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August 13-19, 2015 • BAY AREA REPORTER • 19
Early Bette Davis showed star quality by Tavo Amador
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ette Davis (1908-89) arrived in Hollywood in 1930 after some modest successes on Broadway. The demise of silent movies made stage actors valuable in Tinseltown, and she was initially signed by Universal. But executives didn’t know what to do with her. She didn’t fit the prevailing standards of beauty or glamour, and was dismissed as lacking sex-appeal. She would defensively rail against classic Hollywood’s obsession with glamour for the rest of her life. Warner Bros., a much bigger studio, gave her a contract, but they also failed to see her potential. Even after winning her first Oscar, for Dangerous (1935), she had to battle for good roles. In fact, true stardom didn’t come until her second Academy Award-winning performance in Jezebel (1938). In contrast, Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) became a star with her first movie, A Bill of Divorcement (1932). Davis’ bete noir, Joan Crawford (1906-77), a former chorus girl, made her film debut in a tiny role in 1925, but by 1928 was a star, and in 1930 was the top female box-office attraction in the country. Two recently released DVDs of early, pre-stardom Davis movies are worth viewing because they both show how she was wasted, yet reveal her unique star quality. In The Dark Horse (1932), she plays Kay Russell, a young woman in love with political operative Hal Samson Blake (first-billed Warren William), who’s in jail for failing to make alimony payments to his ex-wife, Maybelle
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SF Shakespeare
From page 18
I think that they acted it out. So I wrote a play about it.” Sonnets for W.H. is, according to Ennals, an appropriate followup to the mainstage show, “partially because of the number of sonnets that are in Romeo and Juliet.” The staged reading will take place at SF Playhouse on Oct. 4, and will feature many of the same cast members. But before then there will be ample opportunities to see them out of doors. R&J will play in San Francisco’s Presidio for three weekends, and for those that don’t want to pack a picnic on Sundays there will be an Off the Grid foodtruck event right next to it on the Main Post Parade Ground Lawn. The final two weekends of the run will play at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in McClaren Park on
(Vivienne Osbourne). The Progressive Party wants to nominate Zachary Hicks (Guy Kibbee) for governor, despite knowing he has no chance of winning. But Kay wants them to hire Hal to manage his campaign. When the bosses witness
Hal delivering a powerhouse speech to another inmate, they pay his fine and his back alimony, getting him released from prison. He manages Hicks’ campaign with great verve. Davis shows flashes of her trademark high-voltage energy, even if her part is secondary to William’s, who is very good. Directed by Alfred E. Green. Based on a story by future 20th Century Fox mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. The plot may have been influenced by Clarence Brown’s superb smash hit Possessed (1931), in which factory worker Crawford
the other side of town, not too far from the Noe Valley and Castro neighborhoods. Free Shakespeare in the Park is an annual tradition with many SF families, and there are always lots of kids in attendance. Ennals’ own first child was born last year during tech rehearsal week for Taming of the Shrew. He was two months premature, and she’s happy to report, “He’s very healthy now, and he loves theater! He loves to be around actors, and he loves to go to shows.” The boy, named after Henry V., will be there with his family, and Ennals hopes many others will join them to “see this year’s show and have a great time!”t Romeo and Juliet (free), Sat. & Sun., Aug. 29-Sept. 13, & Labor Day, Sept. 7, in the Presidio; Sept. 19-27 in McClaren Park. Sonnets for W.H. staged reading (free), Oct. 4, SF Playhouse. Info: sfshakes.org.
Courtesy SF Shakespeare Festival
San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s Romeo and Juliet is this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production.
(billed solo above the title) heads for the big city and becomes the mistress of businessman Clark Gable, whom politicians convince to run for governor. In 1934, Warners lent Davis to RKO for what proved to be her breakthrough part, Mildred, in an adaptation of gay author W. Somerset Maugham’s autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage. Her electrifying performance was overlooked when the Oscar nominations were announced. The resulting controversy was so intense that for the only time in the Academy’s history, writein votes were allowed. Davis lost to Claudette Colbert in Night She It Happened One Night. candidly regarded her win the following year for Dangerous as a consolation prize, and insisted that Hepburn should have received the award for her excellent performance in Alice Adams. Dangerous was significant for Davis on a personal level, however. She fell in love with co-star Franchot Tone, with whom she had an affair. She was humiliated and hurt when he married Crawford, and that was the genesis of Davis’ lifetime dislike of her rival, whom she dismissed as “MGM’s Princess Royale.” Things seemed to get better when she got the female lead in the prestigious 1936 adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest, billed after Leslie Howard and featuring Humphrey Bogart as the gangster Duke Mantee, but it was soon back to dross, including the second newly released DVD, Satan Met a Lady (1936), directed by the usually effective William Dieterle. In this very poor adaptation of
Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, Davis plays Valerie Purvis, who may or may not be lying when she hires a detective to learn the truth about a man who done her wrong. Despite being hobbled by Brown Holmes’ terrible script, she often rises above the material and keeps viewers guessing about her motives. She also displays confidence in her appearance. (Mary Astor would give an unforgettable performance in the part
in 1941’s The Maltese Falcon.) One consolation was that this time, Davis was billed above co-star Warren William. Despite that, it’s easy to see why her dissatisfaction with such shoddy material would soon explode. Warners next cast her in God’s Country and the Woman. She refused, was placed on suspension, then accepted an offer from a British pro-
ducer for a film in England. Amidst tremendous publicity, she sailed across the Atlantic, eager to work. But the studio obtained an injunction. Davis lost the subsequent trial, the judge ruling that she was under contract to Warners until 1942. The studio paid her legal fees and she returned to the Burbank lot – and better scripts, starting with Marked Woman (1937), as a nervy gun moll opposite Bogart. Kid Galahad, That Certain Woman, and It’s Love I’m After (all 1937), were good, and then came Jezebel (1938), in which she proved she was a star who could act. For the next several years, she gave mesmerizing performances in films that were, for the most part, critically acclaimed and boxoffice hits. In 1943, however, Crawford, dumped by MGM, signed with Warners. Although Davis had first refusal on scripts, she passed on Mildred Pierce (1945). Crawford got the part, won the Best Actress Oscar, and dethroned Davis as Queen of the Lot. In 1949, studio head Jack Warner fired Davis. All About Eve (1950), in which she replaced Colbert, was a sensational if short-lived comeback. Although she continued working almost until her death, she had only one more success, teamed with Crawford in 1962’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? In some ways, however, she had the last laugh. When the American Film Institute released its list of the 25 Greatest Female Legends of the 20th century, Davis finished second (Hepburn was first). Crawford was 10th.t