Bette Davis (18 page)

The following day, Thursday, October 15, was devoted to Sir William Jowitt's argument that Bette's contract made her "chattel in the hands of the producer.''

"The contract is so strict," said Sir William, glancing at Bette— whom Ruthie had advised to wear the same outfit as the day before, to discourage Mr. Justice Branson's thinking her a rich American movie star—"that Miss Davis could not become a waitress in a restaurant or an assistant in a hairdresser's shop in the wilds of Africa—whether for love or money.''

Sir Patrick begged to interrupt, to remind Sir William that Warners had hardly sought an injunction to prevent Bette Davis from becoming a hairdresser in Africa; it was to prevent her appearing in a rival producer's film.

"I suggest," Sir William continued, "that the real essence of slavery is not that it is no less slavery because the bars are gilded, but because some superior authority says, 'You've got to continue work!' "

Bette's lawyer conceded to a paucity of evidence that Warners had breached her contract. He appeared to throw his client on the mercy of the court with the unexpected admission: ' 'There are facts which might necessitate the court finding that Miss Davis has broken her contract." Still, he argued that it would be wrong for Mr. Justice Branson to conclude that Bette was "a mere money grabber."

"A breach of contract is always a serious matter," said Sir William. "But there comes a time when carrying out a contract becomes so difficult and irksome that a person is forced to say he cannot continue and must submit to the penalties which the law may impose."

Sir William ended without putting Bette on the stand, for fear of what she might say when Sir Patrick cross-examined her.

On Friday, October 16, Bette wore the identical red-and-blue tweed coat—but different shoes—to court, where Sir Patrick reiterated his plea that Mr. Justice Branson prevent her from acting elsewhere during the term of her Warner Bros, contract; while Sir William likened her contract to "a life sentence."

"This young lady is in the prime of life," said Sir William. "Supposing she cannot act in films until 1942, then she must stage a comeback, which would be an impossible position for her."

If the court must issue an injunction, he argued, let it be valid

only until the end of the year, when her option next came due; or at worst, for that period plus the time that had elapsed since her June 19, 1936, suspension.

' 'I can see no reason for holding the contract unlawful,'' Mr. Justice Branson declared on Monday, October 19, as he granted an injunction that restrained Bette Davis from appearing in any but Warner Bros, films for the length of her current contract, or the next three years, whichever was shorter.

"In June of this year," he went on, "Miss Davis, for no discoverable reason except that she wanted more money, declined to be further bound by her contract, left the United States, and in September entered into an agreement in this country with a third person."

Mr. Justice Branson rejected Bette's contention that her contract was a form of "slavery"; contrary to Sir William's assertions, the injunction left her free to work as a waitress or a hairdresser's assistant, so long as she refrained from appearing on stage or screen.

"Miss Davis is said to be a person of intelligence and means," he continued, "and there is no evidence that she will not be able to employ herself usefully and remuneratively in other spheres of action, though perhaps not so remuneratively. She will not be driven to perform the contract, though she may be tempted to perform it. The fact that she may be so tempted is no objection to granting the injunction."

Finally, Mr. Justice Branson noted that his ruling extended solely to England; that having lost, Bette was responsible for Warners' court costs, as well as her own; and that she had fourteen days to appeal.

"This has been a real sock in the teeth," Bette said afterward, clearly shaken by the verdict. "I had not expected a one hundred percent defeat. Instead of getting increased freedom, I seem to have provided, at my own expense, an object lesson for other would-be 'naughty young ladies,' as Sir Patrick picturesquely described me.''

"One thing is certain," Bette told reporters the next day. "I am not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. I am set on a film career, and if it means going back to Warners and being pleasant about it—why then I'm quite prepared to go."

But as Sir William explained to Jack Warner and his London attorneys, Denton, Hall and Burgin, on Wednesday morning, October 21, Bette would now give serious consideration to an appeal— unless Warner showed himself willing to make certain as yet un-

specified modifications in her existing contract in exchange for the actress's immediate return to work. To which Warner replied that "obvious business reasons" precluded any concessions being made to Bette, who ought to "return to work unconditionally or proceed with the appeal." As his attorneys' November 3 notes make clear, Denton, Hall and Burgin believed Bette and her legal advisers to have been stunned by Mr. Justice Branson's ruling: "They were expecting at the worst an injunction limited to a period of one year. It is the three-year period of the injunction that has upset their calculations."

