Dark Victory_The Life of Bette Davis

by Ed Sikov

  There are those who favor Davis’s performance in Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte over hers in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?—among them Robert Aldrich. His reason is technical: Aldrich’s use of multiple cameras on Charlotte enabled less of the performance to be lost. “Now, Bette—never mind the picture—is much better in Hush . . . Hush than she is in Baby Jane, but only for that reason: that every reaction—and that’s what film is, really—every reaction is recorded. It’s not lost in transition because you have to be on somebody else. That’s very, very tough to do. But with two cameras you can do it and still not lose it. And you’re not often going to be that lucky to work with people as intelligent and as knowledgeable as Davis, so from Baby Jane on I said, ‘Oh, fuck it, I’ll use two cameras all the time.’ ”21

  The filming of Charlotte—based, like Baby Jane, on a novel by Henry Farrell—began on June 1, 1964, but was suspended not only by Crawford’s phantom illness but by a lawsuit against Bette, who had refused to shoot additional scenes for Where Love Has Gone and had to be forced back to Paramount. Whitney Stine quoted at length from Boxoffice, Monday, June 15, 1964; the article is headlined “Drama, Confusion Too, in Joan-Bette Affair.”

  A two-pronged decision issued Friday [June 12] in Superior Court forbids Bette Davis from appearing in any picture until she first completes added scenes in Paramount’s Where Love Has Gone and at the same time requires Paramount to put up a bond of $175,000 to be used to pay Miss Davis’s salary in the event she is prevented from working in Robert Aldrich’s Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte underway at Twentieth Century-Fox. Miss Davis already has received the first $125,000 on payment of $200,000 pledged by Aldrich. Meanwhile, an upper respiratory infection landed Joan Crawford, who also stars in Charlotte, in the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital.

  Both events focused attention on the “Joan Crawford–Bette Davis Day” luncheon at the Twentieth-Fox commissary, which Mayor Sam Yorty had proclaimed in honor of the two actresses for Monday, the 15th. Robert Aldrich was host at the affair, a bit confused perhaps, but the luncheon went on despite the absence of Miss Crawford.22

  The dual delays forced Aldrich to suspend filming from July 2 to July 21 and from July 29 to September 9. The production, which was shot partly on location in Louisiana but mostly on the Fox lot in what is now Century City, finally wrapped on November 23, 1964, at a cost of $2,265,000. It was released on December 24.23

  Crawford’s ostrichlike plunge into a suite at Cedars, together with her insatiable need for glamour and sex, has provided much merriment over the years, all of it at her expense. Bette wrote, “The rest of the cast and I kept up with her condition by reading Hedda Hopper, who received frequent bulletins from Joan’s hospital room. She had clothes fitted every day. The Brown Derby catered her food.24

  “The only thing I will say about Miss Crawford is that, when Olivia replaced her in the film, Crawford said, ‘I’m glad for Olivia—she needed the part.’ Joan issued these daily releases from her oxygen tent.”25

  Vincent Sherman, upon learning that Joan had landed in the hospital, sent flowers. Joan invited him over for a visit, whereupon, says Sherman, “she confided that there was nothing wrong with her and that she was merely trying to get out of doing Sweet Charlotte because Bette was maneuvering Aldrich to reduce her role down to nothing. After we talked for a few minutes, she got up from the bed, walked over to the door, locked it, and asked me to get into bed with her.” Always a gentleman, Sherman obliged.26

  Bob Thomas reports that Crawford learned of her replacement by de Havilland from the columnist Dorothy Manners, who called her on the phone at Cedars and asked for her opinion. “I cried for nine hours,” Crawford was quoted as saying at the time. “I still believe in this business, but there should be some gentleness.” Yes, she told a reporter, she would continue to make motion pictures. “But I’m going to make them with decent, gentle people.”27 The films she went on to make include Berserk! and Trog.

