Fasten Your Seat Belts

by Lawrence J. Quirk

  Davis delighted in the role of Dallas, despite its brevity. In later years she claimed that Dallas exemplified the affirmative womanliness that she liked to think of herself as possessing. Her identification with the idealistic yet practical Dallas may have been one of her illusions about herself, for Dallas in actual fact bore little resemblance to the egoistic, hard-driving, self-centered, and neurotic Bette Davis of 1932. “Tennessee Williams was later to tell us we all needed illusions and that was one of Bette’s,” director William Wellman later said, recalling that he had a time of it toning down Davis’s endless squirming and her particularly bad habit of squinting when under harsh, tough close-up lighting. Davis and Stanwyck, who, though but one year her senior, had already achieved major starring status, mixed like oil and water in their few scenes together. “Bette was supposed to be inspired by Barbara’s character’s example, but it was evident she was jealous because a contemporary had achieved stardom so quickly while she had to grind through small roles and [to date] bad pictures,” Wellman later recalled. Barbara sensed her jealousy and reacted in typical Stanwyck style. While not an overbearing person with set workers and fellow actors (on the contrary, Stanwyck was noted for her friendly, informal relations with co-workers), she didn’t take nonsense from anyone, having struggled up from Brooklyn in the toughest of show-business circumstances. Davis’s tense mannerisms and constant wiggling struck her as affected and designed to hog and, if possible, steal scenes. In one shot, Davis blew her lines and lit a cigarette nervously. “It all makes me so jittery, the pace of this scene,” she complained to Stanwyck, who barked back, “You make yourself jittery! Try to fit into things!” After that Davis never liked her, and the atmosphere was frigid. “She’s an egotistical little bitch,” Stanwyck told Wellman. “Why doesn’t she relax, for Christ’s sake! She’ll get her turn. There’s plenty of room at the top for talent in Hollywood.”

  In later years, when I interviewed Stanwyck, I asked for her opinion of various co-workers. About most of them she was warm and cordial. When I mentioned her brief appearances with Davis in So Big, her eyes hardened. “She was always so ambitious you knew she’d make it. She had a kind of creative ruthlessness that made her success inevitable,” Stanwyck said. Her voice got across the two-edged quality of her remark.

  The New York Times critic opined: “Bette Davis, as a young artist who sees into the complicated story of Selina’s life, is unusually competent.”

  It was in So Big that Davis first worked with the actor who would be one of the great loves of her life. While their scenes in So Big were fleeting, she was to have a more intimate juxtaposition with him in the other picture in which they were appearing simultaneously, The Rich Are Always With Us.

  George Brent, twenty-eight years old in 1932, had a checkered and fascinating career. Born in Ireland, he had come to America in 1915 at age eleven, after his parents died. Later he returned to Ireland, where he did bits and walk-ons with the Abbey Theatre while carrying on, at seventeen, subversive activities against the British as an Irish revolutionary. In 1921, after a narrow escape from the British, who had a price on his head, he was smuggled back to America via freighter to Canada. Odd jobs were followed by an acting debut in Canadian stock, followed by Broadway, where he was regarded as one of the theater’s most attractive young juveniles in the late 1920s. Signaled by Hollywood in 1931, he began a long career as a suave, sexy, but hardly inspired actor who specialized in playing romantic foil to the likes of Garbo, Loy, and others.

  The Rich Are Always With Us starred Warners’ most glamorous actress-of-the-moment, Ruth Chatterton, who had come over from Paramount with a high-salaried contract after conquering the talkies in such women’s-picture fare as Madame X and Sarah and Son. Given the deluxe treatment all the way for as long as her Warner reign lasted (a scant two years, after which her box office fell off), she was designated in her picture credits as MISS Ruth Chatterton and was dubbed by the fan magazines “the Queen” and “The Screen’s First Lady.” By no means pretty, Ruth had flair, poise, and authority instead, and as one of her admirers wrote, “could sweep in and out of a drawing room with an imperial aplomb that was classy as all-get-out!” A Broadway star for fifteen years prior to her 1928 screen debut, she had been adored by producer Henry Miller, who called her “Miss Peaches.”

