Bette Davis - She could handle a cigarette, a man, and a gun.

Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis, on April 5th. 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts. She was nicknamed, "The First Lady of Film." Her performances in Dangerous (1935) and Jezebel (1938) earned her Oscars. She is best known for her character Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950). One of her classmates at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School in New York was Lucille Ball. Bette Davis was the first woman to be president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 1941). She was the first actress to receive ten Academy Award nominations and the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. She is mentioned by name in Madonna's #1 hit "Vogue." She was nominated for an Academy Award 5 years in a row for movies in 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1942. She shares the record for most consecutive nominations with Greer Garson. Bette claimed that she gave the Academy Award statue the nickname "Oscar" because she felt it resembled her husband, whose middle name was Oscar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, but felt it was belated recogniti

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Davis spent the early months of 1942 traveling across the U.S. selling war bonds. Criticized by Jack Warner for her tendency to cajole and harangue crowds into buying, she reminded him that her audiences responded most strongly to her "bitch" performances.

She considered herself to be proven correct when she sold two million dollars 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, that also included Lena Horne and Ethel Waters.

When John Garfield discussed opening a serviceman's club in Hollywood, Davis responded enthusiastically. With the aid of Warner, Cary Grant and Jule Styne, they transformed an old nightclub into the "Hollywood Canteen", which opened on October 3, 1942.

Hollywood's most important stars volunteered their time and talents to entertain servicemen prior to them being sent to war. Davis ensured that every night there would be at least a few important "names" for the visiting soldiers to meet, often calling on friends at the last moment to ensure the soldiers would not be disappointed.

She appeared as herself in the film Hollywood Canteen (1944) which used the canteen as the setting for a fictional story. The canteen remained in operation until the end of World War II. 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.

Bette Davis had initially shown 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 it she portrayed dowdy, repressed spinster Charlotte Vale, who is forced to cater to her domineering mother's demands until psychiatric therapy and a physical makeover transform her into a beautiful, confident woman. The cigarette, often used by Davis as a dramatic prop, was featured prominently in one of the film's most imitated scenes, in which Paul Henreid lit two cigarettes before passing one to Davis. The reviews that followed were scathing; Newsweek called it, "undoubtedly one of the most unfortunate stories [Davis] has ever tackled", while Dorothy Manners writing for the Los Angeles Examiner, criticized the "sheer hysteria and overexposed histrionics" of Davis's performance, and described the film as "an unfortunate finale to her brilliant career". The film contained the line, "What a dump!", which became closely associated with Davis after impersonators used it in their acts. In later years, Davis often used it as her opening line at speaking engagements. When original star Claudette Colbert injured her back and was unable to perform, appeared as the glamorous, aging theatrical actress, Margo

Channing, in All About Eve (1950), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Davis described the script as "the best I ever read" and during production, she established what would become a life-long friendship with her costar, Anne Baxter, and a romantic relationship with her leading man, Gary Merrill, which led to marriage.  Mankiewicz later remarked, "Bette was letter perfect. She was syllable-perfect. The director's dream: the prepared actress". Critics responded positively to Davis's 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".

As she entered old age, Davis was acknowledged for her achievements. In a 2000 review for All About Eve, Roger Ebert noted, "Davis was a character, an icon with a grand style, so even her excesses are realistic." A few months before her death in 1989, Davis was one of several actors featured on the cover of Life. 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 as one of the most important films of the year. Her death made front-page news throughout the world as the "close of yet another chapter of the Golden Age of Hollywood". Angela Lansbury summed up the feeling of those of the Hollywood community who attended her memorial service, commenting after a sample from Davis's films were 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". 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. 

Bette Davis: Larger than Life [Hardcover]

"Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you're not a star," Bette Davis once said. Let's just say in Hollywood she was considered the ultimate star. The Academy Award-winning actress was one of the movies' most riveting and volatile personalities both on and off the screen. She comes to life in the pages of this lavish, fully illustrated tribute produced in conjunction with her estate.