Bette Davis was a successful film actress from the 1920s to the 1980s, known for her melodramatic acting style. She won two Oscars and was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood. Her career included memorable roles in films such as Of Human Bondage and All About Eve. She died in 1989 after a battle with breast cancer.
Bette Davis is one of the most popular and successful film actresses of the 20th century, with a career spanning from the 1920s to the 1930s. She won two Academy Awards during her lifetime and is memorable for her melodramatic and clipped acting style, which has often been imitated and parodied in later years.
She was born as Ruth Elizabeth Davis in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1908. After high school, she changed her name to Bette Davis and began performing small roles on Broadway, where she was approached by a talent scout for Universal Studios . When she arrived in Hollywood, Bette Davis’ audition was sad; even so, the studio signed her to a contract and gave her parts in several films, though they dropped her from their roster after six films in nine months.
Bette Davis’ first big break came when she was cast in a lead role in George Arliss’ The Man Who Played God in 1932; this role led to a five-year contract with Warner Brothers Studios. In a film called Of Human Bondage, Bette Davis played the role of an aloof and unsympathetic character – at the time, this was a rare part for an actress. Davis would be associated with such roles throughout her career. In 1935, Bette Davis won her first Oscar for her role in the film Dangerous. Another would soon follow playing her as the selfish Southern Belle in Jezebel in 1938. At the time, she was one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood.
While not all of Davis’s films in the 1940s and 1950s were successful, many were, including All About Eve, in which Davis played an aging diva. However, she returned to the public eye with her 1962 role in Whatever Happened to BaJane?, a haunting psychological thriller that pitted Davis against a longtime rival, Joan Crawford. The film is recognized today as a cult classic.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bette Davis occasionally appeared in plays, films, and television miniseries. With the release of Kim Carnes’ 1981 hit “Bette Davis Eyes,” Davis became famous for a new generation. Davis died in 1989, following a long bout with breast cancer. Her epitaph on her gravestone reads: “I did it the hard way.”
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