Bette Davis

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born on Aril 5, 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts. She was also known as the First Lady of Film. She started her acting career at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School. She acted in the off-Broadway play The Earth Between in 1923 and her Broadway introduction was in Broken Dishes in 1929. In 1930 Davis was hired by Universal and cast in The Bad Sister 1931. Her first film did not impress audiences or studio officials. Davis moved to Warner Brothers and appeared in The Man Who Played God in 1932. She went to RKO in 1934 and starred in Of Human Bondage. She was also in Dangerous in 1935 and Jezebel in 1939 She won Oscars for these films.
Her film career slowed down in the 1940s but in 1950 she replaced Claudette Colbert in All about Eve and received an Oscar nomination. The 1960s all but saw her career gone. She placed an ad in the Job Wanted trades hoping for a film role. Davis acknowledged an Oscar recommendation for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane in 1962. She accepted the AFI's Lifetime Achievement award in 1977. In 1979 Davis garnered a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter. She was asked to star in Hotel, a television series, but she refused. She wrote This "N That as well as Bette Davis, The Lonely Life. She passed away on October 6, 1989 in France. Bette was married to Harmon Nelson from 1932 until 1938, they divorced. She married Arthur Farnsworth in 1940 and he died in 1943. She then married William Grant Sherry in 1945 and they divorced in 1950. They had one child. She married Gary Merrill in 1950 and divorced him in 1960. They had two children.