Bette Davis (44 page)

"That's terrific," said Mae.

"Can we get you anything?" Bette cut in, a note of hysteria in

her voice, everyone but Mae West having taken a drink from Vik's tray.

"Orange juice," said Mae, whose escorts had notified Pollock in advance that Miss West neither drank nor smoked.

" 'Orange juice'—to Bette that was a code word for vodka," Pollock recalls. "She started drinking her 'orange juice,' as she called it, every morning around ten or ten-thirty. Orange juice laced with vodka. All morning. Then in the afternoon she switched to vodka with water, so people thought it was a glass of ice water. That she considered her 'light' drinking. Then, after nipping all day, at about five or five-thirty she hit the hard stuff—Scotch on the rocks. By the time we sat down to dinner, usually Bette was pretty well sloshed, which meant it was fasten-your-seat-belts time."

This accounts for Pollock's standing policy, whenever Bette was his houseguest, of serving dinner at precisely seven. "Set routine: dinner on the table at seven o'clock and no later," says Pollock. "The minute the food hit Bette's stomach, it was like someone threw a switch and she sobered up! No matter how overdone she was, she suddenly gained control. Amazing thing to see. So I was always frantic to get dinner on the table and into her mouth by seven, especially when there were guests—otherwise, believe me, it could turn into a very hairy situation."

' 'We have orange juice—I '11 get it!'' said Vik Greenfield, dashing off to the kitchen before his pickled employer could fill Mae's glass with her version of the beverage.

"I don't believe I'm meeting you!" Bette took it from the top, very mellow now. "I have to tell you that. You and Garbo. I've met everybody else in this town. I have never met you—whom I have admired. And I have never met Miss Garbo—whom I have admired."

"I met her once," said Mae with scant enthusiasm.

"We never ever meet each other," Bette continued.

"Unless you're in the same studio," said Mae.

"This is right! Unless you're at the same studio!"

"If you're in the same studio, you sort of walk into people."

"Unless you're in the same studio, you never meet," Bette concurred.

"That's right."

"But my admiration for your work!" said Bette.

There followed a tense, embarrassing silence as Bette and the others waited for West to return the compliment; but Mae was preoccupied with her newly arrived glass of orange juice—taking a long, luxurious drink and then daintily placing it on the black mar-

ble top of the round Directoire table that separated the two actresses.

' 'Mae was just telling us on the way over,'' one of West's escorts kindly called to Bette from a sofa beneath the dog painting. "She said, 'I've just been crazy about everything Bette's ever done.' "

"Well, that's why we're meeting tonight!" declared Bette, expansive again—and anxious to raise a toast. "She wanted to meet me! I always wanted to meet her! And this is going to be a great evening!"

In an effort to get some food into Bette before things spun entirely out of control, Pollock placed an hors d'oeuvres tray on the table beside her. But as the host watched in horror, Bette, ignoring the crackers on the tray, thrust a slab of his caviar mousse pate on a napkin and handed it to Mae, who accepted with evident confusion as to how she was going to eat it.

1 'Can I take that and put it on a plate for you and do it properly?'' the embarrassed host asked Mae.

"No, no, no, honey," she replied, struggling to lick the pate off the napkin. "I don't wanna make any waves."

Pollock figured it was time to get the dinner ready, as Davis seemed to have reached what he recognized as "the point of no return." He was on his way out to the kitchen when, to his alarm, he heard Bette cry: "But, Chuck, you didn't light the fire yet!"

"Something I discovered about Mae," said one of the escorts from the sofa. "Mae wrote her own scripts, as you know."

"Did you?" asked Bette.

"Yeah, on my pictures," said Mae.

"So did I!" said Davis, not to be outdone. "You know something? We wouldn't have our careers if we hadn't written our own scripts! You know that. There's not one soul in the world would ever have written a script that was good for us. When I did Now, Voyager, for instance—which is a great book by a woman named Mrs. Prouty—I used to go home every night, write out every word of dialogue from the book, and bring it back to the director and say, 'This we shoot today!' "

"Miss Davis!" exclaimed Vik Greenfield, appalled as Bette's face disappeared in a cloud of smoke. "We are not permitting smoking—we hear it bothers Miss West!"

