Bette Davis made her one and only visit to Australia early in 1975. In Sydney and Melbourne, American publicist John Springer presented an evening of film clips from Bette Davis movies, followed by questions from the audience and answers from Miss Davis on stage. The program of course had been seen already around America.
On the eve (Friday) of her first appearance in Melbourne the city was saturated with Davis movies. One cinema was screening Of Human Bondage and another Fashions of 1934. One TV channel screened Bunny O’Hare that night and another four Davis pictures from midnight onwards: Elizabeth the Queen, Dangerous, Old Acquaintance, and Pocketful of Miracles. On the afternoon of her second appearance (Sunday) another picture house presented a double bill of Bunny O’Hare and Connecting Rooms.
Cover of program for Bette Davis in Person & on Film, 1975
Theatre Heritage Australia
Bette Davis, when she was in London touring with her show, October 1975
ebay
When, at her opening in Melbourne, Davis walked on stage with the words “It’s going to be a bumpy night”, from her All About Eve film, she had practically the entire audience on its feet. Quizzed as to whether her singing voice was dubbed in Thank Your Lucky Stars, the star responded by singing a verse of “They’re Too Young or Too Old”. Obviously enjoying herself, she had a great ovation at the finish.
Because of an eye infection, a press conference scheduled for the day of her Melbourne arrival, was cancelled. However, at Davis’ insistence on meeting the Press, a second was arranged for the Monday afternoon, at her hotel.
I arrived a few minutes before the press conference was due to begin and was surprised to see most people already there, seated in chairs in front of a rostrum, on which Miss Davis sat, being interviewed for radio.
Glenda Jackson, 1971
Wikipedia
Joan Crawford, 1936
Wikipedia
Which of the current film stars did she think would still be at the top in 25 years’ time, asked the interviewer.
“I’d certainly say Glenda Jackson,” answered Davis. “I know Glenda, if she wants to, will have a fabulous long, long career. I am so ignorant of the new players, and ashamed to say, I’m so lazy about going to films. I should think Jane Fonda, if she really wishes to continue to emphasize acting more than her politics. She’s a very fine person. But that’s very hard to tell.
“There never were in any decade a lot of people who continue on. There was always a few people who kept on going.”
The interviewer pointed out that in the ’thirties actresses like Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and a few others, were always certain of being box office draws, but women like that did not seem to exist in the ’seventies.
“Well, there aren’t any women’s scripts being written today,” observed Davis. “That changed with the end of the contract system. It made a difference, because we appeared in film after film for years and years and years, so that the public really knew us, because the public makes stars.”
“The contract system wasn’t bad then?”
“Oh, it was marvellous. Doing the same thing could happen to players today as happened to us, because then you would have an opportunity to see these people over and over again and really get to know them. The men are having far, far more success today, certainly Newman. He can come back here, I suppose, in any number of years, probably Redford in any number of years, very possibly Hoffman … Warren Beatty. Many more of the men today. There’re very few really meaty parts for women today.”
Poster for Jezebel, 1938
IMDB
With Errol Flynn in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939
Wikipedia
When the radio interview finished Bette Davis came down from the rostrum and walked amongst the reporters saying: “How d’you do?”, and shaking hands as everyone individually introduced themselves.
Finally, she said: “Well, what’re we going to do …?”
“Pictures first,” declared John Springer.
Instructing photographers how to photograph her, she explained: “I have not exactly a mobile face and, when I get in the middle of something I’m very intense about, it looks perfectly ghastly. It looks as if I was so angry at arriving in Australia, which is what happened in Sydney. I want just pictures now and no more during answers to questions.
Davis posed for various photographers and for a few moments all that could be heard were the clicks of the cameras. But she could not remain silent for long.
“Yes, apropos of that … in Sydney when I arrived one of the first questions was: “Is this a nostalgia trip for you?”, the insinuation being I was so in love with myself that I was bringing this spool of film of mine around Australia so I could just revel and sit and enjoy it! So I very forcefully said to this woman: “No, this is a theatre presentation and this is business, this is not for my pleasure—I hope it’s for the audiences’ pleasure.
“Well, the picture they printed of me, looking as if I was just about to claw somebody’s eyes out! What was it the man said last night?” (this to Springer).
“First of all, he wanted to know what colour the flowers were when I arrived in Sydney. I couldn’t remember. I said: 'I don’t know,' and then I asked: 'Please tell me sir, why you want to know?' Well, I couldn’t hear the answer because the audience laughed so hard, but be apparently said: 'I thought maybe that’s why your face was so twisted, because you didn’t like the colour of the flowers.'” Here Davis burst out into hearty laughter/
Once the photographing session was over she asked: “Is everybody here for radio? Well, whoever isn’t radio, let’s do this first. Why should they have to sit and listen to me do radio? It’s a bore! It holds them up. It keeps them here for nothing.”
So now it was question time, and I plunged in straight away.
“Miss Davis, do you wish you had played any classical roles—Shakespeare perhaps—on film or on stage, and if so which ones?”
