Dorothy Rabinowitz has Betty Davis eyes.
WSJ.com - It Was Gloriously Bumpy:
Of the four men Bette Davis married, tortured mismatches all, one at least managed to contribute to her Hollywood legacy. When she won the best-actress Academy Award for “Dangerous” in 1936, the story goes, she looked down at the statuette and, having perceived there a resemblance to the neat backside of her otherwise unimpressive first husband, Harmon O. Nelson -- the O stood for Oscar -- she decided to nickname her prize “Oscar.” When newspapers picked up the story, the award became known forever after as the Oscar -- a claim with which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences begged to differ.
“The Girl Who Walked Home Alone : Bette Davis, A Personal Biography” (Charlotte Chandler)
Bette Davis, among the greats? No doubt - she certainly has been on my TiVo searchlist for as long as I've owned a TiVo.
... She had argued more than a few cases with the motion picture academy in her tenure -- if such a word can apply to a reign of two days -- as the first woman president of the academy, deemed an enormous honor when she was elected, early in 1941, at the height of her fame. The country was still nearly a year away from war, but it was war that was on her mind when she greeted the academy, her first night as president, and began, straight off, to talk about the plight of America's friends in Europe and their struggle against the Nazis. She advised the startled academy members that their organization should show some awareness of this state of affairs. Seats to the Academy Awards should be sold that year, she maintained, and “the proceeds given to British War Relief.” Not the sort of order of business that academy members were accustomed to hearing.The new president also had ideas about the awards themselves, specifically the voting process, evidently unsettling to the academy. She quickly decided, in turn, that her ideas would never be taken seriously by this group, whose members had, she suspected, elected her to be a mere figurehead, for her fame. Bette's nearly instant resignation so upset producer Darryl Zanuck, her chief supporter for the presidency, that he ceased speaking to her for nearly a decade.
That moment, when she reminded the academy members that there were matters in the world more urgent than awards galas, was characteristic -- a foreshadowing of her haunted feelings, as war drew near, that acting was impossibly trivial work, under the circumstances: Hitler had conquered most of Europe, and it seemed daily that England might go under. Not surprising, then, that she seized on actor John Garfield's idea for a Hollywood Canteen for U.S. servicemen early in the war, an enterprise into which she threw herself heart and soul. She and fellow actors hurled themselves into every aspect of the war effort they could, undertook exhausting War Bond tours, formed a Victory Committee.
Who can imagine something like a Victory Committee in today's Hollywood -- that society packed with politically progressive luminaries who hold it as an article of faith that all actions of the U.S. military are suspect, that American armies are sent to war thanks to the machinations of corporate conspirators?
Um, Ms. Rabinowitz: care to add any quotes in support of this inflammatory quote? There are lots of “Corporate Conspirator War Bond drives”, right? Guess I just haven't had time to catch up on their thick stack of press releases.
She continues:
... “The Girl Who Walked Alone” is a hodge-podge of too many familiar stories -- where Davis biography is concerned,
More Than a WomanJames Spada's “More Than a Woman” remains unequaled. Even so, the Chandler book offers, between its paddings, more than a few nuggets of new information on the greatest of all American actresses.
Somehow, without evidence, I imagine Charlotte Chandler once voiced an opinion contrary to George Bush, or claimed global warming was a problem, and some WSJ reporter overheard the remark. How else to explain Ms. Rabinowitz, who can only spare a sentence or two at the bottom of a 1500 word essay to discuss the actual book purportedly being reviewed?
A final bit of hyperbole, asserted as absolute 'fact-esque':
There were plenty of roles in which she could show off her glamour, though it is noteworthy that the most glamorous of all of them -- at least the one that exerted the most magical attraction for countless millions of filmgoers, even today -- was one she played when she was a not particularly youthful-looking 42. The part was, of course, that of Margo Channing, stage actress just turned 40 herself. The picture, “All About Eve” (1950) -- whose script, by Joseph Mankiewicz, is rightly considered, still, the most witty and literate ever to come out of Hollywood -- and the character of Margo Channing is in the end the one in which the Davis persona is permanently enshrined.
“All About Eve (Special Edition)” (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
Granted, All About Eve is certainly one of the best Hollywood movies, maybe even top 50, but I don't recall seeing any poll judging it to be the most witty and literate, evah. Ms. Rabinowitz ought to stick to her proper and usual domain: the editorial pages for the Wall Street Journal, where facts are often trumped by ideology. The WSJ is such a strange paper - excellent reporting, paired with, how shall we say, strongly opinionated right-wing Republicans in charge of Op-Ed, and in this instance, book reviews.
