwards, ''for I have always very much loved to work.'' Last April 24, Miss Davis was honored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at its annual tribute, joining the company of such previous honorees as Sir Laurence Olivier and Charlie Chaplin. ''An honor I'm delighted to get,'' she said at the time. ''Greedy, greedy. Can't have too many awards. I've gotten just about every award there is.'' Enduring Popularity 'Acting Should Be Larger Than Life' Although Miss Davis reached the apex of her popularity in films between the mid-1930's and the early 50's, her appeal swept across generations, due largely to her frequent appearances in made-for-television films and the repeated showings of her old, now-classic movies on television. These classics include ''Of Human Bondage,'' ''Dark Victory,'' ''The Corn Is Green,'' ''The Letter,'' ''The Great Lie,'' ''A Stolen Life,'' ''Now, Voyager,'' ''Mr. Skeffington,'' ''The Little Foxes,'' ''The Petrified Forest'' and ''Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?'' New generations of entertainers, many of them female impersonators, have found her distinct mannerisms and clipped speech irresistible material for their acts. ''Oh Petah, Petah, Petah,'' such an impersonator will say, rolling exaggeratedly widened eyes and puffing savagely on a cigarette. ''What a dump!'' And, inevitably, the memorable line that Margo Channing utters as she walks drunkenly up the stairs at her party: ''Fasten your seat belts; it's going to be a bumpy night.'' ''You know, I've learned from the imitators,'' Miss Davis said in an interview this year. ''I really have. I was never conscious I moved my elbow like that'' - she moved it from side to side - ''until I saw someone doing me.'' She was always proud of her approach to acting. ''Natural!'' she said. ''That isn't the point of acting. The public must believe us. They must also be somehow ennobled. Did I ever try to be low-key? Never, never, never! I fought that from the beginning. I think that acting should be larger than life.'' At First, Simply 'Betty' A Broken Home And School Away Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Mass., on April 5, 1908, Miss Davis came from a firmly rooted Yankee background. Her mother was the former Ruth Favor; her father, Harlow Morrell Davis, a Harvard Law School graduate who became a Government patent attorney. Her father divorced her mother when Miss Davis was 7 and her sister, Barbara, was 5, leaving her mother to rear the children alone. In later years Miss Davis said many times that she saw the divorce as her father's abandonment of his family, and that it left her barren of love for him and preternaturally devoted to her doting mother. Mrs. Davis put the girls in boarding school in Massachusetts and moved to New York. In 1917, she was joined by her daughters. It was at about that time that ''Betty'' Davis took the more exotic-sounding name that would become world-famed. A friend of her mother's who was reading Balzac's ''La Cousine Bette'' suggested the name-spelling change, telling her that it would ''set you apart, my dear.'' In her teens, Miss Davis returned to New England, living in several towns there while her mother worked as a portrait photographer. She waited on tables at her schools, and once, to help with family expenses, posed nude for a woman making a sculpture. Miss Davis decided in her teens that she wanted to become an actress, and her mother took her to New York in 1928, where she arranged for her to read for Eva Le Gallienne, whose Civic Repertory Theater was then one of the most popular touring companies. ''Miss Le Gallienne thought I was not serious enough in my approach to warrant my attendance at her school,'' Miss Davis recalled years later. Breaking Into the Business Stage Experience, Looks and a Voice Miss Davis's first professional acting job was with a winter stock company in Rochester, run by the director George Cukor, who dismissed her after a few months. She made her New York acting debut in 1929, at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village, in Virgil Geddes's ''The Earth Between.'' Brooks Atkinson, critic for The New York Times, wrote that she was ''an entrancing creature.'' Successes and disappointments were to come in rapid order after that. The young actress, then only 21 years old, was in her first Broadway hit, ''Broken Dishes,'' quickly followed by ''Solid South,'' in which she played the beguilingly named Alabama Follensby, the first of many Southern-belle roles that were to come her way. The movies had learned to talk only a few years earlier, and Hollywood was greedily spiriting away Broadway actors and actresses who had good speaking voices as well as looks. It was thus perhaps inevitable that a fresh young actress with some training and experience and a couple of good notices would be asked to take a screen test. She was given a $300-a-week contract by Universal Pictures, and Miss Davis and her mother went to Los Angeles in 1930. Her first movie role was in ''Bad Sister,'' notable only for the fact that it also introduced Humphrey Bogart to films. But the movie's cinematographer, Karl Freund, passed the word to studio bosses that ''Davis has lovely eyes,'' and just as she was to be dropped, her option was picked up for another 13 weeks. By the end of 1932, Miss Davis, discouraged after having appeared in six lackluster movies and finally without a contract, prepared to return with her mother to New York. Then she got a call from George Arliss, the highly respected English actor, who was to be her mentor until his death. He hired Miss Davis as his leading lady in ''The Man Who Played God,'' her breakthrough movie role. The film was a success, and its producer, Warner Brothers, signed Miss Davis to her first contract. It was the start of a love-hate relationship with the studio that was characterized by Miss Davis's frequent storming off sets, being suspended for refusing to act in what she considered inferior movies, and going to court to sever her ties with Warners. But in her first three years at Warners Miss Davis made 14 films, including Edna Ferber's ''So Big,'' with Barbara Stanwyck starring, and ''20,000 Years in Sing Sing,'' which was, she was to say, ''my only film with the great Spencer Tracy, to my everlasting regret.'' ''He was the finest actor I ever worked with,'' she said. Getting Parts, and Noticed Unafraid to Play The Villainess She was working hard, in mostly forgettable fare, but Miss Davis was also learning the movie craft and earning the respect of technicians. From the start Miss Davis, unlike leading ladies of the day, had no qualms about playing unsympathetic roles, and so was overjoyed in 1934 when she was lent by Warners to the rival RKO studios to play the cruel and slatternly waitress Mildred in W. Somerset Maughham's ''Of Human Bondage,'' opposite Leslie Howard as the crippled hero Philip. ''Every actor who becomes a star is usually remembered for one or two roles,'' she said, ''like Judy Garland in 'The Wizard of Oz', Garbo in 'Camille,' Brando in 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' Mildred in 'Of Human Bondage' was such a role for me. She was the first leading-lady villainess ever played on a screen for real.'' ''It's odd that people remember me best for my evil roles,'' she said, ''since I played so many other kinds of characters. But villains always have the best-written parts.'' She was widely praised for her performance as Mildred and nominated for an Academy Award, but she failed to win one, mostly, she said, because Warner Brothers did not want to promote an Oscar for a film it did not produce. She came to regard the Oscar that she won the next year, for ''Dangerous,'' as ''a consolation prize.'' She was always proud of her two Oscars, though, and said this year: ''I'm not a bit modest about them. I don't use those boys for door stops.'' Warners was treating her with new respect, giving her movies like ''The Petrified Forest,'' with Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart, but Miss Davis harbored a festering resentment against what she called ''the contract slave system'' at the studio. Deciding in 1936 to defy the strictures of her contract, Miss Davis agreed with an English company to go to London to make two movies. Years later she was to ruefully confess that before she left, Jack L. Warner, the studio head, offered her a chance ''to play one of the great screen roles of all time, but I didn't know it.'' '' 'Please don't leave. I just bought a wonderful book for you,' '' she quoted Mr. Warner as saying. ''And I said, 'I'll bet it's a pip!' and walked out of his office.'' She learned later that the role she turned down was Scarlett O'Hara in ''Gone With the Wind.'' Mr. Warner later gave up his option on it. The Glorious Years Memorable Roles, One After Another In England, Miss Davis was sued by Warner Brothers, which succeeded in preventing her from working for another producer while under contract to Warners. But once she had returned to the United States, Warners gave her a new contract calling for fewer pictures at a much higher salary. They also gave her excellent, high-budget pictures, like ''Jezebel,'' for which she won her second Oscar in 1938. In a single year, 1939, Warners released no fewer than four blockbuster Davis movies: ''Dark Victory,'' ''Juarez,'' ''The Old Maid'' and ''The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,'' ''Jezebel'' began her halcyon years, she said, and ''in 1939 I secured my career and my stardom forever; I made five pictures in 12 months, and every one of them made money.'' The memorable Davis roles continued in swift order: The murderous and unfaithful planter's wife in Maugham's ''The Letter'' in 1940, quickly followed the next year by ''The Great Lie'' and ''The Little Foxes,'' in which she played the scheming Regina Giddens. In 1942 she scored again in ''Now, Voyager,'' as Charlotte Vale, a frumpish spinster who blossoms into a confident beauty and finds true love with Paul Henreid. The film is remembered by movie buffs for the scenes in which Mr. Henreid lights two cigarettes at once and gives one to Miss Davis. There were other triumphs in the 1940's - ''The Man Who Came to Dinner,'' ''Watch on the Rhine,'' ''Mr. Skeffington,'' ''The Corn Is Green'' and ''A Stolen Life.'' But Miss Davis's luck began to run out with critical and box-office disasters like ''Winter Meeting'' and ''Deception,'' and in 1949 Warner Brothers, after 19 years, released her from her contract while she was making the ludicrous melodrama ''Beyond the Forest.'' In it a by-then plumpish Miss Davis uttered one of her most famous ''camp'' lines, so often used by her mimics, ''What a dump!'' Anguish and Acclaim Role of a Lifetime In 'All About Eve' With the end of the Warners era, Miss Davis's third marriage, to William Grant Sherry, an artist by whom she had a daughter, Barbara Davis Sherry, was also ending. She won custody of her daughter. Miss Davis had previously been married to Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr., a band leader, and she said in 1982 that on his insistence she had two abortions. ''That's what he wanted,'' she said. ''Being the dutiful wife, that's what I did.'' The marriage ended in divorce. But for decades afterward, Miss Davis publicly battled with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, insisting that she had bestowed her first husband's middle name on the Oscar. ''The Academy has fought stoically to claim that they named the Oscar,'' she said. ''But of course I did. I named it after the rear end of my husband. Why? Because that's what it looked like.'' Miss Davis's second husband, Arthur Farnsworth, a businessman, died of head injuries suffered in a fall in 1943. Miss Davis was filming ''Payment on Demand'' in 1949 - it was not released until 1951 - when she was offered a role of a lifetime in what she was to call ''that charmed movie, 'All About Eve.' '' She was a last-minute replacement for Claudette Colbert, for whom the director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, had written the role of Margo Channing, the fading Broadway star. Miss Colbert was unable to begin the film on schedule because she ''hurt her back, thank God,'' as Miss Davis liked to recall it. ''When I finished reading 'All About Eve' I was on Cloud Nine,'' said the actress. ''That night Joe Mankiewicz told me Margo Channing was the kind of dame who would treat her mink coat like a poncho.'' She played Margo that way, and brilliantly, and with the aid of a witty, literate script, sharp direction by Mr. Mankiewicz, and a sparkling cast that included Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Marilyn Monroe (in a supporting role), and Thelma Ritter, the movie became one of the all-time great Hollywood films. During the filming of ''All About Eve,'' Miss Davis became romantically involved with her leading man, Gary Merrill, and they were married in 1950. Soon afterward they adopted two children, Margot and Michael. The 'Darkest Decade' A Broadway Flop, A Retreat to Maine Miss Davis received another Oscar nomination for ''The Star,'' released in 1953, but the film was unsuccessful. She was by then 45 and younger actresses were being offered the parts that would have once been hers. She accepted an offer to return to Broadway in a revue, ''Two's Company.'' When the show opened in New York in December 1952, Miss Davis recalled years later, ''The ovation was, to say the least, heartwarming, the reviews were bloodcurdling.'' The revue closed after 90 performances. Miss Davis and Mr. Merrill took an option to buy a home in Maine and, she said with wry amusement, ''We called our house Witch Way because we didn't know which way we were going and a witch lived there. Guess who?'' ''For three years I was solely a wife and mother and Gary fell out of love with me,'' Miss Davis was to say years later. During that period it also became apparent that the Merrills' adopted daughter, Margot, was retarded, and at the age of 3 she had to be put in a special school. Margot has since lived in homes for the retarded. During what she was to call her ''darkest decade,'' the 1950's, while the the Merrills' marriage continued to disintegrate, Miss Davis again played Elizabeth I in ''The Virgin Queen'' and a year later, in 1956, appeared in Paddy Chayefsky's ''A Catered Affair'' as Ma Hurley, a Bronx housewife, which she sometimes said was her favorite role. The Merrills also traveled cross-country doing one-night stands in ''The World of Carl Sandburg'' until 1960, when they were divorced. Friends and Enemies Fonda, Crawford, Cagney and Flynn Having settled into character acting, Miss Davis in 1961 scored a success as the gin-soaked ''bag lady'' Apple Annie in ''Pocketful of Miracles.'' That same year she was praised for her performance on Broadway in Tennessee Wiliams's ''The Night of the Iguana,'' which she left in April 1962 to film ''Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?'' a box-office winner that earned her yet another Accademy Award nomination for best actress of the year. The horror movie, in which Miss Davis wore pasty white makeup and padded herself to appear overweight, revolved around two show-business has-been sisters living in creepy seclusion in a Hollywood mansion. The role of the