  Crawford’s faux-hurt attitude further fueled Bette’s rage. As she told a publicist, “The widow Steele has had her say, now I’ll have mine.” But disappointingly, Bette simply expressed regret over Joan’s condition, the only zinger being Davis’s employment of the word reported as the modifier to illness.28

  Crawford simply couldn’t take the strain of challenging Bette for primacy again, both on-and offscreen, particularly after she’d provoked Davis’s undying enmity with the Oscar incident the year before. In short, Bette Davis was a far better actress than Joan Crawford, they both knew it, and by faking infirmity in such an obvious and theatrical way, Crawford proved it. At least Davis actually had osteomyelitis when she left Two’s Company.

  Davis enjoyed working with Aldrich a second time, but she claimed to have disliked certain aspects of their second collaboration. “He had strange lapses of taste. I thought the scene in Charlotte in which the head bounces down the stairs was a bit much. Baby Jane had some shocks and high drama, but no heads bouncing down the stairs.”29 At the time, however, she told Sight and Sound’s John Russell Taylor that Charlotte was (in Taylor’s words) “incomparably better than Baby Jane.” Still, she said, “the role is a cheat. . . . Charlotte really has to be played dishonestly, because though she didn’t do the murder and knows that she didn’t, she has to keep doing things in such a way that you think she might have, though there is no reason inherent in her situation in the story why she should. I tell you, it was one of the most difficult parts I have ever played; I just had to try to construct some sort of reality for the character in my own mind so that I could do it at all.”30

  Kenneth Tynan, a discerning critic, was impressed with Charlotte, though he was dismissive of the material: “An accomplished piece of Grand Guignol is yanked to the level of art by Miss Davis’s performance as the raging, aging Southern belle; this wasted Bernhardt, with her screen-filling eyes and electrifying vocal attack, squeezes genuine pathos from a role conceived in cardboard. She has done nothing better since The Little Foxes.”31

  AS CENTRAL AS Charlotte to Bette’s experience of 1964 was the January 4 wedding of her daughter B.D. to Jeremy Hyman. The groom was twenty-nine, the bride sixteen. B.D. obviously wanted to get out from under Bette’s thumb as quickly as was legally possible.

  Bette planned everything, from the selection of B.D.’s bridal gown—a sleeveless, white cotton velvet number with a guimpe and a veil made of Marseilles lace—to the lavish reception at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and even beyond. She arranged for the couple to spend their wedding night at the Beverly Hills Hotel. As she herself blithely described it in This ’n That, she went into the nuptial chamber earlier in the day and pulled some pranks—iced tea in a bottle of scotch, tape on all the faucets. Then she made the bed: “Jeremy had once mentioned that he thought black satin sheets were the sexiest background for a roll in the hay. I must say they were hard to come by for a king-size bed, but find them I did. My new son-in-law obviously had extravagant tastes, Dom Perignon and black satin sheets included. Of course, champagne was waiting for them in a cooler, along with masses of flowers.”32

  Bill Frye and his associate Jim Wharton were invited to the wedding as escorts for Rosalind Russell and Hedda Hopper. As the reception began, they attempted to order glasses of champagne but were told that no champagne would be served until the bride and groom were toasted. Frye asked the waiter to put a bottle of champagne on his account, whereupon an enraged Bette descended on the table and declared, “There is to be no champagne until the toasts are made, do you understand?” After she walked away, Hopper announced that she’d had quite enough, thank you very much; Russell agreed, and the four of them adjourned to the Bistro for dinner. According to Frye, Bette never spoke to him again.33

  When the child bride departed the latest of her homes, she left behind her extensive collection of miniatures, which filled three long shelves at Honeysuckle Hill: little giraffes, some cutesy fawns and does, little playful puppies; many porcelain dolls; a tiny gondola fitted with even tinier pas
sengers.34

  B.D.’s rejection of her mother in favor of an older man was a stinging rebuke to Bette, though Bette never acknowledged it as such. Until B.D.’s all-but-matricidal betrayal with My Mother’s Keeper Davis reserved all of her resentment for Jeremy, who made his independence clear even before the wedding by marrying B.D. in a civil ceremony the week before. Bette never forgave him.

