Fasten Your Seat Belts

by Lawrence J. Quirk

  In one of her two autobiographies, Astor gives Davis full credit for helping her get an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress of 1941) for her role of the temperamental pianist. “I didn’t take that picture from Bette, she handed it to me on a silver platter! Sandra was one of the best roles I ever had, and she built it up and made it real and I can never thank her enough!” On Oscar night in 1942, Astor thanked two people in her acceptance speech: Tchaikovsky and Davis.

  Thanks to her years of piano study, Astor gave her concert scenes a reality that won the approbation of José Iturbi, who was on the set. She eschewed the “spaghetti arms” technique of other actors who couldn’t even play, and did it the right way, practicing so assiduously at home that, even though she was working on a dummy piano before the camera, she seemed completely authentic in her movements.

  George Brent was, of course, the man left behind the parade in all this. In fact, he was missing from the middle third of the picture, being presumably dead in a plane crash. “I’m used to playing second and third fiddle,” he complained to Goulding one day, “but this takes the cake!” The director, who had long cherished a secret passion for George, hugged him and purred, “Well, I still love you, George!” “That’s what I’m afraid of, Eddie,” George laughed, disengaging himself from the Goulding embrace and lighting a cigarette. But Goulding had the last word. A few setups later he had Davis and Astor in stitches as he demonstrated to George how he should play a love scene—with Eddie in the female part, of course. Red-faced, George told everyone present he had to take a leak and would be back later. “And don’t follow him to the John, Eddie,” Davis laughed, “or he’ll give you some of that Irish Republican Army rubout stuff he was trained in as a kid!” As always graceful, witty, and ready with a return quip under fire, Eddie Goulding put his hand to his heart, cocked his head sidewise, and purred, “Ah, but some things are worth dying for!”

  Stung by his previous allusions to lesbianism, Davis brought him up short with, “You superintend the action, Eddie, I’ll make the love!”

  Most critics felt The Great Lie was pretty silly and superficial goods when it opened in April 1941. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times wrote, “The story is such a trifle that it hardly seems worth the while. However, the women will probably love it, since fibs are so provocative of fun. . . . the only excuse to be found for this thoroughly synthetic tale is that it gives Miss Davis an opportunity to display her fine talent for distress, to be maternal and noble, the ‘good’ woman opposed to the ‘bad.’” When a Cleveland critic rhapsodized (in rather ornate language) that “Edmund Goulding has such a miraculous, uncanny talent for deciphering the mysteries of the feminine psyche,” there was some hilarity at WB.

  Davis spent all of her free time in 1940 dreaming about Farney. Since his work kept him in the East, and later at Minneapolis Honeywell in Minnesota, their fairly infrequent reunions were very romantic. Absence, it seemed, made the heart grow fonder. He was just enough of a factor in her life for her to keep romantic illusions intact. But he wasn’t right on top of her, either, as Ham had been. He didn’t whine, he didn’t complain, he didn’t have to be weaned away from masturbation, as Ham and Hughes had been. His technique was expert and sure as always; he satisfied her deeply, played back to her all the mature passion she had by then developed with a vengeance.

  She took a brief trip to Hawaii in early 1940. On the way back she met a dynamic publicity man, Bob Taplinger. He, too, was masculine, though more dominating and self-confident a personality than Farney. He was good in bed, too, but she sensed in Taplinger, even as the ship neared the California coast, an impatience with her, a rejection of her assertiveness. The romance was soon cold, and she was back to mooning over Farney again. Then, in late December of 1940, with The Great Lie drawing to a close, she made a decision. She and Farney would marry. He made no objection—so long as the interstate arrangement continued, with nestings when feasible at Riverbottom on the West Coast and Butternut on the East.

  She deliberately timed the wedding to keep the media at bay and got married on December 31, 1940—when the newspapers were on vacation time—at her dear friend Jane Bryan’s handsome ranch in Rimrock, Arizona. Jane had deserted her promising career, to Davis’s great regret, to marry superentrepreneur Justin Dart.