For the rest of the evening, unless she slipped into the kitchen to grab a quick smoke with Chuck and Vik, Bette was compelled to do without the cigarettes that accounted for the many mysterious burn marks on various antique tables and chairs throughout Pollock's house which he referred to as Bette's "calling cards."

"I used to think, every night Bette was with me, we were just going to go up in flames,'' Pollock recalls. "She had those twitchy, nervous hands that always had to be doing or touching something— either clutching a cigarette, or checking the food on the kitchen counter, squeezing and patting and poking the food over and over again with those hysterical fingers of hers, or picking away at a bouquet of flowers on the table, until the thing was bald! It was as if something inside made her hands do those things; she couldn't stop them if she tried."

In the kitchen, where Pollock was hurriedly preparing chicken with sour cream and garlic (the sour cream expressly intended to coat Bette's stomach), the pie-eyed actress could be heard loudly reassuring Mae, in case she hadn't believed it the first time, "You always fascinated me! Always!"

Then, with what Pollock fondly describes as "the total innocence of a child,'' Bette added, - 'But, Mae. You don't talk anything the way you talk in the movies."

"Oh," replied Mae West, momentarily disconcerted. "You mean, 'in characterization.' When I was doing the character. Oh, no. Not in here. Oh, never."

Newly charmed by his friend's artless simplicity, Pollock returned to the living room, to discover that in his brief absence Bette had ignited the logs in the fireplace, which she was poking and prodding as flames shot in every direction.

Soaking wet and seemingly about to pass out, Mae took off her heavy wool jacket. Pollock rushed up behind her to open a window.

"Is that all right, Mae?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah, honey," she panted. "Much better. Much better. Thanks."

By this time, Bette was engaged in a fairly unpleasant exchange with one of the escorts, who happened to have mentioned someone he knew who worked at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Bette interjected that her first husband had worked as a musician in the hotel grill.

"Who?" the escort made the mistake of inquiring.

"Ham!" said Bette, as if the poor fellow were a dunce—how could anyone not know Bette Davis's first husband's name?

Silence.

"Ham Nelson sang at that grill every night!" she went on.

"Oh my God, yes," said the escort, catching on.

1 'That was his job—he used to play there.''

"He was killed, wasn't he?" asked the other escort.

"Not Ham!" said Bette, indignant again. "Farney! Farney died

at thirty of a brain hemorrhage. Oh, I tell you—the one good husband I ever had. You know, I look back on my life—the way I was brought up as a Yankee girl—and there's no way I can believe I've been married four times!'' Here Bette's voice dropped, as she turned to address Mae. "And out of this one idiot, Sherry, I got the most beautiful daughter. I was just the luckiest woman in the whole world. You know, there isn't any way he could ... It was like the immaculate conception. And I kept looking at her and watching her grow. Oh, he was a monster, this man—and she's the most beautiful girl. ..."

"B.D. is heaven!" Vik chimed in.

"Well"—Bette continued her tipsy oration—"B.D. is out of this monster marriage, you see. And I think, in this world, we have many terrible experiences. I believe in this, like I can't tell you. And I never look back! I look forward."

"You went ahead," said Mae, with sympathy.

"How Sherry and I have this daughter . . . This horrible man! He was a horrible man!"

"In what way was he horrible?" asked one of the escorts.

"Well, he beat all of us up!"

"He beat you up?" said die escort.

"Oh my God!" Bette shouted. "Every man in the world beats me up! There's no man who doesn't beat me up!" Her voice subsided again, as she said, "Oh, men always beat me up."

"Why?" asked Mae, gently. "Do you make them angry?"

"No," said Bette. "It's not my fault. They just can't stand me. All the men who've been married to me say, 'I'm so exhausted being married to you.' "

"Well, you're a strong lady," said one of the escorts.

"My enthusiasm is exhausting, I think," said Bette.

"No, what I mean," said the escort, "the thing about you and Mae, you're enormously strong, but there's not one touch of lesbianism—"

"Lesbianism!" Bette cried. "Me?"

"No, no," said the nervous escort. "What I'm talking about—"

"I tried to turn for years!" said Bette, suddenly cackling with delight. "I thought it would be so simple. I have a great friend who's younger than me—she loves men and I love men—and I said to her, 'Now come on, we must get together!' "

At which the boys rocked with laughter, as Bette turned to Mae and asked, "Would you ever want to marry anyone at your age now?"