  It was this formidable figure Davis faced on her first day on the set of The Rich Are Always With Us. Having been given the business by Stanwyck on So Big, Davis found herself speechless in a scene with Chatterton, and the star, sensing her confusion, took her aside and assured her that she was, after all, a fellow human being and co-worker, and if she would relax, all would go well.

  Charmed by the democratic approach of Queen Chatterton, who proved big sisterly in comparison to aloof Stanwyck, Davis relaxed and proceeded to give a fine performance. When I interviewed director Alfred E. Green in the 1950s, he recalled that Davis seemed to fit like a glove the role of Malbro, a flighty society girl in love with the handsome foreign correspondent (Brent) whom the married Park Avenue matron (Chatterton), has appropriated for her very own. The film, written by an ex–Mr. Miriam Hopkins, Austin Parker, was frothy nonsense about Chatterton’s persistent loyalty to an aberrant society scamp of a husband (John Miljan), a womanizer and rogue par excellence. Brent grows impatient with her masochistic loyalty to Miljan, who she is in the process of divorcing, but they somehow blunder their way through to a happy dénouement, of sorts.

  As it turned out, Davis was outmaneuvered in the pursuit of the irresistible Mr. Brent by Chatterton, both onscreen and off. Both ladies fell madly in love with him during the shooting of The Rich Are Always With Us, but it was Chatterton who whisked him off to the altar offscreen as soon as her divorce from her current husband, actor Ralph Forbes, was final.

  Oddly enough, being beaten by Chatterton in the Brent Cupid Sweepstakes did not turn Davis against her. Bette always remembered Chatterton’s kindnesses to her during the shooting, and she designated her one of the premier actresses of her time.

  Davis’s memories of Chatterton in later years may also have been sweetened by her knowledge that Chatterton’s star set as hers rose, and by the fact that Chatterton’s and Brent’s marriage lasted barely two years (1932–34), after which Davis was to have more than a few cracks at him, both on and off screen.

  George Brent was an erratic fellow, disdainful and sharp-tongued. He seemed to have a realistic approach to women and made them dance to his tune rather than the reverse. “No woman will ever own me; I own myself!” he told producer Hal Wallis once, and no woman ever did establish permanent rights to him through many romances and some six marriages, including those to actresses Constance Worth (it scarcely lasted a year, 1937) and Ann Sheridan (who also had a one-year marital turn with him from 1942 to 1943).

  Yet for all his rueful realism, sophisticated awareness of the female psyche, and a feet-on-the-ground cynicism doubtless born of his stark and brutal experiences during the Irish rebellion, Brent had a steadying influence on the ladies in his life and met their problems with a kind of rough compassion that they found healing—while it lasted. Davis was to benefit hugely from these qualities of his in the not-too-distant future.

  Orry-Kelly, who had been born Jack Kelly, began his career as a clothes designer at Warners about this time, and he and cameraman Ernie Haller worked overtime to photograph and dress Davis to flattering effect. Davis thought of herself as striking rather than beautiful at the time (most who knew her agreed) but the Haller-Kelly combine did succeed in doing wonders with her appearance in Rich.

  The New York Times thought little of The Rich Are Always With Us, stating that it “unfortunately savors more of Hollywood than it does of fashionable New York society.” Chatterton was called “charming” and Davis was pleasantly dismissed and/or patted on the back with “Bette Davis also serves this film well.”

  Darryl Zanuck kept his eyes open for a good lead for Davis, and found The Dark Horse. With a presidential election
coming up, this story of a gubernatorial campaign had “the right stuff,” Zanuck felt. And the role of the intelligent, enterprising Kay Russell seemed right up Davis’s street.

  While The Dark Horse will never go down in cinematic history as a classic of the first, or even the second, order, it is a lively and witty political comedy-drama that showcased Davis most effectively.

  The plot has her and campaign manager Warren William trying to sell a gubernatorial candidate (Guy Kibbee) of monumental stupidity and oafishness. Davis and William scheme their way through to an election-night success for their candidate, meanwhile following the usual leading man–leading lady pattern of falling solidly in love.

