Bette Davis - The Lonely Life: An Autobiography

I have always been driven by some distant musica battle hymn no doubtfor I have been at war from the beginning. I rode into the field with sword gleaming and standard flying. I was going to conquer the world.

When the war was won, I knew the triumph of standing victorious over my own dead body, for there among the vanquished, I found a woman lying at my feet. A gold band and a silver thimble on her left hand. Against my full regalia, she had been defenseless.

With my passion for order, I tidied up the battlefield and buried her with full military honors. I even wrote her epitaph. It is the most honorable I know. H ERE LIES R UTH E LIZABETH D AVIS 19081961S HE DID IT THE HARD WAY.

Ive never looked back before. Ive never had the time and it has always seemed so dangerous. To look back is to relax ones vigil.

Any vogue has always bored me. I find no exception in the now stylish trip to the inner world of the psyche where Mama and Papa are the villains of ones life. I could never afford this kind of vacation into self-pity and the transference of ones mistakes to another. This is Pass-the-Buck-Land and it is a desert.

As I piece things together and see my life up to now, I refuse to yield to that vogue. Whatever I did, I did. My mistakes are mine. I, alone, am responsible.

If you hate your parents for willing you buck teeth, have them fixed or become a comiconly keep quiet about it.

My fathers cavalier disappearance from our home when I was a small child certainly has significance. Consider my quartette of marriages. But his hypothetical perfection as a father might have bound me to him and spoiled other men for me.

I only know that when Mother told me that Father was gone, I said, Now we can go on a picnic and have a baby.

But why waste time hating your father when he had a father who had a father? The die was cast when Daddy left us. My sister Bobbys world went up in smoke. Mine shifted on its axis. Its as simple as that.

At thirty I learned what it means to be responsible for the outcome of the show. You must set the tempo, chart the course. You are a star.

If you aim high, the pygmies will jump on your back and tug at your skirts. The people who call you a driving female will come along for the ride. If they weigh you down, you will fight them off. It is then that you are called a bitch.

I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesnt dare to make an enemy should get out of the business. I worked for my career and Ill protect it as I would my childrenevery inch of the way. I do not regret the dust Ive kicked up. I always fought people my own size and more often than not they were bigger.

My father is not the star of my dramanor my mother, my sister, those brothers Warner or my husbands four. They helped and they hindered, but the spark that was Bette Davis was there from the beginning. It emerged in Lowell, Massachusetts, during a thunderstorm. It is true that the spark was fanned by events into something elsebut it could never have been snuffed out.

How strange it is, writing this book and going back. Rushing past a cavalcade of Bettes, each younger, each surer of herself, each purersimplera mist of blond puritanismsmallershyertinier.

It was true about the thunderstorm. Ruthie said the gods were going mad and the earth was holding its head in a panic. The offstage noises were deafening. Thank God, I didnt have a line at my entrance.

I happened between a clap of thunder and a streak of lightning. It almost hit the house and destroyed a tree out front. As a child I fancied that the Finger of God was directing the attention of the world to me. Further and divine prooffrom the stump of that treethat one should never point.

My Episcopal Minister Uncle Paul detected a note of blasphemy in this conceit and my Baptist grandfather took to his bed; but I was undisturbed by the unanimous rejection of my fantasy. I always felt specialpart of a wonderful secret. I was always going to be somebody. I didnt know exactly what at firstperhaps the beautiful nurse in the Red Cross posters immaculately extending her hand of mercy to the worldbut when my dream became clear, I followed it.

A woman has to fly high and fight to reach the top. She tires and needs a resting place. She should travel lightunburdenedbut Ive always done things the hard way. If I fell in love, I married. Had I been a European, I would have managed things differently. The deflowering of New England was unthinkable to this passionate Pilgrim.

I wanted to be married. I wanted a home. Ruthie, Bobby and I hadnt had one since I was seven years old. We were on the move for yearsgypsies. Small wonder that when I could, I acquired houses as other women acquire jewels.

A nest was always being improvised. My dressing rooms in the theatre were immediately decorated. Pictures were hung and familiar sentimental objects were strewn about to give an air of continuity. My bungalow at Warners was a mansion. It had everything but a ghost and a six-hundred-year-old lawn.

Even on one-night stands, the pattern remains unchanged. Bits of fabric that may brighten the place updog-eared volumes I couldnt possibly have time to read againchoice pieces of china and brass which only crowd the tiny rooms. Favorite cigarette boxes and ashtrays have followed me around the world. I am a nesterand Ive always found myself out on a limb.

It all started when I was told that I had a gift. The gods are Yankee traders. There are no gifts. Everything has a price, and in bitter moments I have been tempted to cry Usury!