loony Baby Jane Hansen, addled into thinking she was going to make a comeback in vaudeville, gave Miss Davis a chance to pull out all the acting stops, and she did so with relish. The other, wheelchair-bound, sister was played by Joan Crawford. The casting of Miss Davis and Miss Crawford in ''Baby Jane'' resuscitated longstanding rumors that they had feuded when both were Warners stars. In 1982 Miss Davis told an interviewer, ''I never feuded with Joan Crawford. During 'Baby Jane' the whole world hoped we would fight but we did not. We were both pros.'' In any event, Miss Davis was not reticent about revealing her rancor against other performers. She accused Miriam Hopkins, with whom she co-starred in ''The Old Maid'' and ''Old Acquaintance,'' of upstaging her and scene-stealing. She also disliked Errol Flynn, her co-star in ''Elizabeth and Essex,'' calling him ''unprofessional.'' Intense as her rivalries were, her friendships were deep and long lasting, particularly for Claude Rains, Henry Fonda, James Cagney, Paul Henreid, Olivia de Havilland, Anne Baxter and Geradine Fitzgerald. As she grew older, Miss Davis continued making movies, many of them horror thrillers or melodramas, like ''The Anniversary'' (1968), in which she wore a patch over one eye. Unlike many of her contemporaries who held out against appearing on television when it was in its infancy in the 1950's, Miss Davis embraced it. She appeared as a guest on the Jimmy Durante comedy show, and made episodes of popular series like ''Gunsmoke'' and ''Perry Mason.'' Writing Her Own Epitaph 'The Sweetness Of My Joy' Despite advancing age Miss Davis kept on working, appearing on television and in an occasional movie, some of them made for television. She said she worked into her later years because the money came in handy, and work was part of her Yankee heritage. ''It is only work that truly satisfies,'' she said. ''No one has ever understood the sweetness of my joy at the end of a good day's work. I guess I threw everything else down the drain.'' This included her personal life, she said, adding: ''All my marriages were charades, and I was equally responsible. But I always fell in love. That was the original sin.'' It was never a secret that Miss Davis was temperamental, opinionated and often difficult to get along with, but in 1985 a scandalous book about her, by her own daughter, shocked her critics as well as her fans. In ''My Mother's Keeper,'' B. D. Hyman portrayed Miss Davis as an abusive, domineering and hateful mother and as a grotesque alcoholic who was largely responsible for her own mistreatment by certain of her husbands. Two years later Miss Davis replied to Mrs. Hyman's charges with her own bestseller, 'This 'N That,'' in which she defended herself as the victim of a lying and ungrateful child. She confessed later that her estrangement from her daughter pained her. For some years after her last divorce Miss Davis lived in Weston, Conn., but in the late 1970's she moved into an apartment in West Hollywood. ''Indestructible,'' she once said. ''That's the word that's often used to describe me. I suppose it means that I just overcame everything. But without things to overcome, you don't become much of a person, do you?'' ''I know what I want as my epitaph,'' she said. ''Here lies Ruth Elizabeth Davis - she did it the hard way.'' Douglas Fairbanks (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer.[1] He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro but spent the early part of his career making comedies. Fairbanks was a founding member of United Artists. He was also a founding member of The Motion Picture Academy and hosted the first Oscars Ceremony in 1929. With his marriage to Mary Pickford in 1920, the couple became Hollywood royalty and Fairbanks was referred to as "The King of Hollywood",[2] a nickname later passed on to actor Clark Gable. Though widely considered as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the 1910s and 1920s, Fairbanks' career rapidly declined with the advent of the "talkies". His final film was The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Early career 2.2 Hollywood 2.3 Career decline and retirement 3 Death 4 Legacy 5 Filmography 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links Early life Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman (spelled "Ulman" by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in his memoirs) in Denver, Colorado, the son of Hezekiah Charles Ullman (September 15, 1833 – February 23, 1915) and Ella Adelaide (née Marsh; 1847–1915). He had two half-brothers, John Fairbanks, Jr. (born 1873) and Norris Wilcox (February 20, 1876 – October 21, 1946),[3] and a full brother, Robert Payne Ullman (March 13, 1882 – February 22, 1948). His father was born in Berrysburg, Pennsylvania, and raised in Williamsport. He was the fourth child in a Jewish family consisting of six sons and four daughters. Charles's parents, Lazarus Ullman and Lydia Abrahams, had immigrated to the U.S. in 1830 from Baden, Germany. When he was 17, Charles started a small publishing business in Philadelphia. Two years later, he left for New York to study law. Charles met Ella Adelaide Marsh after she married his friend and client John Fairbanks, a wealthy New Orleans sugar mill and plantation owner. The couple had a son, John, and shortly thereafter John Senior died of tuberculosis. Ella, born into a wealthy southern Roman Catholic family, was overprotected and knew little of her husband's business. Consequently, she was swindled out of her fortune by her husband's partners. Even the efforts of Charles Ullman, acting on her behalf, failed to regain any of the family fortune for her.[citation needed] Distraught and lonely, she met and married a courtly Georgian, Edward Wilcox, who turned out to be an alcoholic. After they had a son, Norris, she divorced Wilcox with Charles acting as her own lawyer in the suit. The pretty southern belle soon became romantically involved with Charles and agreed to move to Denver with him to pursue mining investments. They arrived in Denver in 1881 with her son, John. (Norris was left in Georgia with relatives and was never sent for by his mother.) They were married and in 1882 had a child, Robert and then a second son, Douglas, a year later. Charles purchased several mining interests in the Rocky Mountains, and he re-established his law practice. Charles Ullman, after hearing of his wife's philandering, abandoned the family when Douglas was five years old. Douglas and his older brother Robert were brought up by their mother, who gave them the family name Fairbanks, after her first husband.[citation needed] Career Early career Douglas Fairbanks began acting at an early age, in amateur theatre on the Denver stage, performing in summer stock at the Elitch Gardens Theatre, and other productions sponsored by Margaret Fealy, who ran an acting school for young people in Denver.[4] He attended Denver East High School, and was expelled for cutting the wires on the school piano.[4] He left school in the spring of 1899, at the age of 15.[4] He variously claimed to have attended Colorado School of Mines and Harvard University, but neither claim is true. He went with the acting troupe of Frederick Warde, beginning a cross country tour in September 1899. He toured with Warde for two seasons, functioning in dual roles, both as actor and as the assistant stage manager in his second year with the group.[4] After two years he moved to New York, where he found his first Broadway role in Her Lord and Master, which premiered in February 1902. He worked in a hardware store and as a clerk in a Wall Street office between acting jobs.[5] His Broadway appearances included the popular A Gentleman from Mississippi in 1908–09. On July 11, 1907, Fairbanks married Anna Beth Sully, the daughter of wealthy industrialist Daniel J. Sully, in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. They had one son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., also a noted actor. In 1915, the family moved to Los Angeles.[citation needed] Hollywood D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin (seated) and Douglas Fairbanks at the signing of the contract establishing United Artists motion picture studio in 1919. Lawyers Albert Banzhaf (left) and Dennis F. O'Brien (right) stand in the background. After moving to Los Angeles, Fairbanks signed a contract with Triangle Pictures in 1915 and began working under the supervision of D.W. Griffith. His first film was titled The Lamb, in which he debuted the athletic abilities that would gain him wide attention among theatre audiences.[6] His athleticism was not appreciated by Griffith, however, and he was brought to the attention of Anita Loos and John Emerson, who wrote and directed many of his early romantic comedies. In 1916, Fairbanks established his own company, the Douglas Fairbanks Film Corporation,[7] and would soon get a job at Paramount.[7] Fairbanks speaking in front of a crowd at a 1918 war bond drive in New York City. Fairbanks met actress Mary Pickford at a party in 1916, and the couple soon began an affair. In 1917, they joined Fairbanks' friend Charlie Chaplin[6] selling war bonds by train across the United States. Pickford and Chaplin were the two highest paid film stars in Hollywood at that time. To curtail these stars' astronomical salaries, the large studios attempted to monopolize distributors and exhibitors. By 1918, Fairbanks was Hollywood's most popular actor,[8] and within three years of his arrival, Fairbanks' popularity and business acumen raised him to the third-highest paid. In 1917, Fairbanks capitalized on his rising popularity by publishing a self-help book, Laugh and Live which extolled the power of positive thinking and self-confidence in raising one's health, business and social prospects.[9] To avoid being controlled by the studios and to protect their independence, Fairbanks, Pickford, Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith formed United Artists in 1919, which created their own distributorships and gave them complete artistic control over their films and the profits generated. The company was kept solvent in the years immediately after its formation largely by the success of Fairbanks' films. The Mark of Zorro. In late 1918, Sully was granted a divorce from Fairbanks, the judgment being finalized in early 1919. After the divorce, Fairbanks was determined to have Pickford become his wife, but she was still married to actor Owen Moore. He finally gave her an ultimatum. She then obtained a fast divorce in the small Nevada town of Minden on March 2, 1920. Fairbanks leased the Beverly Hills mansion Grayhall and was rumored to have used it during his courtship of Pickford. The couple married on March 28, 1920. Pickford's divorce from Moore was contested by Nevada legislators, however, and the dispute was not settled until 1922. Even though the lawmakers objected to the marriage, the public went wild over the idea of "Everybody's Hero" marrying "America's Sweetheart." They were greeted by large crowds in London and Paris during their European honeymoon, becoming Hollywood's first celebrity couple. During the years they were married, Fairbanks and Pickford were regarded as "Hollywood Royalty," famous for entertaining at their Beverly Hills estate, Pickfair. Douglas Fairbanks in the title role in Robin Hood (1922). By 1920, Fairbanks had completed twenty-nine films (twenty-eight features and one two-reel short), which showcased his ebullient screen persona and athletic ability. By 1920, he had the inspiration of staging a new type of adventure-costume picture, a genre that was then out of favor with the public; Fairbanks had been a comic in his previous films.[2] In The Mark of Zorro, Fairbanks combined his appealing screen persona with the new adventurous costume element. It was a smash success and parlayed the actor into the rank of superstar. For the remainder of his career in silent films he continued to produce and star in ever more elaborate, impressive costume films, such as The Three Musketeers (1921), Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Black Pirate (1926), and The Gaucho (1927). Fairbanks spared no expense and effort in these films, which established the standard for all future swashbuckling films. In 1921, he, Pickford, Chaplin, and others, helped to organize the Motion Picture Fund to assist those in the industry who could not work, or were unable to meet their bills. During the first ceremony of its type, on April 30, 1927, Fairbanks and Pickford placed their hand and foot prints in wet cement at the newly opened Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. (In the classic comedy Blazing Saddles, Harvey Korman's villain character sees Fairbanks' prints at Grauman's and exclaims, "How did he do such fantastic stunts...with such little feet?") Fairbanks was elected first President of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences that same year, and he presented the first Academy Awards at the Roosevelt Hotel. Today, Fairbanks also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7020 Hollywood Boulevard. Career decline and retirement Fairbanks in Private Life of Don Juan (1934) While Fairbanks had flourished in the silent genre, the restrictions of early sound films dulled his enthusiasm for film-making. His athletic abilities and general health also began to decline at this time, in part due to his years of chain-smoking.[10] On March 29, 1928, at Pickford's bungalow, United Artists brought together Pickford, Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Norma Talmadge, Gloria Swanson, John Barrymore, D.W. Griffith and Dolores del Rio to speak on the radio show The Dodge Brothers Hour to prove Fairbanks could meet the challenge of talking movies.[11] Fairbanks's last silent film was the lavish The Iron Mask (1929), a sequel to 1921's The Three Musketeers. The Iron Mask included an introductory prologue spoken by Fairbanks. He and Pickford chose to make their first talkie as a joint venture, playing Petruchio and Kate in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1929). This film, and his subsequent sound films, were poorly received by Depression-era audiences. The last film in which he acted was the British production The Private Life of Don Juan (1934), after which he retired from acting.[citation needed] Fairbanks and Pickford separated in 1933, after he began an affair with Sylvia, Lady Ashley. Pickford had also been seen in the company of a high-profile industrialist. They divorced in 1936, with Pickford keeping the Pickfair estate.[12] Fairbanks and Ashley were married in Paris in March 1936.[13] He continued to be marginally involved in the film industry and United Artists, but his later years lacked the intense focus of his film years. His health continued to decline, and in his final years he lived at 705 Ocean Front (now Pacific Coast Highway) in Santa Monica, California, although much of his time was spent traveling abroad with third wife, Sylvia, Lady Ashley. Death On December 12, 1939, Fairbanks suffered a heart attack. He died later that day at his home in Santa Monica at the age of 56.[14] His last words were reportedly, "I've never felt better."