  Davis, mightily amused that the next picture scheduled for her in the New Year 1941 had been titled The Bride Came C.O.D., waited until the day after the wedding, January 1, 1941, to send Jack Warner her fait accompli telegram, leaving him and his publicity department, to say nothing of the Hollywood press corps, stymied. It read:

  ARTHUR FARNSWORTH AND I WERE MARRIED AT EIGHT O’CLOCK TUESDAY EVENING (DECEMBER 31) AT THE RANCH OF MR AND MRS JUSTIN DART IN ARIZONA [SHE PURPOSELY OMITTED THE TOWN.]

  On hand for the living-room ceremony, conducted by a Methodist minister at Farney’s suggestion (and his stern Methodist mother’s insistence), were sister Bobby and her current husband, Robert Pelgram; Ruthie; Perc Westmore and his girlfriend, hairdresser Margaret Donovan; Davis’s cousin John Favor; and a few others.

  After spending their wedding night in a room at the Darts, Davis and Farney returned to Riverbottom the next day, as The Bride Came C.O.D. was due to start January 7.

  Fearful that marriage might lessen Farney’s sex appeal in her eyes, Davis found her trepidations unfounded; each bed session continued to be romantically and sexually enthralling. Davis also found his frequent absences through 1941 very much to her taste. Passive and preoccupied, wrapped up in his work, Farney did not interfere in her career in any way, nor did he express any desire to. His salary, true, did not match hers and she found herself paying all the important bills, but he took care of his own needs on his own pay so could not, she reasoned, technically qualify as a parasitical Mr. Bette Davis. Except for a week or so late in 1941, when his attack of pneumonia in Minneapolis caused her to fly to him, upsetting her shooting schedule on a picture. Farney proved to be an undemanding marital presence.

  The Bride Came C.O.D. was one of Davis’s less felicitous assignments. Her newfound happiness in her second marriage probably impaired her judgment in this instance. It had been decided by the powers that were at Warners—especially the anxious Hal Wallis—that Davis needed a change of pace from heavy drama and soap, and that a fast-paced, lively comedy would meet the bill. Ignored was the fact that the bulk of Davis fans paid to see her emote with a vengeance—comedy had never been her forte, nor was she particularly adept at it. The decision, in retrospect, was unfortunate, to say the least. Jack Warner was not keen on the project, but Wallis convinced him otherwise. “She’ll get stale if she is doing high drama all the time—she needs a rest,” Wallis told the boss. “Let’s see just how good she actually can be in comedy, and she can romp through it in no time.”

  Then Wallis had another brainstorm. He decided to pair James Cagney with her in this silly story of a runaway heiress and the pilot who kidnaps her (he’s in the pay of her millionaire oil-tycoon father) to prevent her from marrying a buffoonish band leader. Father and band-leader were, respectively Eugene Pallette and Jack Carson, fine comedians both, but defeated in this case by the silly material, as were all on hand. Pilot and heiress land in a ghost town on the California-Arizona border, where they encounter a lovable old hermit (Harry Davenport), go through all manner of misunderstandings, and finally wind up in each other’s arms. Screenwriters Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein were not at their best here, desperately conjuring up monumentally silly situations: Davis gets several dozen cactus spines in her derriere after jumping from a plane that has been forced to land; Cagney hits the same derriere with a sling-shot; Cagney imitates a coyote-howl to get Davis to move nearer him when they bunk out in the desert—then he inanely repeats the howl on their wedding night. And so forth and so on. Watching the somewhat overweight forty-one-year-old Cagney making like a fey, coy swain was one of the chief embarrassments of the picture. As for Davis, she revealed a lack of light comedy timing and overplayed th
e silly misunderstandings and false alarms as if she were working herself up to high tragic dénouements. If ever a picture demonstrated that comedy—or at least this brand of screwball comedy—was not her forte, this one does. A farce that Carole Lombard could have larked through took on monumental weight with Davis in the role—so weighty and leaden in fact, that the picture died on her hands.

