oPARA gPAR@ ` WTEXT ` IDavis, Bette1908╨1989actorBorn on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Ruth Elizabeth Davis was known from an early age as Bette. After graduating from Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, in 1925, she decided to seek a career in the theater and for a time studied at the John Murray Anderson Dramatic School in New York City. She made her earliest appearances in small parts with stock companies in Rochester, New York, and Dennis, Massachusetts. A brief stint with the Provincetown Players led to her Broadway debut in Broken Dishes at the Ritz Theatre in November 1929. A subsequent Broadway role in Solid South won her a film contract. In Hollywood she again began in small roles in minor productions, including Bad Sister, 1930, Seed, 1930, and Waterloo Bridge, 1931, but in 1932 her performance opposite George Arliss in The Man Who Played God won her considerable attention. She failed, however, to win a part in a substantial production until 1934, when she appeared in Of Human Bondage, in which she was at last able to display some of her vast imaginative and emotional range. For Dangerous, 1935, she won an Academy Award, and after roles in Border Town, 1935, Front Page Woman, 1935, The Petrified Forest, 1936, Marked Woman, 1937, and other pictures she won a second Oscar for her forceful acting in Jezebel, 1938. Often plagued by mediocre scripts, over which she fought some spectacular legal battles with Warner Brothers studio, Davis nonetheless turned in a great many performances of the highest caliber, demonstrating endless versatility in such films as Juarez, 1939, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939, Dark Victory, 1939, The Letter, 1940, The Great Lie, 1941, The Little Foxes, 1941, The Man Who Came to Dinner, 1941, In This Our Life, 1942, Now, Voyager, 1942, Watch on the Rhine, 1943, Mr. Skeffington, 1944, The Corn Is Green, 1945, A Stolen Life, 1946, June Bride, 1948, All About Eve, 1950, The Star, 1953, and The Virgin Queen, 1955. She returned to Broadway in a revue, Two╒s Company (which also featured the dancing of Nora Kaye), in 1952 and later appeared on the stage in The Night of the Iguana. Among her later films, in many of which she took to its limit her ability to portray with great depth and conviction various bizarre or disturbed characters, were A Pocketful of Miracles, 1961, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1962, Dead Ringer, 1964, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1964, The Nanny, 1965, The Anniversary, 1967, Bunny O╒Hare, 1970, Madam Sin, 1971, and The Game, 1972, and The Whales of August, 1987. In 1962 she published The Lonely Life, an autobiography.Recognition of her achievements was widespread. She received ten Oscar nominations, the Cesar Award of the French Film Industry, and Best Actress for All About Eve in 1951 from both the Cannes Film Festival and the New York Film Critics. She was the first woman to be awarded the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in 1977. In 1987 she received the Kennedy Center Honors for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts, and in 1989 the Lincoln Center Film Society Honor. She died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on October 6, 1989, en route home from the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain where she had been honored for her lifetime achievement.Movie: Davis with Leslie Howard from the 1934 film ╥Of Human Bondage,╙ directed by John Cromwell. ▐styl ` d ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ !I !I * !I p !I { !I Γ !I ∞ !I ⌠ !I ° !I !I !I Q !I g !I Θ !I ∙ !I [ !I d !I Ö !I ñ !I ¼ !I ╝ !I ─ !I ╪ !I α !I ∞ !I 9 !I @ !I J 5¬ K !I A !I G !I O !I w !I !I ï !I ô !I ¥ !I Ñ !I ▓ !I ║ !I ╩ !I ╥ !I ∞ !I ⌠ !I !I !I !I !I 2 !I : !I I !I Q !I b !I j !I w !I !I ë !I æ !I ₧ !I ª !I « !I ║ !I ╩ !I ° !I !I * !I ▐ 3 !I a !I x !I !I 5 !I = !I \ !I d !I o !I w !I Æ !I Ü !I ú !I ½ !I ║ !I ┬ !I ╬ !I ╓ !I α !I δ !I ≤ !I !I
