by James Spada
When Bette heard of Keyes’s report, she asked to speak to a detective. Detective Sergeant H. R. Johnson went to Riverbottom, where Bette was reported to be “prostrated.” She described to Johnson Farney’s tumble down the stairs at Butternut two months earlier, and blamed it for her husband’s death. “I realize now that little things that happened since, which I thought nothing of at the time, were the result of that fall, all of which have been confirmed by Dr. Moore,” she was reported to have said. “At least to find a reason for a seemingly ridiculous accident is a relief and a comfort to me.”
Accounts of Bette’s statement in the next day’s newspapers reminded readers that Homer Keyes had found that Farnsworth’s skull fracture could not have been inflicted more than “two weeks ago,” spoke of “new mystery developments,” and suggested that Farnsworth must have suffered another head injury more recently than the one at Butternut. Faced with growing skepticism, Los Angeles County Coroner Frank A. Nance announced that he would hold an inquest into the death on the following Tuesday, August 31.
At the funeral on Saturday, Bette wore a black suit, her hair tucked into a black snood, and sunglasses. She wept during the recitation of the 121st and 123rd psalms, “Farney’s favorites.” As the mourners began to file out, she pulled Jack Warner aside and spoke with him privately for nearly twenty minutes. The veteran Hollywood reporter Hector Arce recalled that “the details of their conversation were not heard by anyone… but he must have agreed to use his influence to get the inquest settled quickly. Certainly he had that power, because look what happened.”
The following Tuesday at 10 A.M., Frank Nance began the inquest into Arthur Farnsworth’s death at the Los Angeles Hall of Justice. The transcription of the testimony, never before available to a Bette Davis biographer, strongly suggests that the proceedings were designed not to ascertain the truth but rather to present the jurors with a prearranged set of facts from which they could reach only one possible verdict: that Farnsworth’s fall on Hollywood Boulevard had been caused solely by his injury at Butternut in June.
Nance alone posed the questions to the ten witnesses who appeared. Again and again the transcript reveals the coroner’s lack of interest in discrepancies in their testimony, and the reader is struck by his leading, biased questions and his interruptions whenever a witness begins to fill in unwanted details. Each time Nance asked the six male jurors whether they had any follow-up questions, they did not. But Nance invited queries from the jury after only four of the witnesses. In five of the six cases where he didn’t, the witness had made at least one statement in direct contradiction of either himself or one of the other witnesses, a contradiction that Nance had neither pointed out nor asked to be explained. It is difficult not to suspect that Nance was very deftly trying to avoid placing any doubts in the minds of the jurors.
The first witness in the stiflingly hot courtroom was Bette’s attorney, Dudley R. Furse, who testified that he had met with Farney in his law office, near to where he fell, between 2:45 and 3:30 on Monday afternoon. Nance’s initial questions to Furse established little beyond Farney’s full name, birthplace, birth date, time and place of death, and the name of his wife. He then asked Furse if he had learned the cause of death—a strange question to a lawyer, especially when expert medical witnesses were waiting to testify—and Furse replied that he had “an opinion” that “it resulted from an accident” and further that “the information that has come to me” indicates that Farney’s death was caused by the fall on Hollywood Boulevard “and possibly a previous injury before that.”
In light of the press hints that Farnsworth’s “secret war work” might have made him the victim of foul play, Nance was oddly uncurious about what business Farney was engaged in on the day he died. “Was he talking to you about personal business?” he asked Furse. “Yes,” the attorney replied, and that was that—Nance posed no more probing questions. The same thing happened with the next witness, Mary Marshall, a secretary at the Walt Disney Studios, who testified that Farnsworth telephoned her around 3:30 “to make an appointment with my immediate superior for him to come in to see him before five o’clock that afternoon, inasmuch as he was working with us at the studio at the time.”
