Bette Davis

Fülszöveg

After fifty-five years in the film industry, during which she has made over ninety films, including such classics as Now, Voyager, All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Bette Davis is indisputably the grande dame of Hollywood.
Alexander Walker, who has known Bette Davis for twenty years, has pieced together her early hfe, from her dramatic entrance -she was born during a thunderstorm in 1908 - and unhappy childhood - her parents separated when she was six - to her promising career on the New York stage, interrupted in 1930 when Bette and her mother moved to Hollywood. The subsequent film career was by no means an instant success. Rejected by Goldwyn ('What are you trying to do to me?' he shouted at his scout on seeing her screen test), she landed a contract with Universal but they failed to see any appeal in her unconventional looks and loaned her out. The turbulent relationship between Bette Davis and Warner Brothers is legendary but gradually she achieved the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

After fifty-five years in the film industry, during which she has made over ninety films, including such classics as Now, Voyager, All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Bette Davis is indisputably the grande dame of Hollywood.
Alexander Walker, who has known Bette Davis for twenty years, has pieced together her early hfe, from her dramatic entrance -she was born during a thunderstorm in 1908 - and unhappy childhood - her parents separated when she was six - to her promising career on the New York stage, interrupted in 1930 when Bette and her mother moved to Hollywood. The subsequent film career was by no means an instant success. Rejected by Goldwyn ('What are you trying to do to me?' he shouted at his scout on seeing her screen test), she landed a contract with Universal but they failed to see any appeal in her unconventional looks and loaned her out. The turbulent relationship between Bette Davis and Warner Brothers is legendary but gradually she achieved the opportunities to show her astonishing range, reflected in the roles she played between 1939 and 1941: an invalid in Dark Victory, frustrated motherhood in The Old Maid, deceit in The Letter, malevolence and greed in The Little Foxes, regal authority in her portrayal of Elizabeth Tudor.
In this elegant celebration Alexander Walker identifies the extraordinary qualities that enabled Bette Davis to survive the Hollywood system and become one of its most durable actresses. He cites her strength of mind and body; the icy will power with which she pursued her ambition, battled for her rights and the rights of all women; the attraction of her striking looks and particularly her eyes, which she used to strike terror into the competition; her emphatic diction, which gave her complete command, and her devastating sarcasm which made her feared by high and low, both on and off set.
These were the weapons which, honed and perfected over the years, made Bette Davis one of Hollywood's towering monuments -not so much an immortal, as an indestructible. Vissza