  The critics were cool to the film when it first appeared in 1941, which is to their credit. The New York Times said, “[It] is neither the funniest comedy in history nor the shortest distance between two points. . . . a serviceable romp.” The Times was unduly kind.

  Seen many years later, the picture alternates between the frenetic and the pathetic. The desperate Epsteins concocted desperation situations—confusion as to California-Nevada wedding rules, unnecessary wrangles between the secondary characters—that defy all logic. The wonder was that Cagney, who like Davis had fought Warners tooth and nail for more money and better roles, had ever accepted it—even with brother Bill on the production team. And why no one had advised him to lose weight is a cinematic mystery. He looks lined, fat, tired, and confused in many situations that an actor like Cary Grant could have carried off with jaunty aplomb. Davis, in addition to looking ridiculously inept with cactus spines in her behind and stuffing herself with food after a starvation episode in a mine, was for once badly photographed by Ernie Haller (the hot 100-degree Death Valley locations did not help, to be sure) and looked haggard and even sweaty in many scenes—sweat on a star, even in the desert, being one of the standard no-nos onscreen circa 1941.

  Not far into the shooting, everyone began to get depressed and disgusted and with great relief they went back to the Burbank studios for the interior shots.

  One of the few bright aspects of the picture was the fine performance of veteran Harry Davenport, who got a seventy-fifth birthday party on January 19 from cast and crew. Davis, who greatly admired Davenport (one of the truly great players of all time, she called him) went to him several times for consolation when the script was driving her up the wall. “If you only knew the clinkers I had to do on the stage, and after I was a star, too!” he reassured her. “This, too, will pass.” Davis later told director William Keighley, “After the fine dialogue Harry got with me in All This and Heaven Too, I feel like apologizing every day for this drivel.” The Epsteins were asked to recast some of the situations, but the substitutions were even worse.

  In later years Davis admitted that Bride was one of her chief mistakes of the period. She called it “truly ridiculous” and on another occasion noted “We [she and Cagney] both reached bottom with this one.” It is regrettable that she and Cagney had not exercised in advance the judgment and foresight that they had applied in other instances, and gone on suspension before agreeing to this.

  Director William Keighley later said of the atmosphere on location and on the Burbank set: “It was funeral, and that is an understatement. You should have seen the long faces just before I called ‘action’ and the sighs of relief when I called ‘cut!’ The happy faces they made on-camera were hollow ones—only Harry Davenport, who was such a good actor he could get into the spirit of anything, and liked his larger-than-usual part, seemed reasonably content. I didn’t really want to do the picture, and I don’t feel Bette or Jimmy did, either. They got talked into it when they were off their guard—which was seldom, I might add. It was all Hal Wallis’s fault. He thought he was being creative in asking Bette and Jimmy to do something offbeat. He was stupid, in my books.”

  16

  Popeye the Magnificent

  IN 1941 BETTE Davis won a signal honor. She was elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, succeeding the producer Walter Wanger. As the first woman ever to receive this honor, she was naturally flattered and gratified. But before the first official meeting, determined to take her duties seriously, she read the bylaws, researched the past fourteen years of the Academy’s history, and arrived at the session full of plans and suggestions.

  Shortly she realized that she was supposed to preside as a sort of charming, public relations–enhancing figurehead. Having won two Oscars, plus nominations, plus numerous citations and tributes from all sides, she would enhance the Academy’s prestige, it was reasoned. That was all very well, she told her cohorts, but a president must preside, give advice, recommendations, initiate policy. In an atmosphere of tense silence she put on her glasses and read her list of proposals. First she felt the awards should be presented in a large theater rather than at a dinner. Then she expressed her dissatisfaction about extras voting, telling the board bluntly that many of them had no taste and no culture, and couldn’t even speak English in many cases.