In the meantime, Bette conferred with Ludovico Toeplitz, who again raised the possibility of decamping for Italy, where he promised to make her his "Duse" in a series of "mythological films" to be shot at Mussolini's new studios near Rome. As she told Ruthie when she called her mother for advice, the unbelievable sum being named was one million dollars, tax free. Ruthie promptly insisted on joining Bette in London to accompany her to Rome should the impending appeal in the British courts come to nothing.

Bette received very different advice from her husband, who cabled her from his parents' home in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, on October 20: clock in steeple strikes one. come home, love,

HAM.

In further meetings with Bette and her representatives, Denton, Hall and Burgin assessed her as "anxious to return to work" but also "to find some concession that will save her from the humiliation of an unconditional return." In a report to Jack Warner, who had gone back to America in the interim, the attorneys noted that "gossip in the film world in London indicates that the defendant is receiving a consensus of advice to return."

4 'Either you work in California or you never work in this industry again," George Arliss told Bette (without letting on that he had come to see her at Warner's behest). "One road or the other— you've got to choose." And later, in an October 27 note to his former protegee, Arliss urged Bette to "review the thing dispassionately and choose the course that is likely to prove best for you in the long run."

"She promised me she'd come home!" a forlorn and angry Ham told Ruthie, whom he had come to see off in New York on the day she was to sail for England.

"What can you expect?" Ruthie replied. "It is a tempting offer."

To which Ham responded with grim silence.

They were standing on the dock—where Ruthie's car, its gasoline drained, was about to be hoisted aboard—when a crew member approached with a cable for Mrs. Davis.

Presuming it to be a Bon Voyage message from Bette, Ruthie was aghast to read instead: don't sail, coming home, meet me in new york. Speechless, she handed die cable to Ham. He joyously exclaimed, "I knew she couldn't do that! I knew it! I knew it!" as Ruthie went to see about having her car disengaged and the gas tank replenished.

That same day, Jack Warner's British lawyers wired him the news that Bette had accepted Arliss's advice to abandon her appeal and come back to work.

Appearing suddenly "very subdued and in a much more chastened spirit" (as the lawyers described her), Bette had arrived at the office of Denton, Hall and Burgin, where she was to be served with "an official sealed copy" of Mr. Justice Branson's injunction. Bette announced that although she had had "a good run for her money," she accepted that there was "no alternative for her but to return and perform her Agreement in accordance with its terms." She had booked passage on the Aquitania for November 4 and hoped to arrive in Hollywood by November 20, when she promised to report for work directly.

Still presumably "subdued and chastened," the actress did put forth several "mere suggestions"—as she now called them—intended for her and Warners' "mutual benefit." Upon her return, Bette persisted in hoping for better cameramen and scripts and a limit of four films a year.

The lawyers promised to convey Bette's suggestions to Jack Warner but not her renewed request for permission to do the occasional outside film (e.g., I'll Take the Low Road)— to which they responded with what they assured Warner had been their "strong objections" and warnings not to pursue the matter.

Nor could they be very encouraging when Bette asked if Warners might consider waiving their claim against her for court costs. And when Bette's lawyers mentioned "with some timidity" that it would be' 'very generous'' if Warners would consider paying Bette's court costs as well, Denton, Hall and Burgin responded by calling it "a preposterous, even an impertinent suggestion," which they could scarcely consider mentioning to Jack Warner (although at length they reported it to him in detail, in a November 3, 1936, letter).

From the outset, the Warners camp recognized that the moneys she owed them—approximately two-thirds of their $14,683.71 legal bills—afforded the studio new leverage in its perpetual struggle to

control her. The British lawyers informed Jack Warner of their suggestion to Bette that if all went well upon her return, the studio ' 'might perhaps look favorably" upon her paying her debt in weekly installments deducted from her salary, rather than in a lump sum— the latter being beyond her means to accomplish, as she was known not yet to have finished paying her own legal bills.

