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:This article is about Bette Davis the actress;
there is also singer named Betty Davis.

Ruth Elizabeth Davis (April 5, 1908 –
October 6, 1989), better known as Bette Davis, was
an United States|American superstar and
actor|actress of stage, screen and television who
was renowned for her intense, forceful persona and
her artistic versitility during career that
spanned six decades and over one hundred films.
Founder of the Hollywood Canteen and one of the
most beloved divas of cinema's Golden Age, Davis
is most remembered as a symbol of feminist
strength, stemming from her portrayals of
ruthless, hysterical or unsympathetic women and
her equally turbulent offscreen life that included
several stormy marriages and legendary battles
with male studio heads. Alternately referred to as
the "Queen of Hollywood" or the "First Lady of the
Screen," Davis for a time held the record most
Academy Award|Oscar nominations (11) for Best
Actress, since broken by Katharine Hepburn (12)
and Meryl Streep (13). To this day, Davis remains
one of the most lauded and idolized stars in film
history, having been the subject of a one of the
most successful #1 songs of pop history, "Bette
Davis Eyes," as well as becoming first woman to
serve as president of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences. She was the first
actress to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award
(1979) from the American Film Institute, which in
1999 voted her the second greatest female film
legend of all-time. In 2004, Davis became the most
represented actress on AFI's ballot of 100
Greatest Film Roles and in 2005 joined three
others as the most represented actress on their
ballot of 100 Greatest Film Quotes. Offscreen,
Davis was the source of several now-famous quips
about womanhood, acting, and Hollywood, often
offered with biting wit. Villified by her critics
as a histrionic, mannered overactor, she also
suffered a reputation for being somewhat combative
and difficult to work with. Despite this,
according to respected film historian and critic
Leonard Maltin "by the time she died Davis had won
a status enjoyed by no other Hollywood actress"
and many fans and film professionals still
consider her the best screen actress of all time. 

==Davis' early years==
Davis, who was of Welsh and Scottish descent, was
born in Lowell, Massachusetts to Harlow and Ruthie
Davis. In 1918, Davis' father left ran off leaving
Bette and her sister to be raised in genteel
poverty by their mother, who had aspired to be an
actress. As a child, she aspired to be a dancer,
until she decided that actors led a more glamorous
life. Upon graduation from Cushing Academy, a prep
school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, Davis was
denied admission to Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan
Civic Repertory because she was considered
insincere. Undeterred, she enrolled in John Murray
Anderson's dramatic school (where classmate
Lucille Ball was sent home because she was "too
shy"), and became a star pupil.

==Davis the ingenue==
Her first professional stage performance was The
Earth Between, Off-Broadway in 1923. Her first
Broadway theatre|Broadway performance was in 1929,
in Broken Dishes and later in Solid South. The
next year, she was hired by Universal Studios, but
they felt she was not star material, and in 1932,
they let her sign with Warner Brothers.  Her first
starring role was in The Man Who Played God, and
she became a star in Of Human Bondage. The Motion
Picture Academy failed to nominate Davis for this
tour de force, and such was the outrage that she
received many write-in votes from disgruntled
Academy members.

A much-publicised legal battle with Warners to
stop them from putting her in inferior movies led
to a dramatic improvement in the quality of her
films (although she lost the case). She went on to
win the Academy Award for Best Actress for
Dangerous (1936) and Jezebel (1938 film)|Jezebel
(1938), and was able to name her own roles, with
the exception of Gone With the Wind in 1939. 
Davis was elected the ninth president of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose
Academy Award|award she claimed to have named the
"Oscar", but only served from October to December
1941, when she resigned.  Her career began to
stagnate through the 1940s, but her performance in
All About Eve (1950), for which she received
another Oscar nomination, put her back on top.  

When her career began to fade again, in 1961, she
placed a notorious ad for "job wanted" in the
trade papers. Her role in 1962's over-the-top What
Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962 movie)|What Ever
Happened to Baby Jane?, in which she played a
parody of herself opposite her long-time rival
Joan Crawford, earned her another Academy
Award|Oscar nomination. The film, which was the
only time that Davis and Crawford ever worked
together onscreen in either of their careers, was
a smash hit and a top-grosser that year.  

Sensing renewed box-office potential in his former
contract player, Jack Warner signed Davis for
another venture into the macabre in 1964's Dead
Ringer , opposite gigalo Peter Lawford and
detective Karl Malden.  In this updated homage to
A Stolen Life (1946), Davis and her Now, Voyager
(1942) co-star, Paul Henreid, were reunited not as
on-screen lovers, but rather with Henreid
directing Davis in the campy dual role as a
murdering twin and her sibling victim.  

In 1977, Davis became the first woman to receive
the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement
Award, and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy
Award|Emmy. She wrote a biography, The Lonely
Life, in the 1960s, and Mother Goddam in 1975.  

Davis's only natural-born daughter was by her
third husband, William Grant Sherry, and is named
B.D. Hyman (born Barbara Davis Sherry, and named
after Davis's sister).  In 1985, Hyman wrote a
tell-all book entitled My Mother's Keeper, in
which she savaged her famous mother and Gary
Merrill, her adoptive father. Davis admitted that
her career always came first, and, although she
married four times and had several affairs,
including ones with George Brent and William
Wyler, it should be pointed out that many who knew
both her and her daughter claimed that this book
was largely fiction and that Davis, although in
some ways difficult, was really a loving mother
and grandmother.  Davis adopted two other children
with Merrill, Margot, who was confined to special
education schools for most of her life due to a
brain injury, and Michael, with whom both Davis
and Merrill maintained close relationships
throughout their lives.  Michael never confirmed
nor denied the claims that his "sister," Hyman,
made in the bestselling biography.