“Shakespeare? No, I’ve never had any desire to.”
“Not Lady Macbeth?”
“No never any desire. If I ever … There were two parts. If I’d ever done Shakespeare, it would have been much earlier. I think one must be trained for Shakespeare. The English are so brilliant you know, much better at it than we Americans are. It’d either have been Taming of the Shrew—that and Lady Macbeth would have been the two for me, if I’d ever done Shakespeare. But I never had any desire which is – sure, a terrible admission. But Ibsen and – oh and all those beautiful characters …”
“You’d be very suitable for Ibsen.”
“Well, you see, no studio in the world ever let you do Ibsen. I always wanted to do Hedda—you know, Gabler—they just thought that was madness. It was much too elegant for the public.”
“Chekhov or Shaw?”
“Oh yes, so much, so many, so many.”
By now someone else joined in, querying whether perhaps the public could take such things on film today but not then.
“I think they always could, frankly. The biggest cop-out of all the early years I was in Hollywood was that the audience was 13 years old. The audience was never totally 13 years old, in my opinion. I think many of the films Hollywood made have been 13 years old as regards entertainment, but if the public got things like this they would go on up with it.”
Someone suggested that television was doing this.
“Hollywood is well aware that they must do something unusual. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t.”
Poster for The Catered Affair, 1956
IMDB
Poster for A Touch of Class, 1973
IMDB
Davis was then asked what film she might regard as being really brilliant.
“I think A Touch of Class is brilliant. It was brilliantly directed, brilliantly acted. Of couse, I am a wild admirer of Glenda Jackson. Her Elizabeth on British television was absolutely fabulous.
“You played her yourself,” pipped up one little girl.
“Mmm. Mmm. One of my favourite women in the world.”
This prompted the inevitable questions as to her favourite film roles.
“There are quite a few. But my favourite film role is always involved with the script and the final result of what the finished product was. Because you have great ideals for certain things when you start on them. Sometimes they come out and sometimes they don’t. But certain pictures way back … certainly Jezebel, Now Voyager and Elizabeth I. I adored playing the part … play her any time at the drop of a hat. Then of course All About Eve is one of the great scripts and the great parts, and a little known film in the United States, The Catered Affair – Aggie Hurley – the whole picture I thought was great, for what it was supposed to be. And I enjoyed doing [What Ever Happened to Baby] Jane[?] very much—the part of Jane—and I thought the film worked very well.”
Scene from The Little Foxes, 1941
ebay
Bette Davis in Miss Moffat, 1974
New York Public Library, New York
There seemed to be a dry up of questions, so I broke in with another.
“When you’ve done film versions of plays, would you have seen the play in the first place, and would it have influenced you?”
“I was forced to do it once. I never did again. I was forced to see The Little Foxes. I didn’t want to. But Miss Hellman is such a brilliant writer … there’s only one way to play Regina anyway. You cannot have any other interpretation of that part but Miss Bankhead’s and mine. They were alike performances basically. I don’t think there was any copying there, it’s just the way she was.”
“Your recent stint in the musical Miss Moffat—what actually happened?” I asked. This was the musical version of Emlyn Williams’ The Corn is Green (which Davis had done on film in 1945), with the Welsh background changed to the American South. On the road, prior to Broadway, according to reports, it had been in trouble, then Davis came out of it for some performances allegedly through ill-health, and finally the production was scrapped.
“I had terrible, terrible trouble with my back, and I was in a hospital for three weeks and then came back to work for two days, and I just didn’t make it, I was too weak. It was tragic.”
“Would you go back to it later?”
“I don’t know, because frankly—which was not why I left it, because we would have made the changes, we were going to be on the road seven months, I would not have left for that reason – but it needed much more work on it.”
“You had Emlyn Williams with you at the time?"
“Yes, he was there, terrific work he did. And I don’t know if they were right to change it to the South. You see her getting a scholarship for a black boy who works in the cane-fields is not the same as for a Welsh boy out of a coal mine. It doesn’t have the same importance. I think the critics thought that. And as I was doing it, I felt that. I think if they ever do it again, they should go back to the original play. I really do. But that was not why I left. I had said I would do it with the southern background.”
Davis then was asked if, for her show, she was getting the same questions asked in Australia as Amercia.
“I’m getting much more comprehensive, intelligent and less personal questions than America … many more personal questions in America. The first question in America, almost automatically, is how old am I? I have never been asked this since we arrived in Australia. So I asked last night: ‘Aren’t you really curious in Australia as to how old I am?’, which is a natural curiosity. Perhaps you have better manners here than the Americans.”
In answer to questions, it emerged that Australia, together with South America, were the places from which, over the years, she had received her largest fan mail.
Soon the questions dried up and it was on to a TV interview. The interviewer wanted to know if Melbourne audiences were asking the right questions.
“In this program there are no right questions. They can ask me anything they want. They’re asking fabulous questions.”
What sort of questions was she being asked?
“I don’t care what anybody asks me. I’ve no preferences. They’re free to ask me anything they want.”
Were the films she made in the old days larger than life?