[15] His funeral service was held at the Wee Kirk o' the Heather Church in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery where he was placed in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum. Fairbanks's tomb at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Two years following his death, he was removed from Forest Lawn by his widow, Sylvia, who commissioned an elaborate marble monument for him featuring a long rectangular reflecting pool, raised tomb, and classic Greek architecture in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.[citation needed] The monument was dedicated in a ceremony held in October 1941, with Fairbanks's close friend Charlie Chaplin reading a remembrance. The remains of his son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., were also interred there upon his death in May 2000.[citation needed] Legacy Reissue poster for 1916 cocaine comedy The Mystery of the Leaping Fish. In 1998, a group of Fairbanks fans started the Douglas Fairbanks Museum in Austin, Texas. The museum building was temporarily closed for mold remediation and repairs in February 2010.[16] In 2002, AMPAS opened the "Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study" located at 333 S. La Cienega Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The building houses the Margaret Herrick Library.[17] On November 6, 2008, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences celebrated the publication of their "Academy Imprints" book Douglas Fairbanks, authored by film historian Jeffrey Vance, with the screening of a new restoration print of The Gaucho with Vance introducing the film.[18] The following year, opening January 24, 2009, AMPAS mounted a major Douglas Fairbanks exhibition at their Fourth Floor Gallery titled, "Douglas Fairbanks: The First King of Hollywood." The exhibit featured costumes, props, pictures, and documents from his career and personal life.[19] In addition to the exhibit, AMPAS screened The Thief of Bagdad and The Iron Mask in March 2009. Concurrently with the Academy's efforts, the Museum of Modern of Art held their first Fairbanks film retrospective in over six decades, titled "Laugh and Live: The Films of Douglas Fairbanks" which ran from December 17, 2008 – January 12, 2009. Jeffrey Vance opened the retrospective with a lecture and screening of the restoration print of The Gaucho.[20] Recently, due to his involvement with the USC Fencing Club, a bronze statue of Fairbanks was erected in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Courtyard of the new School of Cinematic Arts building on the University of Southern California campus. Fairbanks was a key figure in the film school's founding in 1929, and in its curriculum development.[21][citation needed] The 2011 film The Artist was loosely based on Fairbanks, with the film's lead portraying Zorro in a silent movie featuring a scene from the Fairbanks version.[citation needed] While thanking the audience in 2012 for a Golden Globe award as Best Actor for his performance in the film, actor Jean Dujardin added, "As Douglas Fairbanks would say," then moved his lips silently as a comedic homage. When Dujardin accepted the 2011 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Fairbanks was cited at length as the main inspiration for Dujardin's performance in The Artist.[citation needed] An important accolade given to the Douglas Fairbanks legacy was a special screening of his masterpiece, The Thief of Bagdad, at the 2012 edition of the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival. On April 15, 2012, the festival concluded with a sold-out screening of the Fairbanks film held at the historic Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. The evening was introduced by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz and Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance.[22] The nickname for the sports teams of the University of California-Santa Barbara is The Gauchos in honor of Fairbanks' acting in the eponymous film.[23] Filmography Year Title Credited as Role Producer Writer Director 1915 The Lamb Gerald Martyrs of the Alamo Joe / Texan Soldier Double Trouble Florian Amidon / Eugene Brassfield 1916 His Picture in the Papers Pete Prindle The Habit of Happiness Sunny Wiggins The Good Bad Man Passin' Through Yes Reggie Mixes In Reggie Van Deuzen The Mystery of the Leaping Fish Coke Ennyday / Himself Flirting with Fate Augy Holliday The Half-Breed Lo Dorman (Sleeping Water) Intolerance Man on White Horse (French Story) Manhattan Madness Steve O'Dare American Aristocracy Cassius Lee The Matrimaniac Jimmie Conroy The Americano Blaze Derringer 1917 All-Star Production of Patriotic Episodes for the Second Liberty Loan Himself In Again, Out Again Teddy Rutherford Yes Wild and Woolly Jeff Hillington Down to Earth Billy Gaynor Yes Yes The Man from Painted Post "Fancy Jim" Sherwood Yes Reaching for the Moon Alexis Caesar Napoleon Brown Yes A Modern Musketeer Ned Thacker/d'Artagnan Yes 1918 Headin' South Headin' South Yes Mr. Fix-It Dick Remington Yes Say! Young Fellow The Young Fellow Yes Bound in Morocco George Travelwell Yes Yes He Comes Up Smiling Jerry Martin Yes Sic 'Em, Sam Democracy Arizona Lt. Denton Yes Yes Yes 1919 The Knickerbocker Buckaroo Teddy Drake Yes Yes His Majesty, the American William Brooks Yes Yes When the Clouds Roll by Daniel Boone Brown Yes Yes 1920 The Mollycoddle Richard Marshall III, IV and V Yes The Mark of Zorro Don Diego Vega / Señor Zorro Yes Yes 1921 The Nut Charlie Jackson Yes Yes The Three Musketeers d'Artagnan Yes Yes 1922 Robin Hood Robin Hood Yes Yes 1923 Hollywood Himself 1924 The Thief of Bagdad The Thief of Bagdad Yes Yes 1925 Don Q, Son of Zorro Don Cesar Vega / Zorro Yes Ben-Hur Crowd extra in chariot race 1926 The Black Pirate The Black Pirate Yes Yes 1927 A Kiss From Mary Pickford Himself The Gaucho The Gaucho Yes Yes 1928 Show People Himself 1929 The Iron Mask d'Artagnan Yes Yes The Taming of the Shrew Petruchio 1930 Reaching for the Moon Larry Day Yes 1932 Mr. Robinson Crusoe Steve Drexel Yes Yes 1934 The Private Life of Don Juan Don Juan 1937 Ali Baba Goes to Town Himself - at Fictional Premiere Non-profit organization positions Preceded by Position created President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 1927–1929 Succeeded by William C. deMille It's 1920. Warren G. Harding has just been elected President, prohibition is in full swing, the Nineteenth Amendment has given the vote to women, and America's first commercial radio station is on the air. Silent films are at the peak of their popularity - from the few remaining Nickelodeons to the opulent, big-city movie palaces complete with live orchestras - America's first entertainment craze is in full swing. Vaudeville is dead. Television hasn't even been born yet. The public's frenzy for their favorite screen personalities verged on mass hysteria, and one man in particular was singled out as the top box office attraction: Douglas Fairbanks. The mere mention of his name could send the ladies into a swoon; his romantic adventures and heroic exploits also transformed male moviegoers into ardent Fairbanks fans. That fact was never more evident than judging by the thousands of devotees that trailed Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford around the world after their March, 1920 wedding. Later that year, the pair would become the first celebrity residents of Beverly Hills, moving into an old hunting lodge Doug had converted into a 42-room mansion for his new bride. A reporter dubbed it "Pickfair." For the next decade, Pickfair would reign as the most prestigious address in America, second only to the White House.         Crowds surrounded the gates day and night, awaiting a glimpse of their hero riding his horse or taking Mary for a boat ride in Pickfair's gargantuan swimming pool. Before Graceland, there was Pickfair. Before Beatlemania, there was Doug-and-Mary-mania. Fairbanks was the movies' most elegant, dashing, and vital star in the `teens and 20s. His films, both his early comedies and the later swashbucklers, were nothing short of brilliant, inspiring both audiences and his fellow actors and filmmakers to this day. He was the screen's first Zorro -- the first Robin Hood -- and who brought us the first memorable film treatments of The Three Musketeers. Doug Fairbanks taught us how "action-adventure" was done. He cast a long and lasting shadow over Hollywood -- a true pioneer of the silent era, Fairbanks was also a wise businessman with a vision for the future of the film industry, founding both United Artists and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He also helped to found the nation's first film school at a public university, the Department of Film at the University of Southern California in 1929. In the glory days of silent cinema, Douglas Fairbanks was the original King of Hollywood. This is his story. He was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ulman in Denver, Colorado on May 23, 1883. His father, Hezekiah Charles Ulman (read a full biography of H. Charles on page 2 of the Museum's "Early Years" web gallery), was a prominent New York attorney who had mining interests in the Rocky Mountains and relocated to the bustling cowtown of Denver in 1880. Ulman had left a wife, two daughters, and a lucrative law practice behind to go West, but he did not make the cross-country journey alone. Traveling with him was the woman he would soon marry -  Ella Adelaide Marsh Weeks, a lovely Southern belle. Ella and Charles had known each other for many years. When her first husband, John Fairbanks, had died suddenly of tuberculosis in 1873, Ulman put her late husband's legal affairs in order. Ella later moved to Atlanta and married a judge Edward Wilcox, who by all accounts turned out to be an abusive lout. She went to Ulman again, and begged him to help her obtain a divorce from Wilcox. Although divorces were rarely granted to women in the 1870s, Ulman won the case and apparently, Ella's heart at the same time. They ran away together. Ulman busied himself in Colorado with the mining business and by re-establishing his law offices. He and Ella had a baby boy, Robert (Doug's older brother) in 1881. Ulman loved the theatre and actually bore a startling resemblance to the actor Edwin Booth. Ulman often took his young sons to the theatre, sometimes taking the boys backstage to meet the cast of traveling productions -- often the sizeable Ulman household provided  traveling actors overnight accommodations. Naturally, it wasn't long before Doug was reciting Shakespeare from memory. The early years of Doug's life were spent going on mining trips with his dad, learning to climb mountains, and, like most little boys, getting into as much trouble as possible. In many respects, Doug's first memories were those of a happy child -- but soon, they would be all that remained of his father.     Douglas (right) with brother Robert, Denver, Colorado, 1889. (Image from the Douglas Fairbanks Museum Archives) Ulman was an alcoholic; his drinking only increased as all of his mining ventures failed and his fortunes decreased. Perhaps needing to escape the responsibilities of fatherhood, or in need of money himself, Ulman told his family he had decided to take a "temporary" position back in New York. In fact, he was campaigning for future President Benjamin Harrison. But the proud family's hopes were soon dashed when it became clear that H. Charles Ulman never intended to return. Even though Doug was only five when his father abandoned him, Ulman's influence on Doug's character cannot be underestimated.  Perhaps it was due to Ulman that Doug chose to be an actor, to yearn for high society and to rub shoulders with Kings, Queens, and Presidents. Watching alcohol destroy his father's life and career compelled Doug to abstain from alcohol for most of his life. Conversely, the experience may have affected Doug's distant feelings toward fatherhood with his own son. Doug also learned that he and his brother Robert were not exactly legitimate children, as Ulman had never bothered to officially divorce his former wife before running off to Denver with Ella! His mother taught him at a very young age to conceal the fact that he was half-Jewish, something he would keep a closely guarded family secret until the end of his life. The stigma attached to Jews in 19th century America was a tremendous obstacle to overcome for any family aspiring to a middle class social existence. Ella would have been hard-pressed at that point to even provide a middle class lifestyle for the boys - Ulman had left her with nothing. She now had three boys - Douglas, Robert, and their older brother John Fairbanks, from her first marriage. Still infuriated at Ulman, she had the boys names legally changed to Fairbanks, wishing to associate them with the prestigious Fairbanks family name. By the time he was eleven, young Douglas took to the stage, doing amateur theatre around the Denver area. He did summer stock at the famous Elitch Gardens Theatre and in his teens had become a sensation in the local theatre community. He was so in demand as an actor that he never even bothered to finish high school, dropping out in his senior year. Although he would later claim that he attended college at both Harvard and the Colorado School of Mines, none of this is true in actual fact. In 1900, Doug moved to New York, seeking fame on the Broadway stage. He took odd jobs, working as both a cattle freighter and a clerk on Wall Street until he finally made his Broadway debut in 1902 as Florio in the Frederick Warde Company's production of "The Duke's Jester." Doug was ambitious, working hard to reach the top, yet true success on the stage eluded him for several years. In 1907, he married Anna Beth Sully, a beautiful blonde girl and daughter of wealthy industrialist Daniel Sully ("the Cotton King"). Her father wanted Doug to come work for him, convincing him that the theatre was no way to support a family. Doug obliged, and moved into the Buchanan Soap Company's offices in the Flatiron Building. The job didn't last long; within six months, Doug was back on Broadway. It turned out to be a fortunate choice - a few months after his departure, the Buchanan Soap Company went broke and folded. Doug's only son was born on December 9, 1909, named after his father. The next several years found Doug Sr. struggling to make a living on the stage; he could hardly provide the life that Beth, a socialite, expected for their new family. Tension surfaced at home, and it was clear that he would have to make a major change. Douglas was already quite familiar with motion pictures, or "the flickers" as they were known among the "real actors" of Broadway, who scoffed at this new phenomenon. But Doug could not resist the $104,000 offer made to him by the Triangle Film Corporation in 1914, although he did balk at first - "I know it's a lot of money, but the movies!" Douglas Fairbanks arrived in Hollywood in 1915, an unlikely candidate for movie stardom at age 31. He worked under the tutelage of a very skeptical D.W. Griffith, who said of Doug: "He's got a head like a cantaloupe and he can't act." In spite of these obstacles, Doug went on to become one of the most popular comedians of the silent screen, along with Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and his close friend Charlie Chaplin. wild-wol.gif Lobby