  When the board protested that they had been considering putting off Oscar dinners until after the War, she barked “Nonsense!” and said they were excellent for Academy public relations, especially if held in large theaters. The board met all of her suggestions with frigid silence. Disgusted, Davis resigned shortly thereafter. “If I couldn’t function, if my suggestions were disregarded, why should I bother?” she told the press, Darryl Zanuck threatened she would “never work again in Hollywood”—a ridiculous statement, considering she had the security of a long-term Warners contract, plus enormous prestige and clout. When the new president, Jean Hersholt, was installed, all the ideas she had proposed, ironically, were eventually adopted!

  Samuel Goldwyn had purchased the movie rights for Tallulah Bankhead’s hit Broadway play of 1939, The Little Foxes. He assigned William Wyler to direct it, and Wyler decided that no one but Bette Davis should play the lead, the ruthless Regina Giddens, for which Bankhead and Miriam Hopkins, both southern born, had also been considered. Bankhead was deeply offended when she was not asked to do the film, but Goldwyn’s New York representative had to tell her bluntly that she was not box-office, at least where film audiences were concerned, and had not done a film in eight years. She had had a fling at movies in the 1931–1933 period, when she was under contract to Paramount, but she did not photograph well—her hooded eyes seemed lifeless, for one thing—and the moviegoing public of the time had not taken to her. Goldwyn and Wyler reasoned, correctly, that if the movie fans hadn’t cottoned to Tallulah in 1933, they certainly wouldn’t cotton to her in 1941, when she was pushing forty.

  Angry and frustrated, knowing she was the ideal person for the part and had created it by her own instincts and talent, Tallulah went about New York taking the name of Bette Davis in vain. “She’ll ham it up, she’ll put all those damned second-rate oglings and twitchings into it; she’ll never be able to lose herself in the role as I did,” Tallulah raged, while she drank gin from a bottle in heavy, deep swigs and threw bric-a-brac about until, as her onetime husband, character actor John Emery, reported, “Her apartment looked like the London blitz had hit it!” John was also famous for his bon mot about what life was like as Tallulah’s one and only husband (briefly). “It was like the rise, decline, and fall of the Roman Empire!” he reported.

  Bankhead continued to seethe for months. Finally she got a chance to meet her hated rival—at a party. Guests gathered around, some of them making bets as to which grande dame would emerge the winner. The exchange went something like this, according to Davis. Tallulah hissed, “So you’re the woman who gets to play all my parts in the movies. And I play them so much better!” “I couldn’t agree with you more, Miss Bankhead,” Davis said sweetly, and turned away. Stunned and open-mouthed, subdued and puzzled, Bankhead asked for a cocktail and repaired quietly to a window seat. The ones who had bet on Davis collected.

  The truth was that Davis greatly admired Bankhead. Initially, she did not want to see the theater version of The Little Foxes because she wanted to work out her own interpretation of Regina. But eventually she went and wound up so admiring of the Bankhead portrayal, which she saw again, that when she and Wyler got together to discuss the film, she insisted that it could be played no other way. Wyler disagreed vociferously, and for once she refused
to submit to his judgments and opinions. This led to constant screaming matches on the set and in his office, but she was adamant, and once even walked off the set, her nerves shot, her emotions in tatters.

  Davis pulled her weight with all comers where The Little Foxes was concerned. Sam Goldwyn, who had once dismissed her as a film prospect when she had tested for the Colman film in 1929, paid through the nose—some $385,000—to borrow her. Jack Warner had not wanted to lend his valuable star, whom he was still paying a niggardly $3,000 a week, and that was what he proposed to pay her for twelve weeks of Little Foxes shooting at the Goldwyn lot. Davis marched into Jack’s office and icily informed him that he was pulling no “David O. Selznick pocket-the-money-and-pay-the-star-a-pittance” stuff with her, and left him open-mouthed, but eventually compliant, when she demanded his share of the $385,000 deal for herself, no strings attached.