In hopes of persuading the actress to come with him to Italy after all, Ludovico Toeplitz had offered to pay Sir William's fee; but— as Warners' British lawyers reported—Bette had declined the Italian's assistance, lest it put her under further obligation to him.

"I don't want to be misunderstood," Bette announced, shortly after arriving in New York, on November 11. "I don't want people to think I'm carrying the torch for downtrodden movie stars. That never entered my head. I'd hate to be a reformer."

She had come back to America, she told reporters who flocked to her suite at the Algonquin, "to serve five years in the Warner jail. . . . When I was a young thing and not very wise I signed the contract which ties me up until 1942. I'll be an old woman by 1942, but I'm going back and I'll be there in a week or so, and all I can say is the hell with it.''

"The die is cast," Bette told reporters, upon arriving hi Los Angeles with Ruthie aboard the Santa Fe Chief on November 18. "I'm just a working girl—not a crusader. 'Work, work, and more work,' is my motto from now on. No, there are no hard feelings. The law says I have a contract which is inflexible until 1942. Whatever I am asked to do I shall willingly do. I am to have a conference at the studio within the next few days. No, there is no picture selected forme."

Puffing furiously on a cigarette, Bette drove off with her mother and Bobby, who had come to pick them up. The press corps was left behind to note that Warners' publicity people and the customary studio ballyhoo for a returning film star were conspicuously absent. They also were struck that Bette seemed exceptionally wan and emaciated. She had lost more than twenty pounds since last she had been seen in Los Angeles.

Despite the assurances Bette had received in London that upon her return to Burbank there would "be nothing in the nature of any recrimination or victimization" on the part of Jack Warner, who promised to let "bygones be bygones," she desperately feared the studio boss's quickly cutting her down to size with an endless succession of bad parts in bad films.

Bette's note announcing her readiness to return to work was hand-delivered to Jack Warner on November 20. He ordered her to report

to Hal Wallis on Monday morning at eleven-thirty. At that time, after casting an appalled glance at her, the associate executive in charge of production promptly sent her home to put on at least ten pounds and await delivery of the new script he and Warner had been working on for her.

"Anything worth newspaper space is worth a picture," declared Warners' producer Lou Edelman, whose latest project, director Lloyd Bacon's Marked Woman, was said to reflect a much-publicized vice investigation in New York. It was long-standing Warners' policy to use newspaper headlines as a source of free film plots, which had the added advantage that audiences seemed to enjoy recognizing thinly disguised true stories on screen. In the spring of 1936, Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey had convicted flamboyant racketeer Charles "Lucky" Luciano with the help of a group of prostitutes in the mobster's employ. This formed the basis for the terse, elliptical script Wallis sent over to Bette, whose own recent "headlines" (was she only imagining this?) it seemed somehow to reflect as well.

Like Bette, "clip joint hostess" Mary Dwight is outspoken and pugnacious, unafraid of talking back to her boss, dapper racketeer Johnny Vanning (based on Luciano—but also, perhaps, on Jack Warner, who could scarcely conceal the strong sense of identification he felt with the "tough guys" who populated his films). And like Bette, Mary dreams of breaking free from a job from which there appears to be no escape. Finally, the only place left to do battle with Vanning is in court, where (as Bette had not) Mary takes the stand and wins against her cruel and exploitative boss.

Had another actress portrayed Mary Dwight, Marked Woman would have alluded solely to the Lucky Luciano case; but with Bette in the title roll, the film inescapably suggested parallels to her own recent court case, about which all America had been reading for days, weeks, and months on end, and of which the on-screen events must have seemed a kind of distorted, dreamlike continuation.

As this was Bette's first film since returning from England, the image of the rebellious, "naughty young lady" depicted in countless newspaper articles fed into how people perceived the character of Mary Dwight. In turn, Mary Dwight infected the way Bette Davis would henceforth be regarded. Something of Mary's efficaciousness, and even her sense of moral outrage, rubbed off on Bette, who may have lost her court case in life but won it, gloriously, on-screen.