card from the film In Again, Out Again, 1917. (Image from the Douglas Fairbanks Museum Archives) His first 26 films ranged from romances to wacky, madcap comedies; from social satires to westerns. To the uninitiated, these films may prove surprising - especially to those expecting the suave swordsman of his later trademark epic pictures, but who can resist the big-hearted idiot he portrays in 1916's "The Matrimaniac," or the hilariously incompetent detective Coke Ennyday from "The Mystery of The Leaping Fish." (1916)? By late 1916, Douglas Fairbanks had gained such popularity that he was able to form his own production company, producing (and often writing under a pseudonym) his own movies as he saw fit, from his own studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. The Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corporation, under the Paramount/Artcraft banner, released one hit film after another, bringing audiences much-needed laughter during the First World War. Fairbanks was too old for active service in the war, and instead threw himself into the task of making propaganda films for the Allies to drum up public support for the troops. He also raised millions of dollars for the Red Cross and sold war bonds for both the American and Canadian governments' Liberty and Victory Loan Drives. In 1918, while on a Liberty Loan Bond Drive tour with Charlie Chaplin, he found himself involved in a secret love affair with Mary Pickford. The persistent rumors prompted Doug's wife, Beth Fairbanks, to file for divorce in November, 1918. "Little Mary" was the most beloved actress of the silent screen, and the whole world had come to know her as "America's Sweetheart." Now, she was Doug's sweetheart. Their romance was Hollywood's best kept secret for more than two years; both of them were still married to other partners and neither could risk their careers on a scandal. What would the public think? It was around this time that Doug started writing books of the self-help variety. Some called it "armchair philosophy"; others claimed the books were ghostwritten, but upon reading them, those familiar with Fairbanks will recognize the style as clearly his own. Titles like "Laugh and Live" (1917) and "Making Life Worthwhile" (1918) reveal the basic message in his texts. Over the course of his career, Doug would publish five books, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles, short stories, and also penned most of his own film scenarios under the pseudonym of Elton Thomas. All of them are well worth reading. Fairbanks turned out to be a surprisingly prolific and talented writer in his own right. He began to become more involved with the film industry as a businessman, and in 1919 formed the United Artists Corporation along with Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith. The goal of UA was to provide independent distribution for artists who produced their own movies, and to break the big studios practice of "block booking" pictures into theatres. The idea was fresh, new, ambitious, and for once, on the side of the artist. It upset the balance in Hollywood, luring big name directors and stars away from major studio contracts to make their own pictures. Now, the lunatics had taken over the asylum, and a new era of filmmaking was born. UA restructured the "star system" as we know it. 1920 was a pivotal year in Fairbanks's career; not only did he and Mary take the risk of divorcing their partners and getting married publicly, but he also took a great artistic risk: at the height of his popularity, Douglas Fairbanks again tampered with the proven formula of stardom. Audiences around the world were used to him as a comic, but he threw out a curve ball with "The Mark Of Zorro," his first historical action adventure film. It turned out to be a tremendous success, and the classic tale of Don Diego Vega has been re-made over 50 times since. Safe to say both risks paid off generously.        Original movie posters for The Mark of Zorro (1920), Robin Hood (1922), and The Thief of Bagdad (1924) (Images from the Douglas Fairbanks Museum Archives) Fairbanks followed up with more historic costume epics: "The Three Musketeers" (1921), "Robin Hood" (1922), "The Thief of Bagdad" (1924),"Don Q - Son of Zorro" (a 1925 sequel), "The Black Pirate" (1926), and "The Gaucho" (1927) - all stunningly beautiful works featuring the most outrageously expensive and elaborate sets money could buy, crowned of course, by the dashing hero and his love interest (you could always expect a great love story sub-plot in a Fairbanks picture). These films set the standard for the genre now known as "action-adventure" movies, with every last detail of production meticulously handled by Doug himself. These were his masterworks. By 1927, Doug knew that his run as a box-office hero was drawing to a close. He was 44 years old, and could no longer look the part of the youthful swashbuckler or romantic lead, nor could he safely perform the dangerous stunts his audiences expected of him. He focused his attention instead of furthering the motion picture industry, which was undergoing major changes. Instead of fighting the advent of sound films, he was one of the first to come out in favor of them; a short publicity film of Douglas speaking was sent to movie theatres around the globe. That year, he founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was elected it's first President. In addition, he was chiefly involved in the opening of Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, the world's premiere movie palace (he and Mary being the first stars to put their famed hand and footprints in wet cement outside the theatre, hence the tradition), and the adjacent Roosevelt Hotel (named for his hero, Teddy Roosevelt), where the Academy kept it's offices and where the first Academy Awards ceremonies were held in 1929. Doug still found time to make films during this busy period, and they are actually some of his best works. For the first time, audiences saw another side of Fairbanks - a more fallible character, a handsome idol who was now desperately trying to cope with the complexities of growing old. Although box-office receipts for films such as "The Gaucho" (1927), "The Iron Mask" (1928), and "Reaching For The Moon" (1931) were disappointing, these efforts are still very memorable, revealing more than a comic, hero, or lover - they showed a real man plagued by real problems.    For over a decade, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford had ruled the world as Hollywood's King and Queen, by far the most popular film thespians of their time. Yet, these two had never made a picture together. When they finally agreed to do Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" in 1929, it came too late. The film was a colossal disaster, and the pair fought constantly during it's making. When it flopped at the box office, Doug and Mary blamed each other. Many point to this film as the reason for their subsequent breakup, although Doug's constant absence and infidelity combined with Mary's alcoholism and fits of ill-temperament were also major contributing factors. Success had turned sour, failure took it's toll on a once-happy couple. When his son, Doug Jr., decided to marry Joan Crawford in 1929, Doug and Mary disapproved loudly - their suspicions may not have been completely unfounded, as the marriage was troubled and only lasted a short time. Perhaps it was the mutual marital troubles that helped to bring father and son together again after a considerable period of estrangement; Doug Sr. had never liked the idea of Doug Jr.'s occupational choice. One famous actor in the family was enough, he reasoned. It was not easy for the aging Fairbanks Sr. to watch his young, dashing son take over the romantic leading roles that were once reserved for the elder Fairbanks. By the early 30s, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were forgotten relics. Hollywood was full of fresh new faces, including Doug Jr., who was now making a name for himself as an actor (much to his father's regret). The industry had changed so much in such a short time: the days of presenting motion pictures as art were out; a new era of gangster movies, horrors, westerns, and musicals were in.       fairbnks.gif Silent films had been left behind seemingly overnight, along with most of the stars of the era. Doug did not approve of the way the industry was going as he watched it grow from humble beginnings to mammoth proportions. Fairbanks was particularly disturbed by the new direction of his own company, United Artists (under the iron fist of Samuel Goldwyn), and eventually lost interest in the business altogether. He began to travel extensively, absenting himself for long months at a time. These trips are documented in the travelogue Around The World In 80 Minutes (1931) and Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932), the latter being filmed entirely on location in Tahiti and the South Seas. In 1933, Doug and Mary formally announced their retirement from motion pictures, and soonafter, their permanent separation. It would take another three years for their divorce to be legally finalized. Doug made one final film in 1934, Alexander Korda's brilliant The Private Life Of Don Juan, a revealing look at an aging lover whose reputation has outrun him. Many consider it to be the most personal and revealing performance of Doug's career.       By 1936, his divorce from Mary became official, and within months, he married his longtime mistress, Lady Sylvia Ashley (who would later wed Clark Gable). His health was starting to fail him; Doug began to experience heart trouble. No more leaping from balconies. The final years of his life were spent between an endless flurry of cruise ships (Doug was an experienced world traveler) and in quiet retirement at his home in Santa Monica, overlooking the Pacific ocean. In early 1939, Doug got the itch to make another film, and began writing a script called "The Californian," which was sadly still unfinished at the time of his death. On Dec. 12, 1939, Douglas Fairbanks died in his sleep of a heart attack at age 56. The King of Hollywood was gone. He is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. (see photo below)    Thanks in no small part to the efforts of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., many of his finest films have been preserved, and have been reissued in clean, sharp video and DVD versions from Kino, as part of their "Douglas Fairbanks - King Of Hollywood" series and recent DVD boxed set.  Also look for a new series of Fairbanks films to be released by Delta Entertainment in 2005, along with a new documentary film about his extraordinary life and work, prepared with the assistance of the Douglas Fairbanks Museum. Doug's early comedies from the 1910s are often hard to find - some have literally disintigrated into dust. You can often see his films on the Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics cable networks, his work is still often screened at silent film festivals worldwide, and high-quality prints of his pictures are available through many online video retailers. Next time you're browsing for movies to add to your collection, instead of Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, or even Mel Gibson, check out the original King of Hollywood. Douglas Fairbanks made (and broke!) the mold first. **Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. passed away at the age of 90 on May 7, 2000. He is buried with his father at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Visit http://www.HollywoodForever.com for a beautiful final tribute to both father and son.        Carmel Myers (April 4, 1899 – November 9, 1980) was an American actress who achieved her greatest successes in silent film. Contents 1 Life and career 1.1 Relationships 2 Partial filmography 3 References 4 External links Life and career Myers was born in San Francisco, the daughter of an Australian rabbi and Austrian Jewish mother.[1] Her father became well-connected with California's emerging film industry, and introduced her to film pioneer D. W. Griffith, who gave Carmel a small part in Intolerance (1916). Myers also got her brother Zion Myers into Hollywood as a writer/director. From Photoplay Magazine 1920 From this beginning, Myers left for New York City, where she acted mainly on stage for the next two years. She was signed by Universal, where she emerged as a popular actress in vamp roles. Her most popular film from this period—which does not feature her in a vamp role—is probably the romantic comedy All Night, opposite Rudolph Valentino, who was then a little-known actor. She also worked with him in A Society Sensation. By 1924 she was working for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, making such films as Broadway After Dark, which also starred Adolphe Menjou, Norma Shearer, and Anna Q. Nilsson. In 1925, she appeared in arguably her most famous role, that of the Egyptian vamp Iras in Ben-Hur, who tries to seduce both Messala (Francis X. Bushman) and Ben-Hur himself (Ramón Novarro). This film was a boost to Myers' career, and she appeared in major roles throughout the 1920s, including Tell It to the Marines in 1926 with Lon Chaney, Sr., William Haines, and Eleanor Boardman. Myers appeared in Four Walls and Dream of Love, both with Joan Crawford in 1928; and in The Show of Shows (1929), a showcase of popular contemporary film actors. Myers had a fairly successful sound career, mostly in supporting roles, perhaps due to her image as a vamp rather than as a sympathetic heroine. Subsequently, she began giving more attention to her private life following the birth of her son in May 1932. Amongst her popular sound films are Svengali (1931) and The Mad Genius (1931), both with John Barrymore and Marian Marsh, and a small role in 1944's The Conspirators, which featured Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet. Myers surfaced in the entertainment world again briefly in 1951, with a short-lived DuMont Television Network show called The Carmel Myers Show, which followed the interview format. After its cancellation, Myers focused on a career in real estate and her own perfume distribution company. In 1976, Myers was one of the very few silent stars who were cast in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, a comedy featuring cameos by dozens of Hollywood stars of the past. Myers died in 1980 at the age of 81 and was buried near her parents at Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles. Relationships Myers and attorney Ralph H. Blum married in 1929 and had three children: author Ralph H. Blum (b. 1932), known for his works on divination through Norse runes, and two adopted daughters, actress and radio personality Susan Adams Kennedy (b. 1940) and television producer Mary Cossette (b. 1941). After their marriage, Myers and Blum purchased Gloria Swanson’s Sunset Boulevard home. After Blum's death Myers married Paramount Pictures executive Al Schwalberg. Partial filmography c. 1920 Georgia Pearce (1915) Intolerance (1916) - Favorite of the Harem (uncredited) The Heiress at Coffee Dan's (1916) - Waitress (uncredited) The Bad Boy (1917) - Bit Role (uncredited) Stage Struck (1917) - Bit Role (uncredited) A Love Sublime (1917) - Toinette A