Bette Davis

There was no bigger star than Bette Davis in the 1940s. The screen legend overcame a nasty battle with her studio, Warner Brothers, and emerged as their most critically acclaimed and bankable star. Bette Davis was the queen of the screen during Hollywood’s early hey days and earned her reputation as one of the finest actresses of her time.

Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts. She and her sister were raised by her mother after her parents divorced when she was young. In 1921 she saw Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and decided she wanted to become an actress. 

Davis attended a finishing school, Cushing Academy, and it was there that she met her first husband, Harmon Nelson. After graduating from the academy, Davis was accepted to the John Murray Anderson School of Theater where she studied acting. She also studied dance.

In 1929, at the age of twenty-one, Davis made her Broadway debut in a play called Broken Dishes. A year later, she was hired by Universal Studios and appeared in one movie for them. The film was not a hit and Universal Studios let her go. She was then signed by Warner Brothers in 1932 and entered a seven year contract. That year she was in ten films and was noticed in The Man Who Played God with George Arliss, who actually chose her for the role). 

Davis’s first critically acclaimed role came with 1934’s Of Human Bondage with Leslie Howard. The following year she won an Oscar for her role in Dangerous, but had trouble getting roles in high-quality films after that. Fearing that her career was at stake, Davis decided to break her contract with Warner Brothers, who in turn, took her to court. The court ruled in Warner Brothers’ favor and she returned to the studio. However, the studio began to give Davis better roles which led to her extreme popularity in the 1940s.

Davis’s marriage to Harmon Nelson came to an end during this time because he discovered she was having an affair with Howard Hughes. After her divorce, she had a relationship with George Brent, an actor who appeared with her in twelve of her movies; however, she did not marry Brent. Instead, in 1940 Davis married New England innkeeper Arthur Farnsworth. Tragically, Farnsworth died three years later of a skull fracture. In 1945 Davis tied the knot with artist William Grant Sherry and the two had a daughter in 1947 named Barbara. Their marriage failed, however.

She married yet again in 1950 to actor Gary Merrill. They adopted two children, Michael and Margo. Five years later the couple’s marriage ended in divorce, and Davis never married again.

Throughout her career, Bette Davis chose to play many unsympathetic characters instead of always choosing the glamorous roles. Although she never experienced a decade like the 1940s again in terms of popularity, she continued to act until her death in 1989 from cancer. In total Davis was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, winning two of them.

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