"Would I want to?" said Mae.

"Would you?"

Mae thought a moment, then started to say, "I'd—"

"I'd kill a man!" Bette interrupted.

"I'd wanna see him first," Mae came back, deadpan.

"If I had a man in my house," said Bette, "I would murder him!"

"Oh, well," said Mae. "I always have a man."

"What?!"

"I always have a man."

4 * Well,'' said Bette,' 'you are very smart. I have never done that. I haven't had a man in so many years it's a riot! I'm a virgin. A complete old virgin! If a man ever got into bed with me at this age"—here a menacing glance at the sofa full of escorts—"I'd kill him!"

"Oh, but age has nothin' to do with it," said Mae, in her sweetest, most soothing tone.

"It has with me!" Bette shot back, her fury undiminished.

"Oh, it shouldn't."

"I had three children, and now they're all gone from my life," said Bette. ' They're both married, and I live my own little separate life."

"Yes," said Mae, solicitous. "But you've got to meet a man now that inspires you."

"I haven't see one in twenty years that inspires me!'' Bette cried. "And that's sad. Now I agree that's sad. But I really don't care. I can't stand men as husbands anymore!"

"Really?" asked one of the escorts. "Do you think it's because you're too strong?"

"Strong!'' said Bette, enraged. "I was the best wife! I was never a strong woman as a wife! I was the biggest sucker you ever met!"

"You didn't cut their balls off?" asked the escort.

"Ohhhh, come off it!" Bette screamed. "Come off it! All you guys think of strong women this way! I wish men had enough balls not to be cut off! The stronger the woman is, the more she needs a strong man. You want to find strong men today? Go search the earth! I can't find them!"

"But if you did," asked the escort, "you'd marry one?"

"I'd never marry!" declared Bette.

"You don't have to just marry them," said Mae, an island of serenity in the tense room.

"Oh, I'd never marry again," said Bette, softly now. "A love affair would be good. But I'd never marry again. Oh my God, are

you kidding? And end up supporting them? Jesus Christ! No, never. Women like Mae West and I, we have a rough go with husbands because we made lots of money and had to be verrnry smart about who we married. And I wasn't smart! I married men who were supported by me. Oh my God! I'd be so rich today without three husbands!"

At which the boys exploded with laughter again, as Mae tried to stop them by saying, "It's very possible."

"But I got one great daughter," Bette continued.

"You wanted children," said one of the escorts.

"No!" shouted Bette at the top of her lungs. "I did not want children! I am not the mother of the earth!''

"Apparently it's not what she felt," said Mae, trying to prevent the escort from saying more.

"I happened to have the luck with a lousy marriage to have a great daughter. Just luck! Just luck!"

"How lovely that is for you," said the escort. "Yes."

"My dear," said Bette, "I have three children. I am the luckiest woman in the world.''

"Well," said the escort, "Michael's a great joy too, I'm sure."

"Michael is not a joy to me!" Bette exploded again. "He is the lousiest Aquarian bastard that ever walked the earth!"

44 You have three children?'' said Mae, deftly trying to calm things down.

"I have three children," Bette replied.

"Oh, that's wonderful," said Mae. "Do you have pictures of them?"

"Yes," said Bette, a changed person. "I have. Would you?"

"Yes, I'd love it," said Mae, shooing the others away as Bette searched for the photographs in her purse.

"Okay, I '11 show you my grandson.'' Bette kept talking, lest Mae lose interest before the pictures had been produced. "I have one grandson. I have them, Mae. Somewhere . . . How dear of you!" .

Charles Pollock and Vik Greenfield having repaired to the kitchen to finish the dinner preparations, the escorts talked to each other on the sofa—until Bette could suddenly be heard to cry for joy, "There's nobody like us!"

"That's for sure," one of the escorts chimed in.

"This is the crazy thing!" said Bette. "There's nobody else like us! Half the kids you could meet in the television area today, you might say, 'Now Miss West is coming on the set,' and they couldn't give a shit. Couldn't give a shit! These horrible little kids, they couldn't care less!"

"Who are they?" asked Mae.

"Horrible little kids!" Bette replied. "The kids who are doing all this television crap! Horrrrrrrible television!"