Daughter of the Poor (1917) - Hazel Fleming Might and the Man (1917) - Winifred The Haunted Pajamas (1917) - Frances Kirkland Sirens of the Sea (1917) - Julie The Lash of Power (1917) - Marion Sherwood My Unmarried Wife (1918) - Mary Cunningham The Wife He Bought (1918) - Janice Brieson The Girl in the Dark (1918) - Lois Fox The Wine Girl (1918) - Bona The Marriage Lie (1918) - Eileen Orton A Broadway Scandal (1918) - Nenette Bisson The City of Tears (1918) - Rosa Carillo The Dream Lady (1918) - Rosamond Gilbert A Society Sensation (1918, Short) - Sydney Parmelee All Night (1918) - Elizabeth Lane Who Will Marry Me? (1919) - Rosie Sanguinetti The Little White Savage (1919) - Minnie Lee In Folly's Trail (1920) - Lita O'Farrell The Gilded Dream (1920) - Leona Beautifully Trimmed (1920) - Norine Lawton The Mad Marriage (1921) - Jane Judd The Dangerous Moment (1921) - Sylvia Palprini Cheated Love (1921) - Sonya Schonema The Kiss (1921) - Erolinda Vargas Breaking Through (1921) - Bettina Lowden A Daughter of the Law (1921) - Nora Hayes The Love Gambler (1922) - Jean McClelland The Danger Point (1922) - Alice Torrance The Last Hour (1923) - Saidee McCall The Famous Mrs. Fair (1923) - Angy Brice Goodbye Girls (1923) - Florence Brown The Little Girl Next Door (1923) - Milly Amory Mary of the Movies (1923) - Himself (uncredited) Slave of Desire (1923) - Countess Fedora The Dancer of the Nile (1923) - Arvia The Love Pirate (1923) - Ruby Le Maar Reno (1923) - Mrs. Dora Carson Tappan Poisoned Paradise: The Forbidden Story of Monte Carlo (1924) - Mrs. Belmire Beau Brummel (1924) - Lady Hester Stanhope Broadway After Dark (1924) - Lenore Vance Babbitt (1924) - Tanis Judique Garragan (1924) Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) - Iras The Devil's Circus (1926) - Yonna The Gay Deceiver (1926) - Countess de Sano Tell It to the Marines (1926) - Zaya Camille (1926, Short) - Agatha The Demi-Bride (1927) - Madame Girard The Understanding Heart (1927) - Kelcey Dale Sumuru (1927) - Lola Sorrell and Son (1927) - Flo Palfrey A Certain Young Man (1928) - Mrs. Crutchley Prowlers of the Sea (1928) - Mercedes Four Walls (1928) - Bertha Dream of Love (1928) - The Countess The Ghost Talks (1929) - Marie Haley Careers (1929) - The Woman The Careless Age (1929) Broadway Scandals (1929) - Valeska The Show of Shows (1929) - Performer in 'Ladies of the Ensemble' Number The Ship from Shanghai (1930) - Viola Thorpe A Lady Surrenders (1930) - Sonia The Lion and the Lamb (1931) - Inez Svengali (1931) - Madame Honori Pleasure (1931) - Mrs. Dorothy Whitley Chinatown After Dark (1931) - Madame Ying Su The Mad Genius (1931) - Sonya Preskoya Nice Women (1931) - Dorothy Drew No Living Witness (1942) - Emillia The Countess of Monte Cristo (1934) - Flower Girl Lady for a Night (1942) - Mrs. Dickson The Conspirators (1944) - Baroness von Kluge (uncredited) George White's Scandals (1945) - Leslie (uncredited) Whistle Stop (1946) - Estelle Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) - Woman Journalist (final film role) Elliott Nugent Elliot Nugent.jpg Nugent in a 1947 publicity photo Born September 20, 1896 Dover, Ohio Died August 9, 1980 (aged 83) Elliott Nugent (September 20, 1896 in Dover, Ohio – August 9, 1980 in New York City) was an American actor, playwright, writer, and film director. Contents 1 Biography 2 Partial filmography 3 References 4 External links Biography Nugent, the son of actor J. C. Nugent,[1] successfully made the transition from silent film to sound. He directed The Cat and the Canary (1939), starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. He also directed the Hope films Never Say Die (1939) and My Favorite Brunette (1947).[2] Nugent was a college classmate (and lifelong friend) of fellow Ohioan James Thurber. Together, they wrote the Broadway play The Male Animal (1940)[1] in which Nugent starred with Gene Tierney. He also directed the 1942 Warner Bros. film version of The Male Animal, starring Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland.[citation needed] Nugent was the brother-in-law of actor Alan Bunce of Ethel and Albert fame. Partial filmography Headlines (1925) Wise Girls (1929) So This Is College (1929) Not So Dumb (1930) The Sins of the Children (1930) The Unholy Three (1930) (also writer, with J. C. Nugent) Romance (1930) as Harry The Last Flight (1931) The Mouthpiece (1932) (director) Life Begins (1932) (co-director) Whistling in the Dark (1933) (director) Three-Cornered Moon (1933) (director) If I Were Free (1933) (director) Two Alone (1934) (director) Strictly Dynamite (1934) (director) (unbilled) She Loves Me Not (1934) (director) Enter Madame (1935) (director) Splendor (1935) (director) Wives Never Know (1936) (director) It's All Yours (1937) Professor Beware (1938) (director) Give Me a Sailor (1938) (director) Never Say Die (1939) (director) The Cat and the Canary (1939) (director) Nothing But the Truth (1941) (director) The Male Animal (1942) (director) The Crystal Ball (1943) (director) Up in Arms (1944) (director) My Favorite Brunette (1947) (director) Welcome Stranger (1947) (director) My Girl Tisa (1948) (director) Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949) (director) The Great Gatsby (1949) (director) The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950) (director) My Outlaw Brother (1951) (director) Just for You (1952) (director) Bette Davis Bette Davis - Photoplay, June 1938.jpg Davis in 1938 Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis April 5, 1908[1] Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S. Died October 6, 1989 (aged 81) Neuilly-sur-Seine, France Resting place Forest Lawn Memorial Park Occupation Actress Years active 1929-1989 Spouse(s) Harmon Nelson (m. 1932; div. 1938) Arthur Farnsworth (m. 1940; died 1943) William Grant Sherry (m. 1945; div. 1950) Gary Merrill (m. 1950; div. 1960) Children 3, including Barbara Sherry Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (/ˈbɛti/; April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television, and theater. With a career spanning 60 years, she is regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history.[2] She was noted for playing unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films, suspense horror, and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.[3] After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in the summer of 1930. However, her early films for Universal Studios (and as a loanout to other studios) were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932, and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract. Although she lost the well-publicized legal case against the studio, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative and confrontational. She clashed with studio executives and film directors, as well as many of her co-stars. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech, and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona that has often been imitated.[4] Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and three times divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 film, television, and theater roles to her credit during her six-decade-long career. In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. Contents 1 Life and career 1.1 1908-1929: Childhood and early acting career 1.2 1930-1936: Early years in Hollywood 1.2.1 Legal case 1.3 1937-1941: Success with Warner Bros. 1.4 1942-1944: War effort and personal tragedy 1.5 1945-1949: Professional setbacks 1.6 1949-1960: Starting a freelance career 1.7 1961-1970: Renewed success 1.8 1971-1983: Later career 1.9 1983-1989: Illness, awards, and final works 2 Death 3 Reception and legacy 4 Academy Awards milestones 5 Selected filmography 6 See also 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External links Life and career 1908-1929: Childhood and early acting career Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as "Bette", was born on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Harlow Morrell Davis (1885 - 1938), a law student from Augusta, Maine, and subsequently a patent attorney, and Ruth Augusta (née Favór; 1885 - 1961), from Tyngsboro, Massachusetts.[5] Bette's younger sister was Barbara Harriet.[6] In 1915, Davis' parents separated, and Bette attended a spartan boarding school called Crestalban in Lanesborough in the Berkshires.[7] In 1921, Ruth Davis moved to New York City with her daughters, where she worked as a portrait photographer. Betty later changed the spelling of her name to "Bette" after Honoré de Balzac's La Cousine Bette.[8] During their time in New York, Davis became a Girl Scout who proved so successful she later ranked as a Patrol Leader.[9] Davis attended Cushing Academy, a boarding school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, where she met her future husband, Harmon O. Nelson, known as "Ham". In 1926, a then 18-year-old Davis saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck with Blanche Yurka and Peg Entwistle. Davis later recalled for Al Cohn of Newsday, "The reason I wanted to go into theater was because of an actress named Peg Entwistle."[10] She auditioned for admission to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory, but was rejected by LeGallienne, who described her attitude as "insincere" and "frivolous".[11] Davis auditioned for George Cukor's stock theater company in Rochester, New York; although he was not very impressed, he gave Davis her first paid acting assignment - a one-week stint playing the part of a chorus girl in the play Broadway. Ed Sikov sources Davis' first professional role to a 1929 production by the Provincetown Players of Virgil Geddes play The Earth Between; however, the production was postponed by a year.[12] In 1929, Davis was chosen by Blanche Yurka to play Hedwig, the character she had seen Entwistle play in The Wild Duck.[13] After performing in Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston, she made her Broadway debut in 1929 in Broken Dishes, and followed it with Solid South.[citation needed] 1930-1936: Early years in Hollywood Davis in her film debut, Bad Sister (1931) In 1930, 22-year-old Davis moved to Hollywood to screen test for Universal Studios. Davis and her mother traveled by train to Hollywood. She later recounted her surprise that nobody from the studio was there to meet her. In fact, a studio employee had waited for her, but left because he saw nobody who "looked like an actress". She failed her first screen test, but was used in several screen tests for other actors. In a 1971 interview with Dick Cavett, she related the experience with the observation, "I was the most Yankee-est, most modest virgin who ever walked the earth. They laid me on a couch, and I tested fifteen men ... They all had to lie on top of me and give me a passionate kiss. Oh, I thought I would die. Just thought I would die."[14] A second test was arranged for Davis, for the 1931 film A House Divided. Hastily dressed in an ill-fitting costume with a low neckline, she was rebuffed by the film director William Wyler, who loudly commented to the assembled crew, "What do you think of these dames who show their chests and think they can get jobs?".[15] Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, considered terminating Davis' employment, but cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for Bad Sister (1931), in which she subsequently made her film debut.[16] Her nervousness was compounded when she overheard the chief of production, Carl Laemmle, Jr., comment to another executive that she had "about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville", one of the film's co-stars.[17] The film was not a success, and her next role in Seed (1931) was too brief to attract attention.[citation needed] Universal Studios renewed her contract for three months, and she appeared in a small role in Waterloo Bridge (1931), before being lent to Columbia Pictures for The Menace, and to Capital Films for Hell's House (all 1932). After one year, and six unsuccessful films, Laemmle elected not to renew her contract.[18] Davis was preparing to return to New York when actor George Arliss chose Davis for the lead female role in the Warner Bros. picture The Man Who Played God (1932), and for the rest of her life, Davis credited him with helping her achieve her "break" in Hollywood. The Saturday Evening Post wrote, "She is not only beautiful, but she bubbles with charm", and compared her to Constance Bennett and Olive Borden.[19] Warner Bros. signed her to a five-year contract, and she remained with the studio for the next 18 years.[citation needed] Davis's first marriage was to Harmon Oscar Nelson on August 18, 1932, in Yuma, Arizona.[20] Their marriage was scrutinized by the press; his $100 a week earnings compared unfavorably with Davis' reported $1,000 a week income. Davis addressed the issue in an interview, pointing out that many Hollywood wives earned more than their husbands, but the situation proved difficult for Nelson, who refused to allow Davis to purchase a house until he could afford to pay for it himself.[21] Davis had several abortions during the marriage.[22] Davis in Of Human Bondage (1934) After more than 20 film roles, the role of the vicious and slatternly Mildred Rogers in the RKO Radio production of Of Human Bondage (1934), a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, 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 co-star, 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: "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."[23] The film was a success, and Davis' characterization won praise from critics, with Life writing that she gave "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress".[24] Davis anticipated that her reception would encourage Warner Bros. to cast her in more important roles, and was disappointed when Jack L. Warner refused to lend her to Columbia Studios to appear in It Happened One Night, and instead cast her in the melodrama Housewife.[25] When Davis was not nominated for an Academy Award for Of Human Bondage, 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.[26] The uproar led, however, to a change in academy voting procedures the following year, wherein nominations were determined by votes from all eligible members of a particular branch, rather than by a smaller committee,[27] with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.[28] 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.[29] The New York Times hailed her as "becoming one of the most interesting of our screen actresses".[30] She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, but commented that it was belated recognition for Of Human Bondage, calling the award a "consolation prize".[31] For the rest of her life, Davis maintained that she gave the statue its familiar name of "Oscar" because its posterior resembled that of her husband, whose middle name was Oscar,[32][33] although, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences officially makes reference to another story.[34] In her next film, The Petrified Forest (1936), Davis co-starred with Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. Legal case Convinced that her career was being damaged by a succession of mediocre films, Davis accepted an offer in 1936 to appear in two films in Britain. Knowing that she was breaching her contract with Warner Bros., she fled to Canada to avoid legal papers being served on her. Eventually, Davis brought her case to court in Britain, hoping to get out of her contract.