Since Farnsworth’s work on the Disney film involved his knowledge of the top-secret bombsights and may have endangered his life, the testimony of Mary Marshall’s superior might have provided key information for the investigation. Incredibly, Nance didn’t even ask the name of the man, or whether Marshall had any idea what the meeting was going to be about. Instead he asked, “That was the last you heard of him?” When Marshall replied, “Yes, sir,” Nance said, “I think that is sufficient.” He didn’t invite the jurors to ask any questions.
Next on the witness stand was Ralph William Dorn, a young attendant at a parking lot next door to the Regent, where Farney had parked his car that day. Early in his testimony, Dorn dropped a potential bombshell when he said that Farnsworth had left his car in the lot on two separate occasions the day he fell. “He came in once towards noon,” Dorn said, “and then again about 2:30 or quarter to three.” Completely ignoring this intriguing new information, Nance asked Dorn nothing about Farney’s demeanor or activities during the first visit, and he did not recall Dudley Furse to the stand to ask if the first visit was also to Furse’s nearby office and if so what business was discussed.
When Dorn told Nance that he did not see Farney fall but did see him lying on the sidewalk, Nance asked if the young man went up to him. Dorn began to reply, “I went up there and Mr. Wright and Mr. Friedman—” but Nance interrupted him. “Was he unconscious?” Dorn replied, “No, he wasn’t unconscious.” After asking if Farnsworth had said anything (he hadn’t), Nance then quickly wrapped up the questioning.
Nance: Was there any evidence of an obstruction or anything that would cause him to fall?
Dorn: No sir.
Nance: The sidewalk was perfectly clear?
Dorn: Yes sir.
Nance: And nothing to interfere with careful walking?
Dorn: No sir.
Nance: Do you know of anyone who contributed to his falling?
Dorn: No sir.
Nance: That is all.
Again, Nance invited no questions from the jurors. Dave Friedman, the owner of the Regent, climbed into the witness box next, and offered no major departures from what he had told the press following the accident. He did supply further details of Farnsworth’s condition after the fall. “His body was quivering. He didn’t say anything. The only thing, he just looked dazed and his eyes were glassy. He didn’t say a word, but he was groaning or moaning. He was quivering and trying to get up. The blood was coming from above his ears, and his mouth and his nose.” In response to Nance’s question—“Was it your impression from the way he acted that he had a sudden seizure of some sort and fell backwards and lost control?”—Friedman replied, “That’s correct. The reason I thought that something happened to him at first, he didn’t throw his arms out, trying to save himself.”
After Friedman’s straightforward testimony, there was a brief recess, then the court reconvened and Nance began to question Gilbert E. Wright. At three separate points in the transcript one is stunned by Nance’s failure to ask follow-up questions. When the coroner asked whether Wright agreed with Dave Friedman’s testimony about what happened outside the tobacco shop that day, Wright replied, “Practically,” but Nance never asked him to enumerate the points on which he disagreed with Friedman. Contrary to his earlier statement to the press that he had seen Farnsworth “walk past the store entrance” before hearing his cry, Wright now testified that he did not notice Farney until his scream “attracted my attention that something was happening,” and Nance did not question him about the discrepancy. After Wright contradicted Ralph Dorn’s statement that Farney had been conscious during the seizure with the statement that “he was unconscious all the time,” Nance ended the advertising man’s ninety-second testimony without asking the jury if they had any
questions.
Friedman’s sales clerk, Rosalie Fox, added little to what her boss and Gilbert Wright had said, and she was dismissed after about a minute. Next up was Dr. Moore, whose most interesting testimony was that he had not seen Farney since the first week of June and had no indication that he had had an injury to his head at Butternut until he saw Bette the day after Farney’s death and she told him about the fall. Nance did not ask Moore whether he thought it strange that a man with a skull injury that would later cause him to go into convulsions would not have complained to his doctor of dizziness, headaches, or other symptoms of a neurological problem.