Davis wrote another book, This 'N' That, in the
late 1980s, and Bette Davis, The Lonely Life,
which appeared the year after her death, updating
what had happened since her first biography had
been published.

On July 19, 2001, Steven Spielberg purchased
Davis' Oscar statuette for Jezebel at a Christie's
auction and returned it to the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences. This was to protect an
Oscar from commercial exploitation.

Bette Davis died, aged 81, on October 6, 1989 in
Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, following a long battle
with breast cancer, and after having suffered at
least one serious stroke. She is interred in
Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los
Angeles. On her tomb stone|tombstone is written,
"She did it the hard way."

She walked out of her last film, "Wicked
Stepmother," which was released posthumously in
1989 with her still included. She is also credited
with many famous quotes about acting often about
Hollywood and rivals like Crawford and Hepburn.

After the song "Bette Davis Eyes" became a hit
single, Davis wrote letters to songwriters Donna
Weiss and Jackie DeShannon, and singer Kim Carnes
to ask them how they knew so much about her. One
of the reasons Davis loved the song is that her
granddaughter thought her grandmother was "cool"
because she had a hit song written about her.

==Academy Awards and Nominations==
*Nominated What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962
movie)|What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
*Nominated The Star (1952)
*Nominated All About Eve (1950)
*Nominated Mr. Skeffington (1944)
*Nominated Now, Voyager (1942)
*Nominated The Little Foxes (1941)
*Nominated The Letter (1940)
*Nominated Dark Victory (1939)
*Won Jezebel (1938 film)|Jezebel (1938)
*Won Dangerous (1935)
*Nominated Of Human Bondage (1934)

==Filmography==
*The Bad Sister (1931)
*Seed (1931)
*Waterloo Bridge (1931)
*Way Back Home (1932)
*The Menace (1932)
*Hell's House (1932)
*The Man Who Played God (1932)
*So Big! (1932)
*The Rich Are Always with Us (1932)
*The Dark Horse (1932)
*The Cabin in the Cotton (1932)
*Three on a Match (1932)
*20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
*The 42nd Street Special (1933) (short subject)
*Parachute Jumper (1933)
*The Working Man (1933)
*Ex-Lady (1933)
*Bureau of Missing Persons (1933)
*The Big Shakedown (1934)
*Fashions of 1934 (1934)
*Jimmy the Gent (1934)
*Fog Over Frisco (1934)
*Of Human Bondage (1934)
*Housewife (1934)
*A Dream Comes True (1935) (short subject)
*Bordertown (movie) (1935)|Bordertown (1935)
*The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935)
*Front Page Woman (1935)
*Special Agent (1935)
*Dangerous (1935)
*The Petrified Forest (1936)
*The Golden Arrow (1936)
*Satan Met a Lady (1936)
*Marked Woman (1937)
*Kid Galahad (1937 movie)|Kid Galahad (1937)
*That Certain Woman (1937)
*It's Love I'm After (1937)
*Breakdowns of 1938 (1938) (short subject)
*Jezebel (1938 film)|Jezebel (1938)
*For Auld Lang Syne (1938) (short subject)
*The Sisters (1938)
*A Day at Santa Anita (1939) (short subject)
*Dark Victory (1939)
*Juarez (1939)
*The Old Maid (1939)
*The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
*All This and Heaven Too|All This, and Heaven Too
(1940)
*The Letter (1940)
*The Great Lie (1941)
*Shining Victory (1941) (Cameo)
*The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941)
*The Little Foxes (1941)
*The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
*In This Our Life (1942)
*Now, Voyager (1942)
*Show Business at War (1943) (short subject)
*Watch on the Rhine (1943)
*Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
*The Present with a Future (1943) (short subject)
*Mr. Skeffington (1944)
*Hollywood Canteen (1944)
*The Corn Is Green (1945)
*A Stolen Life (1946) (also producer)
*Deception (1946)
*Winter Meeting (1948)
*June Bride (1948)
*Beyond the Forest (1949)
*All About Eve (1950)
*Payment on Demand (1951)
*Another Man's Poison (1952)
*Phone Call from a Stranger (1952)
*The Star (1952)
*The Virgin Queen (1955)
*The Catered Affair (1956)
*Storm Center (1956)
*John Paul Jones (1959)
*The Scapegoat (1959)
*Pocketful of Miracles (1961)
*What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962
movie)|What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
*The Empty Canvas (1963)
*Dead Ringer (1964)
*Where Love Has Gone (1964)
*Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
*The Nanny (1965)
*Think Twentieth (1967) (short subject)
*The Anniversary (movie)|The Anniversary (1968)
*Connecting Rooms (1970)
*Bunny O'Hare (1971)
*Madame Sin (1972)
*The Scientific Cardplayer (1972)
*Burnt Offerings (1976)
*Return from Witch Mountain (1978)
*Death on the Nile (1978)
*The Children of Sanchez (1979) (Cameo)
*The Watcher in the Woods (1980)
*Directed by William Wyler (1986) (documentary)
*The Whales of August (1987)
*Wicked Stepmother (1989)

==External links==

* http://www.classicactresses.com/bette.html Bette
Davis at Classic Actresses
*imdb name|id=0000012|name=Bette Davis
*http://dmoz.org/Arts/Celebrities/D/Davis,_Bette/
Open Directory entry for Davis
*http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=37447 Davis on
Broadway IBDB entry