[35] She later recalled the opening statement of the barrister, Patrick Hastings, who represented Warner Bros. Hastings urged the court to "come to the conclusion that this is rather a naughty young lady, and that what she wants is more money". He mocked Davis' description of her contract as "slavery" by stating, incorrectly, that she was being paid $1,350 per week. He remarked, "If anybody wants to put me into perpetual servitude on the basis of that remuneration, I shall prepare to consider it." The British press offered little support to Davis, and portrayed her as overpaid and ungrateful.[36] Davis explained her viewpoint to a journalist: "I knew that, if I continued to appear in any more mediocre pictures, I would have no career left worth fighting for."[37] Her counsel presented the complaints - that she could be suspended without pay for refusing a part, with the period of suspension added to her contract, that she could be called upon to play any part within her abilities, regardless of her personal beliefs, that she could be required to support a political party against her beliefs, and that her image and likeness could be displayed in any manner deemed applicable by the studio. Jack Warner testified, and was asked: "Whatever part you choose to call upon her to play, if she thinks she can play it, whether it is distasteful and cheap, she has to play it?". Warner replied: "Yes, she must play it."[38] Davis lost the case, and returned to Hollywood, in debt and without income, to resume her career. Olivia de Havilland mounted a similar case in 1943, and won. 1937-1941: Success with Warner Bros. Davis in Jezebel (1938) Davis began work on Marked Woman (1937), portraying a prostitute in a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano. For her performance in the film, she was awarded the Volpi Cup at the 1937 Venice Film Festival.[39] Her next picture was Jezebel (1938), and during production, Davis entered a relationship with director William Wyler. She later described him as the "love of my life", and said that making the film with him was "the time in my life of my most perfect happiness".[40] The film was a success, and Davis' performance as a spoiled Southern belle earned her a second Academy Award. This led to speculation in the press that she would be chosen to play Scarlett O'Hara, a similar character, in Gone with the Wind. Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O. Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite. Warner offered her services to Selznick as part of a deal that also included Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but Selznick did not consider Davis as suitable, and rejected the offer,[41] while Davis did not want Flynn cast as Rhett Butler. Newcomer Vivien Leigh was cast as Scarlett O'Hara, de Havilland landed a role as Melanie, and both of them were nominated for the Oscars, with Leigh's winning. Jezebel marked the beginning of the most successful phase of Davis' career, and over the next few years, she was listed in the annual Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money-Making Stars, which was compiled from the votes of movie exhibitors throughout the U.S. for the stars who had generated the most revenue in their theaters over the previous year.[42] In contrast to Davis' success, her husband, Ham Nelson, had failed to establish a career for himself, and their relationship faltered. In 1938, Nelson obtained evidence that Davis was engaged in a sexual relationship with Howard Hughes, and subsequently filed for divorce, citing Davis' "cruel and inhuman manner".[43] Davis with Errol Flynn in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) Davis was emotional during the making of her next film, Dark Victory (1939), and considered abandoning it until the producer Hal B. Wallis convinced her to channel her despair into her acting. The film became one of the highest-grossing films of the year, and the role of Judith Traherne brought her an Academy Award nomination. In later years, Davis cited this performance as her personal favorite.[44] She appeared in three other box-office hits in 1939: The Old Maid with Miriam Hopkins, Juarez with Paul Muni, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex with Errol Flynn. The last was her first color film, and her only color film made during the height of her career. To play the elderly Elizabeth I of England, Davis shaved her hairline and eyebrows. During filming, she was visited on the set by the actor Charles Laughton. She commented that she had a "nerve" playing a woman in her 60s, to which Laughton replied: "Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut." Recalling the episode many years later, Davis remarked that Laughton's advice had influenced her throughout her career.[45] By this time, Davis was Warner Bros.' most profitable star, and she was given the most important of their female leading roles. Her image was considered with more care; although she continued to play character roles, she was often filmed in close-ups that emphasized her distinctive eyes. All This, and Heaven Too (1940) was the most financially successful film of Davis' career to that point. The Letter (1940) was considered "one of the best pictures of the year" by The Hollywood Reporter, and Davis won admiration for her portrayal of an adulterous killer, a role originated by Katharine Cornell.[46] During this time, she was in a relationship with her former co-star George Brent, who proposed marriage. Davis refused, as she had met Arthur Farnsworth, a New England innkeeper. Davis and Farnsworth were married at Home Ranch, in Rimrock, Arizona, in December 1940, her second marriage.[47] Davis often played unlikable characters such as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1941) In January 1941, Davis became the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but antagonized the committee members with her brash manner and radical proposals. Davis rejected the idea of her being just "a figurehead only". Faced with the disapproval and resistance of the committee, Davis resigned, and was succeeded by her predecessor Walter Wanger.[48] Davis starred in three movies in 1941, the first being The Great Lie, with George Brent. It was a refreshingly different role for Davis, as she played a kind, sympathetic character. William Wyler directed Davis for the third time in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1941), but they clashed over the character of Regina Giddens, a role originally played on Broadway by Tallulah Bankhead (Davis had portrayed in film roles initiated by Bankhead on the stage twice before - in Dark Victory, and Jezebel). Wyler encouraged Davis to emulate Bankhead's interpretation of the role, but Davis wanted to make the role her own. She received another Academy Award nomination for her performance, and never worked with Wyler again.[49] 1942-1944: War effort and personal tragedy Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Davis spent the early months of 1942 selling war bonds. After Jack Warner criticized her tendency to cajole crowds into buying, she reminded him that her audiences responded most strongly to her "bitch" performances. She sold $2 million worth of bonds in two days, as well as a picture of herself in Jezebel for $250,000. She also performed for black regiments as the only white member of an acting troupe formed by Hattie McDaniel, which included Lena Horne and Ethel Waters.[50] At John Garfield's suggestion of opening a servicemen's club in Hollywood, Davis - with the aid of Warner, Cary Grant, and Jule Styne - transformed an old nightclub into the Hollywood Canteen, which opened on October 3, 1942. Hollywood's most important stars volunteered to entertain servicemen. Davis ensured that every night, a few important "names" would be there for the visiting soldiers to meet.[51] She appeared as herself in the film Hollywood Canteen (1944), which used the canteen as the setting for a fictional story. Davis later commented: "There are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud of. The Hollywood Canteen is one of them." In 1980, she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the United States Department of Defense's highest civilian award, for her work with the Hollywood Canteen.[52] Davis with Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager (1942), one of her most iconic roles Davis showed little interest in the film Now, Voyager (1942), until Hal Wallis advised her that female audiences needed romantic dramas to distract them from the reality of their lives. It became one of the best known of her "women's pictures". In one of the film's most imitated scenes, Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes as he stares into Davis' eyes, and passes one to her. Film reviewers complimented Davis on her performance, the National Board of Review commenting that she gave the film "a dignity not fully warranted by the script".[53] During the early 1940s, several of Davis' film choices were influenced by the war, such as Watch on the Rhine (1943), by Lillian Hellman, and Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), a lighthearted all-star musical cavalcade, with each of the featured stars donating their fees to the Hollywood Canteen. Davis performed a novelty song, "They're Either Too Young or Too Old", which became a hit record after the film's release. Old Acquaintance (1943) reunited her with Miriam Hopkins in a story of two old friends who deal with the tensions created when one of them becomes a successful novelist. Davis felt that Hopkins tried to upstage her throughout the film. Director Vincent Sherman recalled the intense competition and animosity between the two actresses, and Davis often joked that she held back nothing in a scene in which she was required to shake Hopkins in a fit of anger.[54] In August 1943, Davis' husband, Arthur Farnsworth, collapsed while walking along a Hollywood street, and died two days later. An autopsy revealed that his fall had been caused by a skull fracture he had suffered two weeks earlier. Davis testified before an inquest that she knew of no event that might have caused the injury. A finding of accidental death was reached. Highly distraught, Davis attempted to withdraw from her next film Mr. Skeffington (1944), but Jack Warner, who had halted production following Farnsworth's death, convinced her to continue. Although she had gained a reputation for being forthright and demanding, her behavior during filming of Mr. Skeffington was erratic, and out of character. She alienated Vincent Sherman by refusing to film certain scenes and insisting that some sets be rebuilt. She improvised dialogue, causing confusion among other actors, and infuriated the writer, Julius Epstein, who was called upon to rewrite scenes at her whim. Davis later explained her actions with the observation, "When I was most unhappy, I lashed out, rather than whined." Some reviewers criticized Davis for the excess of her performance; James Agee wrote that she "demonstrates the horrors of egocentricity on a marathonic scale".[55] 1945-1949: Professional setbacks In The Corn Is Green (1945): Despite the studio's suggestion that she play the role as young woman, Davis (age 37) insisted on aging her appearance to fit the part In 1945, Davis married artist William Grant Sherry, her third husband, who also worked as a masseur. She had been drawn to him because he claimed he had never heard of her and was, therefore, not intimidated by her.[56] The same year, Davis refused the title role in Mildred Pierce (1945),[57] a role for which Joan Crawford won an Academy Award, and instead made The Corn Is Green (1945), based on a play by Emlyn Williams. Davis played Miss Moffat, an English teacher who saves a young Welsh miner (John Dall) from a life in the coal pits, by offering him education. The part had been played in the theatre by Ethel Barrymore, but Warner Bros. felt that the film version should depict the character as a younger woman. Davis disagreed, and insisted on playing the part as written, and wore a gray wig and padding under her clothes, to create a dowdy appearance.[58] The film was well received by critics, and made a profit of $2.2 million.[59] The critic E. Arnot Robertson observed: Only Bette Davis...could have combated so successfully the obvious intention of the adaptors of the play to make frustrated sex the mainspring of the chief character's interest in the young miner.[60] She concluded that "the subtle interpretation she insisted on giving" kept the focus on the teacher's "sheer joy in imparting knowledge".[60] Her next film, A Stolen Life (1946), was the only film that Davis made with her own production company, BD Productions.[61] Davis played dual roles, as twins. The film received poor reviews, and was described by Bosley Crowther as "a distressingly empty piece";[62] but, with a profit of $2.5 million, it was one of her biggest box office successes.[63] In 1947, the U.S. Treasury named Davis as the highest-paid woman in the country,[64] with her share of the film's profit accounting for most of her earnings. Her next film was Deception (1946), the first of her films to lose money.[65] Possessed (1947) had been tailor-made for Davis,[66] and was to have been her next project, after Deception. However, she was pregnant and went on maternity leave. Joan Crawford played her role in Possessed, and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress. In 1947, at the age of 39, Davis gave birth to daughter Barbara Davis Sherry (known as B. D.), and later wrote in her memoir that she became absorbed in motherhood and considered ending her career. As she continued making films, however, her relationship with her daughter B. D. began to deteriorate, and her popularity with audiences was steadily declining.[67] Among the film roles offered to Davis following her return to film-making was Rose Sayer in The African Queen (1951). When informed that the film was to be shot in Africa, Davis refused the part, telling Jack Warner, "If you can't shoot the picture in a boat on the back lot, then I'm not interested." Katharine Hepburn played the role, and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress.[68] Davis was offered a role in a film version of the Virginia Kellogg prison drama Women Without Men. Originally intended to pair Davis with Joan Crawford, Davis made it clear that she would not appear in any "dyke movie". It was filmed as Caged (1950), and the lead roles were played by Eleanor Parker (who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress) and Agnes Moorehead.[69] Beyond the Forest (1949) was the last film Davis made for Warner Bros. after 17 years with the studio In 1948, Davis was cast in the melodrama Winter Meeting. Although she initially was enthusiastic, she soon learned that Warner had arranged for "softer" lighting to be used to disguise her age. She recalled that she had seen the same lighting technique "on the sets of Ruth Chatterton and Kay Francis, and I knew what they meant".