Bette Davis (20 page)

By this point, the production was twenty-four days behind schedule. Following her father's death, Bette had returned to Warner Bros, to discover that Wyler was quite possibly about to be replaced by William Dieteiie. That the rumor was rampant concerning Dieterle's imminent takeover is suggested by a January 4 memo from unit manager Fellows, eagerly requesting concrete information about "if and when" Dieterle was due to arrive on the Jezebel set.

Although Wyler had repeatedly promised Wallis to work more quickly, his sixteen takes of Julie descending a staircase to hear from Aunt Belle that Pres is finally coming home made Wallis question the director's sincerity.

"Doesn't this man know that we have close-ups to break up a scene of this kind?" asked Wallis. "And with all of the care he used in making the close-ups, certainly he must expect that we would use the greater portion of the scene in close-up."

This takes us to the heart of Wyler's conflict with Warner Bros, about filmmaking and, even more, about how properly to use Bette Davis on-screen: something he passionately believed her studio had not done until now.

Whereas Hal Wallis would have him "break up" the scene with

close-ups, Wyler more generously uses the long take to allow us to watch Bette change physically as powerful emotions slowly, visibly surge through her body in reaction to the glorious news about Pres: a kind of fluid, wavelike movement passing from one body part to another, which Bette would have learned to call a "succession" when she studied at Mariarden in 1925.

"This is the greatest order of movement for the expression of emotion,'' said Ted Shawn of the succession,' 'and the introduction into dance of this discovery by Delsarte was one of the major forces toward forming the type of dance called American modern."

The shot that caused Wallis to speculate whether Wyler might be "absolutely daffy" takes place in the hallway at Julie's house in New Orleans. In the course of urging Aunt Belle to leave for the country with Julie to escape the threat of yellow fever in town, Dr. Livingstone (Donald Crisp) has informed her that Pres is returning to New Orleans to argue publicly for health measures to prevent an epidemic. As Aunt Belle shows the doctor out, she pauses at a table arrayed with flowers, while Livingstone proceeds to the front door, where—in an exceptionally fine touch—Uncle Cato suddenly sweeps into frame to get the doctor's hat and walking stick. While he does, we watch Aunt Belle look to the left, then to the right, as the camera seems to follow her gaze (and the rightward swing of the opening front door) to the staircase, where Julie will be coining down any moment, even as the doctor departs and the butler closes the door in what is now off-screen space.

All of this graceful and carefully choreographed movement has prepared us for Julie's entrance, as we wait to see quite how Aunt Belle will tell her about Pres and—more important—how Julie will react: the momentum of the long take serving to build up dramatic tension.

By contrast with the gliding movements that precede it in the shot, Julie's descent seems languid, lackadaisical; her body is uncharacteristically lifeless as she drags her hand along the banister, then fiddles with her sleeve a bit, before twining her fingers together as she passes Aunt Belle, who watches her from beside the table.

Only when Julie is partway down the hall (just after Uncle Cato passes behind her) does Aunt Belle finally tell her the news: at which Julie stops with a sudden small backward whipping motion of the right shoulder, in keeping with the classic Delsartean principle that the shoulder is the "thermometer of passion and sensibility," moving automatically and involuntarily whenever we are stirred or agitated. Then, after a tense pause, the wave of emotion

seems to rouse her head and left shoulder, before pulsing visibly into her sternum and her arms.

Until this point we have been watching Julie grasp the news emotionally, hence corporeally; only now, when she speaks the words given in the script, "Pres is coming," does she seem to grasp it intellectually as well, as the fluid movement finally passes into her fingers, causing them to unknit and spring to animated life again.

Another beat, as Julie casts a backward glance at Aunt Belle, then shows her profile to the camera and says, "Of course." This use of the profile was a deft bit of stage business Bette probably acquired from watching Katharine Cornell, who was famous for it on Broadway.

"Bette was as innocent and naive as a child," recalls her friend from Warner Bros, days, actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.

So innocent that, for a time, she seems to have convinced herself that her on-the-set romance with Willy Wyler during the making of Jezebel was something a good deal more serious than the pleasant "fling" he quite openly considered it to be. Attracted to strong-willed women as Wyler undeniably was, he made no secret about his antipathy toward ever marrying another movie star after his turbulent union with Margaret Sullavan.

