Bette+Davis+-+Acting+Career

BETTE DAVIS- ACTING CAREER Bette Davis was born April 5, 1908, as Ruth Elizabeth Davis. She got her nickname Bette as a child. At a young age she was inspired to become an actress after she saw Rudolph Valentino in //The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse// and after seeing //The Wild Duck// she had to become an actress. Her mom, who had also dreamed of acting, helped her achieve this goal. Despite serious financial troubles she managed to send her children to a good boarding school. This helped Bette Davis get into John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School, which helped launch her acting career. After completing her roll in a Broadway production known as //Broken Dishes// she moved to Hollywood to screen test for Universal Studios. She was told that she didn´t look like and actress and failed the first screen test, which was to kiss fifteen men passionately. She was about to be fired but because of her strange eyes she was cast in The Bad Sister. The film was extremely unsuccessful because she didn´t have enough sex appeal, and the six other films that she played roles in under her contract with Universal were also unsuccessful. Her contract was terminated. She then signed a seven year contract with Warner Bros. This was when she played a role in her first critically acclaimed film, //Of Human Bondage//. In this movie she was cast as an unsympathetic character, a role that many other women had turned down out of fear. Life magazine said that she gave "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress". Her next role in //Dangerous// got her nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. She didn´t win and the crowds went crazy. This created a new system as to deciding the winner of an Oscar. Instead of having a small panel of judges the people decided who won an Oscar by voting. By now Bette Davis had the reputation of being an actress who played crazy roles, who had a wide variety of acting skills, and followed her instincts. E. Arnot Robertson wrote in //Picture Post//, "I think Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. She gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet." She was also known to have a hot temper and be hard to work with. Her sass can be shown in the fact that she always had a cigarette in her mouth. These are just a few of her trademarks. Although she had been successful the past few years it was through small roles. She was angry at Warner Bros for not casting her in larger parts, and went to play a role with a different company in England, knowingly violating her contract. She was sued and lost the case, but when she returned to the US she was given larger roles. However her success slowly began to decline. She refused roles and went on maternity leave, and in 1946 made her first movie that lost money. After spending four more years making unsuccessful movies she recovered her career in 1949 with //All About Eve// for which she won an Oscar, and she continued to recover her career until she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1983. She died on October 6, 1989 in Paris where she had traveled to. She left behind a legend and a new bar for actresses to rise to. Instead of only settling for simple normal roles she played anything and everything and insisted on doing things her way.



Bibliography

Copyright lashorasperdidas. N.d. La Reina De Hollywood. Retrtieved 26 May 2010. lashorasperdidas.com <[] >

© Estate of Bette Davis.13 August 2005. About Betty Davis. Retrieved 21 May 2010. Bettydavis.com <[]>

Wikipedia.16 May 2010. Bette Davis. Retrieved 18 May 2010. Wikipeida.com <[]>