[70] To add to her disappointment, she was not confident in the abilities of her leading man - James Davis in his first major screen role. She disagreed with changes made to the script because of censorship restrictions, and found that many of the aspects of the role that had initially appealed to her had been cut. The film was described by Bosley Crowther as "interminable", and he noted that "of all the miserable dilemmas in which Miss Davis has been involved ... this one is probably the worst". It failed at the box office, and the studio lost nearly $1 million.[71] While making June Bride (1948), Davis clashed with co-star Robert Montgomery, later describing him as "a male Miriam Hopkins... an excellent actor, but addicted to scene-stealing".[72] The film marked her first comedy in several years, and earned her some positive reviews, but it was not particularly popular with audiences, and returned only a small profit. Despite the lackluster box office receipts from her more recent films, in 1949, she negotiated a four-film contract with Warner Bros. that paid $10,285 per week and made her the highest-paid woman in the United States.[73] However, Jack Warner had refused to allow her script approval, and cast her in Beyond the Forest (1949). Davis reportedly loathed the script, and begged Warner to recast the role, but he refused. After the film was completed, her request to be released from her contract was honored. The reviews of the film were scathing. Dorothy Manners, writing for the Los Angeles Examiner, described the film as "an unfortunate finale to her brilliant career".[74] Hedda Hopper wrote: "If Bette had deliberately set out to wreck her career, she could not have picked a more appropriate vehicle."[75] The film contained the line, "What a dump!", which became closely associated with Davis after it was referenced in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and impersonators began to use it in their acts. 1949-1960: Starting a freelance career Davis posing as Margo Channing in a promotional image for All About Eve (1950): She is pictured with Gary Merrill, to whom she was married from 1950 to 1960 (her fourth, and final, husband) Davis filmed The Story of a Divorce (released by RKO Radio Pictures in 1951 as Payment on Demand). Shortly before filming was completed, producer Darryl F. Zanuck offered her the role of the aging theatrical actress Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950). Davis read the script, described it as the best she had ever read, and accepted the role. Within days, she joined the cast in San Francisco to begin filming. During production, she established what would become a life-long friendship with her co-star Anne Baxter and a romantic relationship with her leading man Gary Merrill, which led to marriage. The film's director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, later remarked: "Bette was letter perfect. She was syllable-perfect. The director's dream: the prepared actress."[76] Critics responded positively to Davis' performance, and several of her lines became well-known, particularly "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night". She was again nominated for an Academy Award, and critics such as Gene Ringgold described her Margo as her "all-time best performance".[77] Pauline Kael wrote that much of Mankiewicz' vision of "the theater" was "nonsense", but commended Davis, writing "[the film is] saved by one performance that is the real thing: Bette Davis is at her most instinctive and assured. Her actress - vain, scared, a woman who goes too far in her reactions and emotions - makes the whole thing come alive."[78] Davis won a Best Actress award from the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award. She also received the San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award as Best Actress, having been named by them as the Worst Actress of 1949 for Beyond the Forest. During this time, she was invited to leave her handprints in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.[citation needed] On July 3, 1950, Davis' divorce from William Sherry was finalized, and on July 28, she married Gary Merrill, her fourth and final husband. With Sherry's consent, Merrill adopted B. D., Davis' daughter with Sherry. In January 1951, Davis and Merrill adopted a five-day-old baby girl they named Margot Mosher Merrill (born January 6, 1951),[79][80] after the character Margo Channing. Davis and Merrill lived with their three children - in 1952, they adopted a baby boy, Michael (born January 5, 1952)[81] - on an estate on the coast of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Davis, after semi-retirement in the mid-1950s, again starred in several movies during her time in Maine, including The Virgin Queen (1955), in which she played Queen Elizabeth I.[82] The family traveled to England, where Davis and Merrill starred in a murder-mystery film, Another Man's Poison (1951). When it received lukewarm reviews and failed at the box office, Hollywood columnists wrote that Davis' comeback had petered out, and an Academy Award nomination for The Star (1952) did not halt her decline.[citation needed] In 1952, Davis appeared in a Broadway revue, Two's Company directed by Jules Dassin. She was uncomfortable working outside of her area of expertise; she had never been a musical performer, and her limited theater experience had been more than 20 years earlier. She was also severely ill, and was operated on for osteomyelitis of the jaw.[citation needed] Margot was diagnosed as severely brain-damaged due to an injury sustained during or shortly after her birth, and was placed in an institution around the age of 3.[83] Davis and Merrill began arguing frequently, and B. D. later recalled episodes of alcohol abuse and domestic violence.[84] Few of Davis' films of the 1950s were successful, and many of her performances were condemned by critics. The Hollywood Reporter wrote of mannerisms "that you'd expect to find in a nightclub impersonation of [Davis]", while the London critic, Richard Winninger, wrote, Miss Davis, with more say than most stars as to what films she makes, seems to have lapsed into egoism. The criterion for her choice of film would appear to be that nothing must compete with the full display of each facet of the Davis art. Only bad films are good enough for her.[85] Her films of this period included The Virgin Queen (1955), Storm Center (1956), and The Catered Affair (1956). As her career declined, her marriage continued to deteriorate, until she filed for divorce in 1960. The following year, her mother died. During the same time, she tried television, appearing in three episodes of the popular NBC Western Wagon Train as three different characters in 1959 and 1961; her first appearance on TV had been February 25, 1956, on General Electric Theatre.[86] In 1960, Davis, a registered Democrat, appeared at the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where she met future President John F. Kennedy, whom she greatly admired.[87] Outside of acting and politics, Davis was an active and practicing Episcopalian.[88] 1961-1970: Renewed success Davis received her final Academy Award nomination for her role as demented Baby Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) In 1961, Davis opened in the Broadway production The Night of the Iguana to mostly mediocre reviews, and left the production after four months due to "chronic illness". She then joined Glenn Ford and Ann-Margret for the Frank Capra film A Pocketful of Miracles (1961) (a remake of Capra's 1933 film, Lady for a Day), based on a story by Damon Runyon. She accepted her next role, in the Grand Guignol horror film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), after reading the script and believing it could appeal to the same audience that had recently made Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) a success. She negotiated a deal that would pay her 10% of the worldwide gross profits in addition to her salary. The film became one of the year's biggest successes.[89] Davis and Joan Crawford played two aging sisters, former actresses forced by circumstance to share a decaying Hollywood mansion. The director, Robert Aldrich, explained that Davis and Crawford were each aware of how important the film was to their respective careers, and commented: "It's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly."[90] After filming was completed, their public comments against each other allowed the tension to develop into a life-long feud. When Davis was nominated for an Academy Award, Crawford contacted the other Best Actress nominees (who were unable to attend the ceremonies) and offered to accept the award on their behalf, should they win. When Anne Bancroft was announced as winner, Crawford accepted the award on Bancroft's behalf. Davis also received her only BAFTA Award nomination for this performance. Daughter Barbara (credited as B. D. Merrill) played a small role in the film, and when Davis and she visited the Cannes Film Festival to promote it, she met Jeremy Hyman, an executive for Seven Arts Productions. After a short courtship, she married Hyman at the age of 16, with Davis' permission. Davis and William Hopper in the Perry Mason episode, "The Case of Constant Doyle" (January 31, 1963) In October 1962, it was announced that four episodes of the CBS-TV series Perry Mason would feature special guest stars who would cover for Raymond Burr during his convalescence from surgery. A Perry Mason fan, Davis was the first of the guest stars. "The Case of Constant Doyle" began filming on December 12, 1962,[91] and aired January 31, 1963.[92] In September 1962, Davis placed an advertisement in Variety under the heading of "Situations wanted - women artists", which read: "Mother of three - 10, 11, & 15 - divorcee. American. Thirty years experience as an actress in Motion Pictures. Mobile still, and more affable than rumor would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway.)"[93] Davis said that she intended it as a joke, and she sustained her comeback over the course of several years. Dead Ringer (1964) was a crime drama in which she played twin sisters. The plot was previously filmed in Mexico with Dolores del Rio.[94] Where Love Has Gone (1964) was a romantic drama based on a Harold Robbins novel. Davis played the mother of Susan Hayward, but filming was hampered by heated arguments between Davis and Hayward.[95] Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) was Robert Aldrich's follow-up to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Aldrich planned to reunite Davis and Crawford, but Crawford withdrew allegedly due to illness soon after filming began. She was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The film was a considerable success, and brought renewed attention to its veteran cast, which also included Joseph Cotten, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead, and Cecil Kellaway. The following year, Davis was cast as the lead in an Aaron Spelling sitcom The Decorator.[96] A pilot episode was filmed, but was not shown, and the project was terminated. By the end of the decade, Davis had appeared in the British films The Nanny (1965), The Anniversary (1968), and Connecting Rooms (1970), but her career again stalled.[citation needed] 1971-1983: Later career In the early 1970s, Davis was invited to appear in New York City, in a stage presentation, Great Ladies of the American Cinema. Over five successive nights, a different female star discussed her career, and answered questions from the audience; Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, Lana Turner, Sylvia Sidney, and Joan Crawford were the other participants. Davis was well received, and was invited to tour Australia with the similarly themed Bette Davis in Person and on Film; its success allowed her to take the production to the United Kingdom.[97] In 1972, Davis played the lead role in two television films that were each intended as pilots for upcoming series for ABC and NBC, Madame Sin, with Robert Wagner, and The Judge and Jake Wyler, with Joan Van Ark, but in each case, the network decided against producing a series. She appeared in the stage production Miss Moffat, a musical adaptation of her film The Corn Is Green, but after the show was panned by the Philadelphia critics during its pre-Broadway run, she cited a back injury, and abandoned the show, which closed immediately. She played supporting roles in Comencini's Lo Scopone scientifico (1972) with Italian actor Alberto Sordi and Joseph Cotten, Burnt Offerings (1976), a Dan Curtis film, and The Disappearance of Aimee (1976), but she clashed with Karen Black and Faye Dunaway, the stars of the two latter respective productions, because she felt that neither extended her an appropriate degree of respect, and that their behavior on the film sets was unprofessional.[98] Davis (left) and Elizabeth Taylor in late 1981 during a show celebrating Taylor's life In 1977, Davis became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. The televised event included comments from several of Davis' colleagues, including William Wyler, who joked that given the chance, Davis would still like to re-film a scene from The Letter to which Davis nodded. Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, Natalie Wood, and Olivia de Havilland were among the performers who paid tribute, with de Havilland commenting that Davis "got the roles I always wanted".[99] Following the telecast, she found herself in demand again, often having to choose between several offers. She accepted roles in the television miniseries The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978) and the theatrical film Death on the Nile (1978), an Agatha Christie murder mystery. The bulk of her remaining work was for television. She won an Emmy Award for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979) with Gena Rowlands, and was nominated for her performances in White Mama (1980) and Little Gloria... Happy at Last (1982). She also played supporting roles in the Disney films Return from Witch Mountain (1978) and The Watcher in the Woods (1980).[citation needed] Davis' name became well known to a younger audience when Kim Carnes' song "Bette Davis Eyes" (written by Jackie DeShannon) became a worldwide hit and the best-selling record of 1981 in the U.S., where it stayed at number one on the music charts for more than two months. Davis' grandson was impressed that she was the subject of a hit song and Davis considered it a compliment, writing to both Carnes and the songwriters, and accepting the gift of gold and platinum records from Carnes, and hanging them on her wall.[100][101] She continued acting for television, appearing in Family Reunion (1981) with her grandson J. Ashley Hyman, A Piano for Mrs. Cimino (1982), and Right of Way (1983) with James Stewart. In 1983, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award.[102] 1983-1989: Illness, awards, and final works Davis (aged 79) completed her final role in The Whales of August (1987), which brought her acclaim during a period in which she was beset with failing health and personal trauma In 1983, after filming the pilot episode for the television series Hotel, Davis was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Within two weeks of her surgery, she suffered four strokes which caused paralysis in the left side of her face and in her left arm, and left her with slurred speech. She commenced a lengthy period of physical therapy, and aided by her personal assistant Kathryn Sermak gained partial recovery from the paralysis. Even late in life, Davis smoked 100 cigarettes a day.