Evening star., 1932-08-07
Bette's Biography

~ ETTE DAVIS recounts modestly
- a life history of devotion to
acting that Older and better
~ known players might boast
about. But she adds hastily:
1T hasn't been hard. It's been awfully
good fun. suppose because I've always
had the breaks"
When Bette was q very young girl.
her mother found herself with two
daughters and no visible means of sup
port And she had promised herself
that the girls should be educated and.
more than that, that they should be
educated well-in private schools. She
studied photography, and from her
earnings-for she quickly developed
into an expert photogrepher-she sent
them to private school In the Berk-
shire hills.
They graduated at last and entered
Gushing Academy.
In her senior year, Bette's principal
approached her with an offer to wait
In the girls dormitory, pointing out how
this might help her mother She didn't
particularly want to. But at the prin-
cipsrs request she wrote her mother,
asking permission, yet feeling sure that
her mother would refuse the request
On the contrary, she approved of it.
so Bette trudged through the snow one
dun and leaden day to her first ex-
perience at helping herself. She learned,
she says, to love it.
It was the heginning Of a long sp-
the academy, BetteS mother took her
to New York and entered her in John
Murray Anderson's School OF the
Drama, where she won scholarship.
AL fAll -fv1N~ ~HA - \
cess with the Provincetown Players in
various roles. But when nothing better
seemed to offer, she wasn't ebove going
back to the private school she had at
tended In the Berkshires to put on their
Christmas and class plays.
She wanted, the worst way, to work
with Eva lie Gallienne. But Miss lie
Gallienhe turned her down. That hurt.
But it brought her to the determination
to learn to play everything the stage
could give her, and year later she
had the satisfaction Of being highly
complimented by lie Gallienne for her
performance in Ibsens The Wild
Duck" with Blanche Yurka. In Phila-
delphia. The Philadelphia performance
won her Miss Yurka's request to appear
with her in two Ibsen plays in New
York, but a bad case of the measles
arrived with the request. She was
week in bed before they were vanished,
but took that time to improve herself
In her parts In the plays-and had the
extreme qualification of having Miss
Yurka postpone her opening until she
could join the company.
With George Cukor, now a motion
picture director, she went to Rochester
to play in stock, and played there for
several months before an enticihg offer
to appear in The Earth Between"
brought her back to New York.
After playing with Richard Bennett
on Broadway-BcnGett called her
cross between his two A.Hkhters, Con-
stance and Jcan--she CAM Ae Holly
wood. She remained year on a motion
picture lot doing bits and odd parts, but
under handsome contract, before she
saw deeply enough into Hollywood's
psychology to know that they were not
at ali interested In her mind. So she
blondined her hair-and got her biggest
part, opposite Arliss in THE Man Who
Played God" And by the time she had
finished that, what with the plaudits |
of ArliSs himself to add to those she |
received from reviewers and audiences
Hollywood knew it had another cot-esS /,