  AFTER A SERIES of short-term schools, Michael Merrill was sent to Gary’s alma mater, Loomis, a prep school in Windsor, Connecticut, from which he graduated in 1968. Both of his parents attended the ceremony; Gary and Bette chatted, but only briefly. The most notable aspect of Mike’s high school graduation was his father’s outlandish getup: Gary showed up for his son’s rite of passage not having shaved for several days and wearing a watermelon colored jacket graced by a roaring yellow print tie, with gold shoes and a red plastic water pistol completing the ensemble. This attention-grabbing stunt was designed, Merrill told reporters, to publicize his most recent film, Cycad, which ended up never being released. Whatever humiliation Mike suffered at the hands and clothing of his strange father was partly offset by his graduation present: a brand-new MG.

  Mike proceeded to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his mother took a puritanical approach to the prevailing haze: “During Michael’s college years,” Davis recalled, “the primary problem was marijuana. I could find no excuse for it, or for the parents who ignored how dangerous a habit it was. I flatly stated, ‘If ever he or a friend indulge in marijuana in my house, they are not welcome in the future.’ And I made it clear to Michael that no more college tuition would be paid.”35

  The house in question was the one on Crooked Mile in Westport, Connecticut, where Mike increasingly tended to take walks without revealing his destination. He wasn’t going off to smoke pot in the woods, as it turned out, but rather to visit a girl down the street. Her name was Charlene Raum; everyone called her Chou Chou. Michael announced his intention to propose, and Bette, who had approved B.D.’s decision to marry at sixteen, now advised a postponement for her son. He should wait until he finished law school, she told him. “As is usually the way with parental advice, he did not take it. A few months later, Michael proposed to Chou Chou and she accepted. I always promised him one of my rings as an engagement ring when the time came, and this he gave to Chou Chou.”36

  Mike had just graduated from Chapel Hill only a week or two before marrying and was preparing to start law school at Boston University in the fall. Gary threw Mike and about fifty of his college buddies a bachelor party the night before the wedding. For the main event, Chou Chou wore a satin gown finished with pearls and lace and gold threads on the sleeves, and the groom’s mother wore a floor-length electric blue silk organza gown.37 Tempers had tempered since the custody battle. Of her ex-husband, Bette writes, “We stood side by side at the head of the reception line. Gary had obviously regained control of his life and was once more the attractive man I had met during the filming of All About Eve. I often wished that my feelings toward Gary had been less hostile and that he had not given me such good reasons for having them.”38

  After graduating from law school in 1976 and passing the bar exam the following February, Michael Merrill and his wife moved to Frankfurt for a year while Mike worked as a lawyer for the military. They returned to Boston after three years, and Mike set up his own legal practice, at which he still works. He and Chou Chou are the parents of two sons: Matthew Davis Merrill, born on April 27, 1981; and Cameron S. Merrill, born on September 22, 1984.39

  “I think she has been fantastic with us,” Michael Merrill once said in a rare interview. “She doesn’t impose at all. She will ask if we want to come visit with her, and if we do, we do. If we don’t she says, fine, there will be a better time. You know, we do like to stay close.”40*

  * To me, he wrote the following: “I am pleased that you intend to write a book about my mother. She was a great actress and a loving mother. I have not cooperated with any writers on the past books, and I see no reason to change my position. Best of luck, and I hope your book is both sympathetic and successful. Very truly yours, Mike.”41 His brief note speaks volumes about his temperament.

  * * *

  IN THE FALL of 1959, Bette told Margot Merrill’s story to the writer Adele Whitely Fletcher for a magazine article titled “The Story of Our Daughter, Margot, Retarded!” Margot was then eight years old, but as Bette described her, in “all other ways, except for her size, she is about four.” “She still deeply resents authority,” Bette told Fletcher. “She still is destructive. She cannot read. And she cannot write.”42

  Davis announced in the article that she planned to bring Margot home to live with her and Gary once B.D. was married and Michael was away at prep school. At the time, Lochland generally didn’t house girls over sixteen or boys over twelve. But Margot’s return to family life was a pipe dream. Not only did Bette and Gary divorce the following year, but Bette herself was constitutionally unable to put up with Margot for anything longer than a brief visit for the rest of her life. Fortunately, Lochland expanded its mission and began providing ongoing care for adults as well as children.