[103] During this time, her relationship with her daughter, B. D. Hyman, deteriorated when Hyman became a born-again Christian and attempted to persuade Davis to follow suit. With her health stable, she traveled to England to film the Agatha Christie mystery Murder with Mirrors (1985). Upon her return, she learned that Hyman had published My Mother's Keeper, in which she chronicled a difficult mother-daughter relationship and depicted scenes of Davis' over-bearing and drunken behavior.[citation needed] Several of Davis' friends commented that Hyman's depiction of events was not accurate; one said, "So much of the book is out of context". Mike Wallace re-broadcast a 60 Minutes interview he had filmed with Hyman a few years earlier in which she commended Davis on her skills as a mother, and said that she had adopted many of Davis' principles in raising her own children. Critics of Hyman noted that Davis financially supported the Hyman family for several years and recently saved them from losing their house. Despite the acrimony of their divorce years earlier, Gary Merrill also defended Davis. Interviewed by CNN, Merrill said that Hyman was motivated by "cruelty and greed". Davis' adopted son Michael Merrill ended contact with Hyman, and refused to speak to her again, as did Davis, who also disinherited her.[104] Davis with President Ronald Reagan (her co-star in 1939's Dark Victory) in 1987, two years before her death In her second memoir This 'N That (1987), Davis wrote: "I am still recovering from the fact that a child of mine would write about me behind my back, to say nothing about the kind of book it is. I will never recover as completely from B. D.'s book as I have from the stroke. Both were shattering experiences." Her memoir concluded with a letter to her daughter, in which she addressed her several times as "Hyman", and described her actions as "a glaring lack of loyalty and thanks for the very privileged life I feel you have been given". She concluded with a reference to the title of Hyman's book, "If it refers to money, if my memory serves me right, I've been your keeper all these many years. I am continuing to do so, as my name has made your book about me a success."[105] Davis appeared in the television film As Summers Die (1986), and in Lindsay Anderson's film The Whales of August (1987), in which she played the blind sister of Lillian Gish. Though in poor health at the time, Davis memorized her own and everyone else's lines, as she always had.[106] The film earned good reviews, with one critic writing: "Bette crawls across the screen like a testy old hornet on a windowpane, snarling, staggering, twitching - a symphony of misfired synapses."[107] Davis became an honouree of the Kennedy Center Honors for her contribution to films in 1987. Her last performance was the title role in Larry Cohen's Wicked Stepmother (1989). By this time, her health was failing, and after disagreements with Cohen, she walked off the set. The script was rewritten to place more emphasis on Barbara Carrera's character, and the reworked version was released after Davis' death.[103] After abandoning Wicked Stepmother and with no further film offers (though she was keen to play the centenarian in Craig Calman's The Turn of the Century and worked with him on adapting the stage play to a feature-length screenplay), Davis appeared on several talk shows, and was interviewed by Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Larry King, and David Letterman, discussing her career, but refusing to discuss her daughter. Her appearances were popular; Lindsay Anderson observed that the public enjoyed seeing her behaving "so bitchy": "I always disliked that because she was encouraged to behave badly. And I'd always hear her described by that awful word, feisty."[108] During 1988 and 1989, Davis was honored for her career achievements, receiving the Kennedy Center Honor, the Legion of Honor from France, the Campione d'Italia from Italy, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Lifetime Achievement Award. She appeared on British television in a special broadcast from the South Bank Centre, discussing film and her career, the other guest being the renowned Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky. Death Bette Davis's crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles Davis collapsed during the American Cinema Awards in 1989, and later discovered that her cancer had returned. She recovered sufficiently to travel to Spain, where she was honored at the Donostia-San Sebastián International Film Festival, but during her visit, her health rapidly deteriorated. Too weak to make the long journey back to the U.S., she traveled to France, where she died on October 6, 1989, at 11:20 pm, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Davis was 81 years old. She was entombed in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, alongside her mother Ruthie and sister Bobby, with her name in larger type size. On her tombstone is written: "She did it the hard way", an epitaph that she mentioned in her memoir Mother Goddam as having been suggested to her by Joseph L. Mankiewicz shortly after they had filmed All About Eve.[109] Reception and legacy As early as 1936, Graham Greene summed Davis up: Even the most inconsiderable film ... seemed temporarily better than they were because of that precise, nervy voice, the pale ash-blond hair, the popping, neurotic eyes, a kind of corrupt and phosphorescent prettiness ... I would rather watch Miss Davis than any number of competent pictures.[110] In 1964, Jack Warner spoke of the "magic quality that transformed this sometimes bland and not beautiful little girl into a great artist",[109] and in a 1988 interview, Davis remarked that, unlike many of her contemporaries, she had forged a career without the benefit of beauty.[111] She admitted she was terrified during the making of her earliest films, and that she became tough by necessity. "Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you are not a star", she said, "[but] I've never fought for anything in a treacherous way. I've never fought for anything but the good of the film."[112] During the making of All About Eve (1950), Joseph L. Mankiewicz told her of the perception in Hollywood that she was difficult, and she explained that when the audience saw her on screen, they did not consider that her appearance was the result of numerous people working behind the scenes. If she was presented as "a horse's ass ... forty feet wide, and thirty feet high", that is all the audience "would see or care about".[113] While lauded for her achievements, Davis and her films were sometimes derided; Pauline Kael described Now, Voyager (1942) as a "shlock classic",[114] and by the mid-1940s, her sometimes mannered and histrionic performances had become the subject of caricature. Edwin Schallert, for the Los Angeles Times, praised Davis' performance in Mr. Skeffington (1944), while observing, "The mimics will have more fun than a box of monkeys imitating Miss Davis"; and Dorothy Manners, at the Los Angeles Examiner, said of her performance in the poorly received Beyond the Forest (1949): "No night club caricaturist has ever turned in such a cruel imitation of the Davis mannerisms as Bette turns on herself in this one." Time magazine noted that Davis was compulsively watchable, even while criticizing her acting technique, summarizing her performance in Dead Ringer (1964) with the observation, "Her acting, as always, isn't really acting: It's shameless showing off. But just try to look away!"[115] Davis attracted a following in the gay subculture, and was frequently imitated by female impersonators such as Tracey Lee, Craig Russell, Jim Bailey, and Charles Pierce.[116] Attempting to explain her popularity with gay audiences, the journalist Jim Emerson wrote: "Was she just a camp figurehead because her brittle, melodramatic style of acting hadn't aged well? Or was it that she was 'Larger Than Life', a tough broad who had survived? Probably some of both."[111] Her film choices were often unconventional: Davis sought roles as manipulators and killers in an era when actresses usually preferred to play sympathetic characters, and she excelled in them. She favored authenticity over glamour, and was willing to change her own appearance if it suited the character.[112] Davis' signature and handprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre As she entered old age, Davis was acknowledged for her achievements. John Springer, who had arranged her speaking tours of the early 1970s, wrote that despite the accomplishments of many of her contemporaries, Davis was "the star of the thirties and into the forties", achieving notability for the variety of her characterizations and her ability to assert herself, even when her material was mediocre.[117] Individual performances continued to receive praise; in 1987, Bill Collins analyzed The Letter (1940), and described her performance as "a brilliant, subtle achievement", and wrote: "Bette Davis makes Leslie Crosbie one of the most extraordinary females in movies."[118] In a 2000 review for All About Eve (1950), Roger Ebert noted: "Davis was a character, an icon with a grand style; so, even her excesses are realistic."[119] In 2006, Premiere magazine ranked her portrayal of Margo Channing in the film as fifth on their list of 100 Greatest Performances of All Time, commenting: "There is something deliciously audacious about her gleeful willingness to play such unattractive emotions as jealousy, bitterness, and neediness."[120] While reviewing What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) in 2008, Ebert asserted that, "No one who has seen the film will ever forget her."[121] A few months before her death in 1989, Davis was one of several actors featured on the cover of Life magazine. In a film retrospective that celebrated the films and stars of 1939, Life concluded that Davis was the most significant actress of her era, and highlighted Dark Victory (1939) as one of the most important films of the year.[122] Her death made front-page news throughout the world as the "close of yet another chapter of the Golden Age of Hollywood". Angela Lansbury summarized the feeling of those of the Hollywood community who attended her memorial service, commenting, after a sample from Davis' films was screened, that they had witnessed "an extraordinary legacy of acting in the twentieth century by a real master of the craft" that should provide "encouragement and illustration to future generations of aspiring actors".[123] In 1977, Davis became the first woman to be honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award.[124] In 1999, the American Film Institute published its list of the "AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars", which was the result of a film-industry poll to determine the "50 Greatest American Screen Legends" in order to raise public awareness and appreciation of classic film. Of the 25 actresses listed, Davis was ranked at number two, behind Katharine Hepburn.[125] The United States Postal Service honored Davis with a commemorative postage stamp in 2008, marking the 100th anniversary of her birth.[126] The stamp features an image of her in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve. The First Day of Issue celebration took place September 18, 2008, at Boston University, which houses an extensive Davis archive. Featured speakers included her son Michael Merrill and Lauren Bacall. In 1997, the executors of her estate, Merrill and Kathryn Sermak, her former assistant, established The Bette Davis Foundation, which awards college scholarships to promising actors and actresses.[52] Academy Awards milestones Davis in the trailer for Dark Victory (1939), in which she gave one of her 10 Oscar-nominated performances Bette Davis became the first person to earn five consecutive Academy Award nominations for acting, all in the Best Actress category (1938-1942).[127] Her record has only been matched by one other performer, Greer Garson, who also earned five consecutive nominations in the Best Actress category (1941-1945), including three years when both these actresses were nominated.[127] In 1962, Bette Davis became the first person to secure 10 Academy Award nominations for acting. Since then only three people have surpassed this figure, Meryl Streep (with 21 nominations and three wins), Katharine Hepburn (12 nominations and four wins), and Jack Nicholson (12 nominations and three wins) with Laurence Olivier matching the number (10 nominations, 1 award).[128] Steven Spielberg purchased Davis' Oscars for Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938), when they were offered for auction for $207,500 and $578,000, respectively, and returned them to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[129][130] Davis' performance in Of Human Bondage (1934) was widely acclaimed and when she was not nominated for an Academy Award, several influential people mounted a campaign to have her name included. The Academy relaxed its rules for that year (and the following year also) to allow for the consideration of any performer nominated in a write-in vote; therefore, any performance of the year was technically eligible for consideration. For a period of time in the 1930s, the Academy revealed the second- and third-place vote getters in each category, Davis placed third for best actress above the officially nominated Grace Moore. The academy's nomination and winner database notes this under the 1934 best actress category and under the Bette Davis search. Year Category Film Result 1935 Best Actress Dangerous Won 1938 Jezebel 1939 Dark Victory Nominated 1940 The Letter 1941 The Little Foxes 1942 Now, Voyager 1944 Mr. Skeffington 1950 All About Eve 1952 The Star 1962 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Selected filmography Main article: Bette Davis filmography Bad Sister (1931) The Cabin in the Cotton (1932) Parachute Jumper (1933) Of Human Bondage (1934) Dangerous (1935) The Petrified Forest (1936) Marked Woman (1937) Jezebel (1938) Dark Victory (1939) The Old Maid (1939) The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) Juarez (1939) All This, and Heaven Too (1940) The Letter (1940) The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941) The Little Foxes (1941) The Great Lie (1941) The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) In This Our Life (1942) Now, Voyager (1942) Watch on the Rhine (1943) Old Acquaintance (1943) Mr. Skeffington (1944) A Stolen Life (1946) Deception (1946) Winter Meeting (1948) Beyond the Forest (1949) All About Eve (1950) The Star (1952) The Virgin Queen (1955) The Catered Affair (1956) Pocketful of Miracles (1961) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) Dead Ringer (1964) The Nanny (1965) Madame Sin (1972) Burnt Offerings (1976) Death on the Nile (1978) Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979) The Watcher In The Woods (1980) The Whales of August (1987) Wicked Stepmother (1989)
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