In mid-January, as their work together on the film drew to a close (Wyler having withstood Wallis's threat of replacing him with William Dieterle), Bette, whatever hopes she may have been harboring, must have realized that her daily contact with Wyler was coming to an end as well. Although in recent weeks she and Wyler had talked endlessly about his directing her in the role of Cathy in a film version of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, the chances of Jack Warner's acquiring the Ben Hecht—Charles MacArthur script for her, or of his allowing her to do it for Samuel Goldwyn (should Goldwyn want her), seemed increasingly remote. Indeed, Bette's worst fears were realized before long when she learned that Goldwyn, not Warner, had acquired the script, with Wyler scheduled to direct Merle Oberon as Cathy. This left Bette unhappily to fend for herself again at Warners, while Wyler went on to a project that would no doubt challenge and engross him even without Bette in the starring role.

The final day of shooting was set for Saturday, January 15, after which—as part of a deal to stay on as director—Wyler had agreed to work without salary. Whereas until this point Bette had done whatever she could to help Wyler get through the picture, now

suddenly at the last minute she fell ill. She refused to do a simple shot with George Brent, on the grounds that she feared coming down with a bad cold, but it was being quietly said on the set that Bette just wanted to hold on to Wyler a little longer.

Unknown and unsuspected at the time was that on Monday, January 17,1938, when Wyler finally finished shooting Jezebel, twenty-eight days over schedule, Bette was pregnant with Wyler's child.

on January 29, Dr. Noys declared himself "absolutely amazed that she got through the last picture, as her condition does not warrant the nervous strain she undergoes in the making of pictures.'' Should Warners ' 'rush'' his patient into Comet over Broadway, he warned, "she would be in clanger of collapse and naturally that would result in loss and expense" to the studio.

Although Wallis finally agreed to give Bette a six-week unpaid "rest period," for the moment he and Jack Warner stood firm on the Busby Berkeley assignment, even when she wrote to point out that Warners already had a script on Rachel—by Jean Negulesco— in-house.

The end of her relationship with Willy Wyler; the abortion she had had soon after they finished filming Jezebel; the pressure of concealing both the affair and the pregnancy from Ham; and now renewed conflict with the studio—all made this a difficult interlude for Bette, who fled again to La Quinta Hotel in Indio, in hopes of reviving her spirits.

"I believe we are getting the well-known run-around," production manager Tenny Wright told Hal Wallis on March 28, when, having returned from her "rest period," Bette failed to arrive for scheduled costume fittings for Comet over Broadway. It can hardly have been coincidental that on the same day, Bette had appeared on the cover of Time magazine: "Popeye the Magnificent," they dubbed her, a reference to her odd exophthalmic eyes.

Bette may have expected the Time cover to strengthen her bargaining position at the studio, but the next day, March 29, Wallis suspended her. For nearly a month the actress remained out of sight, celebrating her thirtieth birthday, on April 5, with Ruthie and Bobby—and four servants—at her capacious new Spanish-style house at 1700 Coldwater Canyon in Beverly Hills. Even as Jack and Ann Warner were wiring their "sincere wishes" on Bette's birthday, the studio was quietly preparing an appeal to the Screen Actors Guild to intervene on its behalf against the wayward actress, who had rejected yet another Busby Berkeley project— Garden of the Afo

And so it went, back and forth and around, until finally, when the Screen Actors Guild refused to get in the middle, Warners held out the tantalizing possibility of new salary negotiations, if only she would agree to come back to work in director Anatole Litvak's The Sisters— which would serve as a stopgap while screenwriter Casey Robinson adapted the play Dark Victory (in which Tallulah Bankhead had starred on Broadway) as a vehicle for Bette.

By contrast with the fragile truce Bette forged with her studio,

all-out war raged at home, where according to Ham's December 6, 1938, divorce complaint, his every attempt at normal conjugal relations caused Bette to become "enraged" and to lash out at him with an "array of epithets and derision." Where once they had enjoyed a vigorous sex life, in recent months she had been "inattentive and distant" to him, to the point of "humiliation." When he attempted to make love to her, she would coolly declare that she was too tired or that she preferred to read. Nor, according to Ham, had she spared his feelings in front of others. On numerous occasions when he brought home business associates from the Rockwell-O'Keefe talent agency, where he worked as a musicians' representative, Ham experienced more "embarrassment and humiliation" as Bette appeared to do everything she could to make his guests "uncomfortable and unwelcome."

