ON THIS DAY: Hollywood legend Bette Davis dies aged 81 (1989)

On 6 October 1989, Bette Davis, one of the most formidable and influential actresses in Hollywood history, died in France at the age of 81.

Known for her piercing gaze, distinctive voice and willingness to play difficult, unsympathetic and unconventional women, Davis built a career that stretched across more than five decades. She won two Academy Awards, received ten competitive Best Actress nominations and became one of the defining performers of Hollywood’s studio era.

Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on 5 April 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts, she developed an interest in acting while still young. After studying drama and working on stage, Davis made her way to Hollywood in the early 1930s.

Her first years in film were relatively unremarkable, but her reputation changed dramatically with Of Human Bondage in 1934. Playing the cruel and manipulative waitress Mildred Rogers, Davis deliberately abandoned conventional ideas of glamour and gave a performance that shocked audiences with its emotional harshness.

The performance became so acclaimed that, despite Davis not having received an official Academy Award nomination, a campaign led to her becoming a write-in candidate. The Academy subsequently abolished write-in voting after that period.

Two Oscars and a battle with Hollywood

Davis won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for Dangerous, released in 1935, playing self-destructive actress Joyce Heath. Three years later, she won again for Jezebel, in which she portrayed the headstrong Southern belle Julie Marsden.

But Davis’s importance extended beyond individual performances.

Frustrated with what she considered poor roles at Warner Bros, she challenged the studio system itself. In the 1930s, at a time when actors under long-term contracts had little control over the films they made, Davis attempted to escape her contract and took her dispute with Warner Bros to court in Britain.

She lost the case, but her willingness to confront one of Hollywood’s most powerful studios became part of her reputation as a fiercely independent performer. The American Film Institute would later describe her battle for demanding and substantial roles as one that helped make the struggle easier for performers who followed her.

Her return to Warner Bros ultimately led to one of the strongest periods of her career.

Films including Dark Victory in 1939, The Letter in 1940, The Little Foxes in 1941 and Now, Voyager in 1942 established Davis as one of Hollywood’s leading dramatic actresses. Between the films released from 1938 to 1942, she received an unprecedented five consecutive Best Actress nominations.

Rather than relying on conventional beauty or romantic leading roles, Davis became known for characters who could be arrogant, selfish, bitter, ambitious or emotionally complicated. Her willingness to appear older, ill, unattractive or morally compromised was unusual for a major female star of her generation.

Hollywood Canteen and wartime service

Davis also played a notable role away from the screen during the Second World War.

Together with actor John Garfield, she helped establish the Hollywood Canteen, where American servicemen could eat, dance and watch performances free of charge before departing for military service.

Some 2,500 servicemen visited the canteen each night, while major Hollywood stars volunteered as performers, waiters and kitchen workers. Davis later described the Hollywood Canteen as one of the accomplishments of which she was most proud.

In 1941, she also became the first woman elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, another significant achievement at a time when few women occupied positions of institutional power in Hollywood.

‘All About Eve’ and one of cinema’s great performances

By the end of the 1940s, Davis’s relationship with Warner Bros had ended and her career appeared to be slowing.

Then came All About Eve in 1950.

As ageing Broadway star Margo Channing, Davis delivered what became perhaps her most famous performance, portraying a successful woman confronting professional insecurity, ageing and the arrival of an ambitious young admirer who gradually attempts to replace her.

The film became a major critical success. It received 14 Academy Award nominations, then a record, and Davis earned another Best Actress nomination. She also won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival and received the New York Film Critics Circle award for her performance.

Margo Channing became one of cinema’s defining portraits of female stardom and ageing, and the film remains closely associated with Davis’s screen persona: intelligent, theatrical, sarcastic and unapologetically commanding.

A remarkable comeback with Joan Crawford

Davis experienced another major career revival in 1962 with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, opposite fellow Hollywood veteran Joan Crawford.

Davis played Baby Jane Hudson, a former child star living with her disabled sister in a decaying Hollywood mansion. Grotesque, frightening and darkly comic, the performance once again demonstrated Davis’s willingness to sacrifice glamour for character.

It earned her tenth and final competitive Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

The production also became legendary because of the famously difficult relationship between Davis and Crawford, whose rivalry has since become part of Hollywood folklore.

Davis continued working during the following decades, appearing in films including Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Burnt Offerings, Death on the Nile and, near the end of her life, The Whales of August opposite Lillian Gish.

She also increasingly worked in television and won an Emmy for the 1979 television film Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter.

Personal life and illness

Away from the screen, Davis’s life was often turbulent.

She married four times and had three children, one biological daughter and two adopted children. Her relationship with her eldest daughter, B. D. Hyman, became particularly strained and later highly public after Hyman published a critical account of her mother.

Davis herself wrote about her life in the memoirs The Lonely Life, published in 1962, and This ‘n’ That, published in 1987.

During the 1980s, her health deteriorated considerably. She underwent treatment for breast cancer and later suffered several strokes, but continued acting despite her illnesses.

In 1987, she received the Kennedy Center Honors, recognising her contribution to American culture. A decade earlier, in 1977, she had become the first woman to receive the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award.

Death in France

Davis died on 6 October 1989 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, aged 81.

She had recently attended a film festival in Spain where she had been honoured for her career and was travelling home when her health worsened.

By then, she had appeared in close to 100 films and television productions and had spent more than half a century challenging expectations of what a female film star could look like and, more importantly, what kinds of women she could portray.

Her Academy Award record alone places her among the great actresses of her era: two victories, for Dangerous and Jezebel, alongside nominations for films including Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes, Now, Voyager, All About Eve and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Yet Davis’s enduring influence lies as much in her approach to acting as in her awards. She repeatedly chose women who were ageing, angry, ambitious, sexually independent, difficult or deeply flawed at a time when Hollywood frequently demanded that its female stars remain beautiful and agreeable.

Her unmistakable eyes became one of cinema’s most recognisable images, but it was the force and fearlessness behind them that turned Bette Davis into one of the defining actresses of the 20th century.

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