  The New York Times liked The Dark Horse, and Davis in her first solid leading part of the year found herself described as giving “a splendid performance.” Of the picture itself, the Times critic wrote: “A lively comedy of politics . . . filled with bright lines and clever incidents and never a word or an action is wasted.”

  Photoplay had referred to The Dark Horse in its review as a “grand political satire, which comes at the most opportune of moments,” adding “[it] will give you enough chuckles to tide you over a flock of gloomy days.”

  Meanwhile the magazine’s editor Jimmy Quirk was answering the flood of “Davis looks like Connie Bennett” letters with articles and gossip notes that called attention to the highly distinctive individuality of both actresses, but which favored Bette. When Connie Bennett was in New York for a visit, she met Quirk at a party and protested. He told her: “You’ve already made it—you’re a big star. But she’s just coming up and needs any and all kinds of inventive publicity. Be a sport, Connie. You can afford to be generous!” Bennett agreed she could indeed afford it, and no more on the matter was heard from that quarter.

  Meanwhile, Davis was having problems with Warren William, a notorious ladies’ man who reportedly had an erection ninety percent of the time and had to wear special crotch supports to disguise the fact—not always successfully. She had dodged his passes all through The Dark Horse, and then, to her horror, found that Warners expected her to go to New York with William on a personal appearance tour. She suspected that Zanuck had cooked this up as a favor to William, who was his friendly rival in the cocksmanship sweeptstakes. William made no secret of the fact that he found Davis the cat’s meow sexually, and she had to complain to director Alfred E. Green when William turned their onscreen smooching sessions into grope parties.

  As for Zanuck, he admired Davis’s talent and potential but found her “too New England staid” for his tastes. “If William has the hots for the dame, I’ll make it easy for him,” he told Alfred Green. And presently Davis found herself on a train bound for the East with William and a Warner contingent of publicity men and administrative aides.

  In 1932, Davis hated personal appearances and publicity tours. She did not think she was sufficiently well known as yet, and it wounded her vanity to face the prospect of people asking, “Who is she?” To her pleasant surprise, she got maximum recognition. Jack Warner later said, “I don’t think she realized the enormous exposure Warner films give to even supporting players. The Stanwyck and Chatterton films paid off for her.”

  In later years Davis gave full credit to this hyperefficient Warners publicity machine for speeding her to stardom. “The disadvantage of the contract system was that we were treated like serfs and forced to take roles that were not always suitable. The advantage was that one got maximum exposure to the public in picture after picture, churned out regularly in those days, and wonderful concentrated publicity.”

  William did not seem to care that Davis was seriously involved with Ham Nelson, whom she would marry that August. “Ham has a bad temper,” she hinted. “I know he’ll take apart any man who tries to take liberties with me.” She also let it be known to one and all that she would go to her marital bed a virgin, all of which elicited coarse laughter from the horny William. “I can’t believe a woman as passionate as that waited twenty-four years to find out what a guy had in his pants and what he did with it!” he snorted to Zanuck. “She’s giving out a lot of horseshit. She was probably into the boys’ pants back in high school!”

  Zanuck to his surprise found himself a lady’s defender for a change. “She didn’t go to a high school, she went to an academy,” he rejoined, “and I don’t know any guy who has made her, but you can try your luck if you want!”

  Warren William, once ensconced in New York with his wary prey, dreamed up, with Zanuck’s approval, a sketch for him and Davis to do at the Capitol Theater. Called The Burglar and the Lady, it portrayed a robbery that later turns out to be a skit depicting a movie scene, with the director yelling, “Cut!”

  But “cut” it was not to be back at the hotel, where Davis and William (again thanks to the inventive Zanuck) had rooms on the same floor. When Davis heard the patter of little feet once too often out in the corridor and heard the inimitable, sexy Warren voice calling out, “Room service!” she phoned Ham. “I think I’m in imminent danger of getting raped. Do something about it!”

  Within ten minutes Mr. Warren William heard an irate Ham’s voice on the phone. “Who do you think you are, trying to make time with MY woman?” was the least of what Mr. Nelson had to say to Mr. William, and after that all was peace at both hotel and theater—or relatively so. “I couldn’t escape Warren’s looks, at any rate,” Davis later said. “They say looks can kill. Well, looks can undress, too, believe you me!”