Anxious as she may have been to end this marriage to a boy whom she had so clearly outgrown, Bette remained unwilling to assume responsibility for all that was happening between them. Hence, it would seem, her repeated attempts to provoke him, to make him lash out at her or even to drive him away, to cause him to be the one who finally broke things off. Instead, when he refused to answer her taunts, when he waited half the night for her to appear for dinners long grown cold, and when he steadfastly declined to speak ill of her to his friends or hers, Bette abused and tormented him all the more, as if to punish him for failing to comprehend how bad she really was.

Perhaps it was a mercy that Ham seemed never to recognize one of the worst public humiliations to which Bette subjected him. On July 4, 1938, with a seeming warmth and affection that she had scarcely shown in months, Bette presented Ham with what was to be her final birthday present to him. He happily interpreted the gift as a signal of a welcome turnaround in their stormy relationship. Ham experienced a pang at how much Bette had spent on his extravagant birthday surprise—a motorcycle and leather helmet. Bette had lately, inexplicably, discouraged Ham from visiting or coming for her at Warners, so he was in ecstasies of delight when she insisted that he come to the studio as soon as possible to show off the dashing new bike to her co-workers. Oblivious of Bette's liaison with Wyler as he remained, Ham had no inkling of the gratuitous cruelty of the birthday gift, or of her heartlessness in encouraging the cuckolded husband to ride about the Warners lot on a bike that, to all who observed him, would instantly, inevitably call to mind Willy Wyler's motorcycle on which Bette had often ridden during their affair.

For all Ham's fond hopes, Bette had no intention of healing the rift between them. Even as she was photographing her husband posed ebulliently beside his new motorcycle the day he visited Burbank. Bette's thoughts were filled with another man, whom she hadn't even met yet. With Bobby and Ruthie. both of whom had been well aware of the liaison with Wyler. Bette could speak of nothing but the prospect of meeting daredevil aviator and tycoon Howard Hughes, whom she had invited as guest of honor to the dog welfare fund-raiser she was hosting at the Beverly Hills Hotel on August 11. Hughes had already set several air speed records when, on July 10. 1938, taking off from Floyd Bennett Field in a twin-engine Lockheed 14, he set a new round-the-world flight record of 91 hours. 14 minutes, 28 seconds. The hero returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York, a congressional medal in Washington—and Bette Davis's Tailwagger's Ball in Los Angeles.

Davis had been named president of the Tailwagger's Club, a southern California dog-lovers' organization, in the spring. Assisted by Bobby, who attended to most of the detail work, the actress had devoted months to organizing the August gala to benefit stray dogs and the training of Seeing Eye dogs. With a lack of sophistication that set them apart from much of Hollywood, Bette and Bobby planned an assortment of childish games, including musical chairs and a dance event in which the gentleman found his partner by rolling a large ball across the polished ballroom floor and waiting to see which of the ladies' feet it hit first.

In order to stand out from the crowd of other actresses in attendance, including Lili Damita, Man' Pickford, Norma Shearer. Jean Parker, and Lupe Velez, Bette decided to come "in costume": an elaborate lacy ball gown reminiscent of one she had worn in Jezebel. Although she seemed not to realize it. Bette's position as front-runner for Best Actress at the Academy Awards for her portrayal of Julie Marsden made her a likely target for Howard Hughes, notorious for his penchant for brief, mostly frivolous affairs with the hottest actresses of the moment, whoever they might be. Hughes's quite serious, and much publicized, liaison with Katharine Hepburn was a notable exception to this pattern. Bene may have been thinking of the rival Yankee dame when, upon finally meeting Hughes at the Beverly Hills Hotel that August, she wildly overreacted to his standard overtures. She misinterpreted his routine seduction as an invitation to something considerably more serious and long-lasting than the well-known Hollywood Lothario seemed to have had in mind. Bette s nagging insecurity about her sexuality and physical appearance was such that she later confessed to having