As reporters and court personnel studied her every move, the day’s star witness, Bette Davis, took the stand next. Her testimony is fascinating when one interprets it as an attempt to push forward a certain scenario of Farnsworth’s death. She appeared to observers “wan and nervous” and looked haggard without makeup, her eyes underscored by dark circles. Once again she wore a black snood and suit jacket, but her skirt was punctuated by a dull green-and-red flower pattern.
Nance treated Bette with a deference he accorded none of the other witnesses. “I learned from witnesses,” he told her, “that your husband, Arthur Farnsworth, not only met with an accident on the 23rd day of this month while walking on the street in Hollywood, but that he had an accident sometime previous to that while he was on a visit in the East. Is that true, Miss Davis?”
Bette’s reply was odd in the extreme: “That is from the autopsy, I believe.” Nothing of the sort was contained in the autopsy; the information that Farnsworth had fallen at Butternut came only from Bette, and Homer Keyes had said five days earlier that the fracture that caused Farney’s seizure could not have occurred more than two weeks before his fall. Clearly, Bette was attempting to lend official credence to her version of the events, and Nance let the blatantly untrue statement go unchallenged. Instead he spent several minutes prodding Bette for irrelevant details like whether the fall was “in the daytime or nighttime” and whether the staircase on which Farney fell at Butternut was “winding or straight.”
Bette’s replies were terse, as though she had been coached to say as little as possible. When Nance asked her whether Farney had complained after the first fall, she replied, “Never heard him mention anything.” When he asked her whether Farney saw a physician, she replied, “Evidently not.”
After Bette added that Farney “wasn’t one to complain very much” and that he might not have told her if he didn’t feel well, Nance proceeded to tell rather than ask her how she felt when she heard of his fall on Hollywood Boulevard: “So that you were not prepared for the surprise and the shock you received on the 23rd when you learned he had fallen on the street. Did you at that time think about this fall?”
“I just couldn’t imagine what it was.”
“You never thought about this fall?”
“I never thought of it until the autopsy and they asked me of any kind of an accident he could have had.”
“Your relations were always pleasant and nothing in your home life that could in any way contribute to his condition?”
“No.”
“There is nothing else you can tell us?”
“That is the only thing I know anything about. I even asked the man who takes care of our horses if he had a fall from one of the horses while I was away, but not that he knew anything about. I think he would have known of that.”
“Gentlemen of the jury, have you any questions?” Nance asked. There was no response. “I think that is all, Miss Davis, thank you very much.”
This blithely unprobing inquest continued with the next witness, H. R. Johnson, the Los Angeles police investigator who had interviewed Bette at Riverbottom. The detective sergeant testified that he had conducted a probe into Farnsworth’s death and had been “unable to locate anyone that knew anything of any prior injury that [Farnsworth] had complained of or received.” In any proceeding truly intent on unearthing the truth, that information, which seemed to contradict Bette’s story of the fall at Butternut, would have created some doubt as to her veracity, and would at least have prompted further investigation. Instead, Nance immediately retreated from it and turned Johnson’s testimony around to show that the detective was in full agreement with the direction that the inquest was obviously taking:
Nance: You did verify the fact of his falling there on Hollywood Boulevard?
Johnson: We did.
Nance: You talked to these witnesses who testified here, and what they have told you in your investigation is substantially the same as they have stated here?
Johnson: It is.
Nance: Have you any reason to believe there is any contributing act on anybody’s part in connection with his death?
Johnson: None at all.
Nance: I think that is sufficient. Thank you.
Homer R. Keyes, the man who had performed the autopsy on Farnsworth’s body the morning of August 26, was the last to step into the witness box. Court observers leaned forward in anticipation of Keyes’s testimony; it was, after all, his finding that Farney’s initial injury could not have been more than two weeks old that had first cast doubt about the cause of death. Since it was clear to all in the courtroom by now what direction the inquest was taking, reporters and observers wondered how Nance would deal with Keyes’s contradictory finding.