  As Gary Merrill acknowledged, “Miss Stewart once said that she was the most pathetic child at the school because she was just bright enough to know what she was missing. She wanted to have babies, hold a job, get married—all the things normal people do—and she knows she can’t.”43

  “Margot weaves and makes things,” Bette said in 1964. “She writes letters—though it takes hours, of course—and she truly adores coming home for visits. With her, one must be very quiet, though firm. I must talk to her in short sentences, or it becomes too complicated. Right now, Margot has a passion for the Beatles. John Lennon is her favorite. However, the children at school finally told her to stop talking about the Beatles or they’d never speak to her again. I can understand why. I spent two weeks with her on the Beatles.”44

  In public, Bette always credited Florence Stewart and her staff for providing Margot with a stable, caring home. But sometime in the early to mid-1960s, and for unexplained reasons, she pulled Margot out of Lochland. “Margot isn’t here,” Bette told Hedda Hopper. “She’s having a whole new life with a family in Pennsylvania and adoring it. She is happy and I am thrilled for her.”45 One detail Davis failed to tell Hedda was that she hadn’t informed Margot’s father of the move. She and Gary spoke infrequently at that point—they were locked in their bitter, years-long custody battle—but changing Margot’s living situation was worthy of at least a brief conversation.

  Gary found out about it when he returned from Europe and called Lochland to check on things. He was enraged. “I was told that Bette had consulted a psychologist, who, without any real understanding of the matter, had convinced Bette that Margot would be better off living with a family,” Merrill wrote. “So Bette had found a family on a farm outside of Philadelphia and had taken Margot there.” Merrill got the address and arrived unannounced only to find that Bette had moved Margot again, this time to somewhere outside of Pittsburgh. Merrill called Lochland again and asked if anyone knew why Margot would be living near Pittsburgh, and one of the teachers mentioned that a former employee of Lochland had in fact moved to western Pennsylvania.

  Merrill tracked down his daughter, and according to him she seemed happy. She liked living in the country, she said. But when Merrill returned to Pennsylvania for another visit sometime later, he found that Bette had moved Margot yet again, this time to a Devereux Foundation home in Santa Barbara.

  Later, in one of their rare conversations, Bette called Gary and told him that Margot was unhappy at Devereux. A shouting match ensued after Merrill demanded to know why Bette had moved her out of Lochland in the first place. “If you’re so set on Lochland, all right!” Bette yelled. “You take her back there, and you pay for it!” “What were you looking for, a bargain?” Merrill shouted in response. Bette hung up on him.46

&nbs
p; “Margot is past thirty now,” Bette benignly wrote in This ’n That. “She has come home often, and our times together have been happy. On one of her birthdays, I took her to New York and pulled out all the stops—nightclubs, theaters, the works. Wherever we went I was asked for my autograph. In the car going back to the hotel, Margot said, ‘Mummy, may I have your autograph?’ Sometimes you laugh to keep from crying.”47

  Bette’s former personal assistant Vik Greenfield remembers Margot well. Davis, said Greenfield, would periodically lose her temper at Margot, though of course Margot couldn’t help her behavior. “But you could hold a conversation with her,” Greenfield recalled. “She was very pretty. Huntington Hartford, who liked young girls, once struck up a conversation with her at a party. She held her own.”48

  Still, Bette’s visits were far less frequent than she suggests in her books. Lochland’s housemother Mary Beardsley once said that Margot’s visits to her mother generally ended abruptly and prematurely. If Margot was scheduled to be with Bette for two weeks, it would usually turn out to be only one. And, Beardsley added, “Whenever Margot got back from Bette’s, she always had a new vocabulary of curse words. And she’d be crushed that her mother treated her that way.”49

  Bette Davis made no provision for her second daughter in her will; she left everything to Michael Merrill and Kathryn Sermak. Gary Merrill paid for Margot’s care until his death in 1990 and bequeathed a trust for Margot, who still resides at Lochland. The trust is administered by Michael.