Hollywood first failed to recognize Bette Davis at the station
When twenty-two-year-old Bette Davis arrived in Hollywood in 1930, a studio greeter left because nobody looked like an actress. Universal nearly fired her until Karl Freund praised her eyes. She went on to become the first person with ten Oscar acting nominations and AFI's second-greatest female star.
Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, nicknamed Betty until she restyled it Bette after Balzac's La Cousine Bette. After her parents separated, she and sister Barbara boarded at Crestalban while their mother worked in New York. A 1926 Wild Duck production starring Peg Entwistle decided her vocation; Eva Le Gallienne dismissed her as frivolous, but stock work and Broadway's Broken Dishes and Solid South in 1929 got her west.
Universal's early screens tests were humiliating—one required fifteen passionate kisses; William Wyler mocked her neckline—and Carl Laemmle Jr. joked she had as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville. Freund's intervention landed Bad Sister in 1931; six flops later her contract died. Warner Bros. hired her in 1932. Of Human Bondage in 1934 was the critical breakthrough, though she was controversially shut out of that year's Best Actress ballot. She won for Dangerous in 1935, fought her contract in a losing 1936 lawsuit that still reset her power, and took a second Oscar for Jezebel in 1938, beginning five straight Best Actress nominations through Now, Voyager.
All About Eve in 1950 is often called her peak; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1962 brought a final nomination as psychotic Jane Hudson. Co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen and first female Academy president, she cultivated a combative perfectionist image—clipped voice, cigarette, unsympathetic roles. Married four times and often a single parent, she kept working past illness until breast cancer ended a career of more than one hundred credits on October 6, 1989. In 1999 the AFI placed her second among classic Hollywood's greatest female stars, behind Katharine Hepburn.
Source: Bette Davis