  Bette Davis has said that her favorite of all her film lines is the one from her next 1932 film, Cabin in the Cotton: “I’d love to kiss ya, but I just washed ma hair!” spoken, of course, in the southern accent she adopted for the film, which starred a rather washed-out-looking Richard Barthelmess. The great silent star was slipping in 1932; his career would end a few years later, his vogue as the well-meaning innocent forced to express his manhood under pressure having passed during the sophisticated Depression era of gangsters and men who kicked women around and made them like it.

  Michael Curtiz was the reluctant director. He had not wanted Davis for the part of Madge, the sexy planter’s daughter who seduces sharecropper’s son Barthelmess against the background of a planter-sharecropper dispute. During the filming he embarrassed Davis any and every way he could, calling her, within earshot, “a no-good sexless son of a bitch” and harassing her with such insults while she was making love to a camera without Barthelmess on hand to play to.

  Darryl Zanuck had insisted that Davis could generate the steamy sexuality necessary for the part. Even when he knew he had been proven wrong during the filming, Curtiz lacked the grace to admit his mistake.

  Davis knew Madge was a breakthrough role for her, and she gave it all she had. In a famous bedroom seduction scene, Davis undresses in a closet, then emerges obviously naked, though the shots are filmed at shoulder height. She advances on Barthelmess, who is suddenly aroused by her come-hither steaminess and brokenly whispers her name as the scene dissolves in a passionate embrace.

  The scene—and Davis’s performance in general—is all the more remarkable in that Davis was still a virgin, her marriage some weeks away. Possibly it was her frustration over that state, her determination to be free of it, that lent such emotion and such sexual kineticism to the scene.

  I talked to Richard Barthelmess in 1960, a few years before his death from cancer, and among the topics covered was Davis’s emergence as seductress supreme in Cabin in the Cotton. “I felt she was emerging from some kind of chrysalis, that true womanhood had somehow eluded her up to then, that family pressures, her mother, her puritanical upbringing, had somehow kept her in delayed adolescence,” Barthelmess said. “There was a lot of passion in her, and it was impossible not to sense it. She was twenty-four at the time, and one got the sense of a lot of feeling dammed up in her, a lot of electricity that had not yet found its outlet. In a way it was rather disconcerting—yes, I admit it, frightening.”

  Barthelmess added, “I was thirty-se
ven or so at the time, and had forgotten a lot more than she was in the process of discovering—and I don’t mean acting. I admit I was never noted—onscreen or off—for being a hot lover-boy. That was not my thing, not my gift, if that is the word for it, but she was so exciting and seductive that she would have aroused a wooden Indian.

  “More important, she was an excellent actress who, I knew even then, required only the right director and the right script to shine along with the best of the stars of the time. When Of Human Bondage came along a couple of years later, I was not at all surprised at the sensation she made. It was all there in Cabin, but the story and the director were not right for her.”

  Barthelmess recalled that Curtiz had gone out of his way to be cruel to Davis. “He had fought Zanuck over her casting—probably thought Ann Dvorak or some other directly sexual type would have been more right for it—and he couldn’t admit it when he saw he was wrong. Mike Curtiz was a mean one. I was the star of the film so I could walk away from him and hole up in my dressing room but Bette was a contract player and had to put up with him, and put up with him she did. Indeed she would taunt him in return at times. She knew Darryl Zanuck believed in her and that Curtiz couldn’t remove her. And she gave that performance all she had.”

  Cabin in the Cotton was indeed a breakthrough performance for Davis. When the picture was released in late September of 1932 the critics picked up on Davis’s fresh incarnation at once. Regina Crewe in The New York American raved about “that flashy, luminous newcomer Bette Davis, who romps off with first honors, for hers is the most dashing and colorful role.” Crewe wound up her rave review with, “The girl is superb.” Richard Watts, Jr., of The New York Herald-Tribune noted, with some surprise, “Miss Davis shows a surprising vivacity as the seductive rich girl.”