Who is Bette Davis? Bette Davis Bio
Ruth Elizabeth “Bette” Davis was a famous American actress. Over the course of her 50-year career she earned over 100 performing credits. She was a well-known actress who focused on portraying sardonic and cynical roles in a range of film genres, including romantic comedies, suspense thrillers, historical dramas, and contemporary crime melodramas. However, love story roles were her most popular roles. She became the first actor in history to win two of her ten Oscar nominations.
Bette Davis Love Triangle
Bette had four marriages, three divorces and one widowhood. Bette Davis was previously married to Gary Merrill (1950 – 1960), William Grant Sherry (1945 – 1950), Arthur Farnsworth (i) (1940 – 1943) and Harmon Nelson (1932 – 1939).
Bette Davis was romantically involved with Franchot Tone (1939), George Brent (1939 – 1940) and William Wyler (1937 – 1938).
Bette Davis had encounters with Robert S. Taplinger (1940), Howard Hughes (1938), Robert Aldrich and Anatole Litvak.
Bette Davis Children
Barbara Davis was Bette Davis’s only known biological child. She adopted Michael Merrill and Margot Merrill.
Bette Davis relationship with her daughter Barbara Davis Hyman
The bond between Bette Davis and her daughter Barbara Davis Hyman, also known as “B.D. Hyman,” soured when Hyman converted to Christianity and tried to convince Davis to do the same. When she returned from filming the Agatha Christie mystery Murder with Mirrors in England in 1985, she discovered that Hyman had written a book titled “My Mother’s Keeper,” in which she detailed a challenging mother-daughter relationship and included instances of Davis’s controlling and drunken manners.
Gary Merrill defended Davis, even though they had divorced years earlier in bitterness. According to Merrill, Hyman was driven by “cruelty and greed” in an interview with CNN. Michael Merrill, Davis’s adopted son, cut off communication with Hyman and declined to speak with her ever again. Davis also disinherited her.
Bette Davis Net Worth
Bette Davis had an estimated net worth of $2.5 Million at the time of her passing. according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Who Inherited Bette Davis’s fortune?
Bette’s last will and testament stated that she left a $1 million estate. She bequeathed most of her estate to her adopted son, Michael Merrill. Kathryn Sermack, her personal assistant and close friend, were the other beneficiary.
Bette Davis Early Life
Ruth Elizabeth Davis, referred to as “Betty” since her early years, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on April 5, 1908.
Her parents were Harlow Morrell Davis, a former law student and patent attorney from Augusta, Maine, and Ruth Augusta. Davis’s younger sister was Barbara Harriet. After their parents separated in 1915, Davis and her sister Barbara boarded at Crestalban in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, for three years.
Bette Davis Health Issues
Bette had multiple periods of career eclipse, but she persisted in acting in television shows and movies despite a protracted period of ill health. In 1983, Davis underwent a mastectomy following her diagnosis of breast cancer.
Two weeks after the surgery, she suffered four strokes that caused paralysis in her left arm and on the left side of her face, as well as slurred speech. She began a lengthy physical therapy regimen with the assistance of her personal assistant, Kathryn Sermak and made a partial recovery from her paralysis.
Bette Davis Cause of Death
Following her collapse at the 1989 American Cinema Awards, Davis discovered that her cancer had returned. While she was in Spain, her health rapidly deteriorated, but she had sufficiently recovered to go back and be honored at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. She was too weak to make the long journey back to the United States, so she left for France.
She died on October 6, 1989, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. She was 81 years old. A memorial service was held by invitation only at Burbank Studio’s stage 18, where a work light was turned on to signal the end of production. She was interred in Los Angeles’ Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery alongside her mother Ruthie and sister Bobby. She wrote her name in all capital letters.
Bette Davis Career
In 1930, at the age of 22, Davis moved to Hollywood to pursue her career as a film actress, following her Broadway debut. After a string of bad films, she made her critical breakthrough as a rude waitress in Of Human Bondage (1934), even though she wasn’t one of the three Academy Award nominees for Best Actress that year.
Davis received her first nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of a down-and-out actress in Dangerous (1935), which she went on to win the following year. Despite losing the legal battle, she became one of the most well-known leading ladies in American cinema for over ten years when she attempted to leave Warner Brothers Studio in 1937.
She starred in one of her most significant early roles in Marked Woman that same year. For the first of five consecutive years, Davis received nominations for Best Actress. Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942). Davis won a second Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942 for her performance as a resolute 1850s southern belle in Jezebel (1938).