Keyes first described when and where he had conducted the autopsy, and read into the record his highly technical official report that concluded that the “immediate cause of death” was a “basal skull fracture.” Then Nance zeroed in on the heart of the matter: “How about this old dark clot that you found? Was that sufficient to incapacitate the man?”
Keyes: Yes, indeed. The surface of the brain is a very sensitive area. You might say it is a ticklish spot, and is capable of throwing a person into convulsions resembling epilepsy.
Nance: Could it have taken practically eight weeks to develop that?
Keyes: Yes, I think it would be very likely. It would take about that long to develop.
Keyes had completely reversed himself, but Nance didn’t question him about the contradiction. Instead he proceeded, as he had with Bette, to put words into the witness’s mouth:
Nance: You heard the history of a fall while at his home in New Hampshire.… Could the hemorrhage and the injury to the brain develop a leak of some small blood vessel, so the hemorrhage would accumulate slowly, so it would take eight weeks to reach a point where it would cause a convulsion?
Keyes: I think that is what happened. I think there was a slight leak in a capillary.
Despite his report five days earlier that “the blood in the fracture was black and coagulated, not merely purple and partially congealed as it would have been if the injury had been received only last Monday,” Keyes now reversed himself and testified that “I don’t think there was a previous skull fracture.”
After prodding Keyes to say that he didn’t find it the least bit odd that Farnsworth hadn’t complained of any symptoms following the fall at Butternut, Nance turned to the jurors. “All right, gentlemen, are you satisfied? Please retire to the jury room and see if you can agree upon a verdict and the responsibility for the death, if any.”
At that, Bette left on the arm of Dudley Furse. There was little reason to stick around: the verdict could be easily predicted. After a short deliberation, the six men came to the only conclusion they could have after hearing the evidence they were presented. Farnsworth’s death, they ruled, was “the result of an accidental fall on the sidewalk.… We find this death to be accidental and no person to blame.”
In the fifty years since Arthur Farnsworth’s death, rumors have been rampant that Jack Warner used his considerable power in Hollywood to orchestrate and control the investigation. Former Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi, after reviewing the transcript, agrees that “the questioning of the witnesses by the coroner’s office at the inquest seemed like it was just a formality. In fact, it seemed as if it was
done almost to appease those who might have questions. The questioning of Bette Davis was fairly innocuous and she was handled with kid gloves… she was very much allowed to say whatever she wished… her testimony was a cold, calculated statement.”
It seems clear that this inquest was designed to protect Bette, but from what? The most benign of the cover-up theories is that Jack Warner merely wanted to spare his biggest star the agony of a protracted, genuinely probing inquest—and his studio the attendant bad publicity—and stepped in with coercion and money to make sure that the matter was kept short and sweet. Others suggest that Bette was desperate to keep her marital difficulties out of the public eye, and to avoid revealing her husband’s fall after their fight on the train back to Los Angeles.
But there is evidence to suggest a third possibility, one that would have left Bette and Jack Warner with no choice but to make certain that the inquest jury would find exactly the way it did: Bette may have been with Farnsworth that fatal day, and she may have pushed him, albeit accidentally, to his death.
The writer Fredda Dudley reported only a few months after Farnsworth’s death that Bette had been with her husband when he met with Dudley Furse, in order to discuss how best to deal with the tax matters arising from Bette’s recent formation of her own production company, which she had incorporated in June primarily as a tax shelter.
Miss Dudley made no further implication, but the man Bette married next, William Grant Sherry, recalls a very strange moment three years later as he and Bette walked along Hollywood Boulevard. “We were crossing the street,” Sherry says emphatically, “and we walked between a couple of parked cars. All of a sudden Bette started shaking and looked frightened. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ She pointed down to the ground and said, ‘That’s where I pushed Farney. I thought he was drunk and I pushed him and he fell and hit his head on the curb.’”