“Yes, I think they were. I think they were more romantic … they were larger than life. The films today are not.”
Did she prefer it that way?
“Oh, I think that’s what it’s all about. I think there should be stories …escapist.”
If she was offered an escapist film today … ?
“If anybody offered me a film that was suitable for me at this point, I would be thrilled to death!”
Next came a radio interview with a rather young man.
“I understand you’re very critical of many of the movies that are made today,” he began.
“Where did you hear that?”
“I seem to recall reading about it.”
“I haven’t done any interviews on films. What do you mean: I’m critical of films today? I just say they’re different, the films of today.”
“Well – er – obviously I’m misquoting you, because I understood you felt that many of the permissive types of films was not particularly your cup of tea.”
“Well, I personally am rather sick of guns and naked people, but millions of people aren’t. So, I’m not criticising it from that standpoint. It’s not my cup of tea.”
Bette Davis, 1938. Photo by George Hurrell.
Wikimedia
Bette Davis, 1974
Wikimedia
“Making comparisons between the stars of today and yesterday—if I may use that term very loosely—do you believe this aura that surrounded the stars of yesterday is missing today, and if so why?”
“Well, there’s much more availability today, due to talk shows. People today are seen much more all around the world, and that makes it a change. You have a certain familiarity today with the acting groups, and we didn’t have television then, we didn’t have the talk shows.”
“Do you regret the passing of this ‘mystery’ and ‘fantasy’ behind the Hollywood stars?”
“Oh, I don’t regret anything. I just think the world goes on to different things, and much good will come out of any new thing.”
“What sort of film role would you like to play now?”
“Well, I’ve always wanted to play any kind of film roles I’m offered. And I will never, of course, have as many offers today as I am a much older woman and have a deep desire to keep my name above the title—I’m very stubborn about that—so I don’t have that many offers.”
“Latterly you haven’t done a lot of comedy work, but you did play in a comedy, as I recall, with Ernest Borgnine a few years back.”
“You mean The Catered Affair. Well, it wasn’t really a comedy … in a way, I guess she was a bit of fun to do. No, I’ve never done much comedy. My interest’s drama, always have been. I have done a few comedies: June Bride, a very good fun comedy … I did a comedy with Jimmy Cagney called The Bride Came C.O.D. … The Man Who Came to Dinner … It’s Love I’m After with Leslie Howard was a comedy. But basically my interest has been drama.”
“Would you like to pit some of the knowledge that you have of the theatre and films into perhaps producing, directing or even writing the story?”
“No. I have no ability to write, I would not want to direct. Producing would be a possibility, but not directing.”
“I was told erroneously about a stage performance of Two on the Aisle that you were to do and at the last minute didn’t in fact do, but on talking to John Springer, I found out that you did.”
“Now wait a minute. It was not Two on the Aisle—that was a beautiful Bert Lahr revue. Our’s was called Two’s Company. Oh, I was in it for a very long time.”
“It just goes to show the facts get muddled up at times … ”
“Well, no, no … As I say to audiences, it’s probably Hedda and Louella. They fed a great deal of misinformation to the world.”
“If you were giving advice …”
“You know who Hedda and Louella are?”
“No.”
“You’re very young! Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the two greatest gossip columnists of Hollywood, for many, many years …”
“I’ll never forget their names!”
“Their misinformation was colossal!”
“Terrific!” Loud laughter from everyone. “That’s helped enormously.”
“No, I said their misinformation, I did not say your misinformation.”
“Well, since you’ve shocked me, may I also shock you by telling you that my radio station is now broadcasting plays that you did on radio some years back.”
“Oh, I adore radio. Some of the greatest scripts I was ever privileged to act in were for radio. There were the most fantastic plays written for radio and many of them for the Lux Radio Theatre. It was a tragedy when theatre—drama—disappeared from radio, for all of us—we all adored it.”
“Could you see in the United States a return to this type of radio?”
“Oh, no, not to that extent. No, no. Television’s definitely here to stay, but I hear from radio people that listeners to the radio in the USA are increasing more and more.”
“Of actresses today, who is your preference?”
“Oh, I suppose I have two. One is certainly Miss Hepburn and I have a great love of Glenda Jackson. I think she’s just smashing.”
The reporter then suggested that her life hadn’t been a very happy one.
“I think I’ve had one of the greatest lives that any woman has ever had! One of the luckiest women in the world! I made my goal in my profession, and I had three marvellous children I brought up. I am a lucky woman.”
A soon as the radio interview had ended Bette Davis turned to the rest of us. “Isn’t it marvellous—somebody’s who’s never heard of Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper!!" Loud laughter all round. “One’s belief in Hollywood is impossible, that you don’t know these two fantastic women!”
“Abbott and Costello types obviously,” observed the radio reporter.
“I have no comment,” affirmed Miss Davis. “I have no comment upon that remark!”
Listen to:
Bette Davis singing ‘They’re Either Too Young or Too Old’
Bette Davis in Two’s Company
Bette Davis—Best of the Radio Shows