Best Bette Davis feud

Didn't Bette really slug Miriam Hopkins in Old Acquaintance?

Rep 1:

1-If you are referring to onscreen, she throttled Hopkins but did not slug her. It was in the script. During this shot, the rafters of the sound-stage were packed with onlookers.

2-Bette sometimes selected one person to be an enemy. The first time Celeste Holm met Bette on the set of All About Eve, she said something like "Good morning!". Bette replied "Oh shit, good manners." Bette didn't treat her any better during the rest of the filming.

3-Bette gave daughter B.D. everything she could. She made the lousy film Where Love Has Gone so she could pay for B.D.'s fancy wedding. Bette financially supported B.D. and her husband into the 1970s. B.D. paid her back by writing a Mommie Dearest-style book.

That scene in Old Acquaintance. Is Bette acting or venting?

While I think Bette relished a good fight/feud, she wasn't the only one whose patience was tried by Miriam, Joan, and Lady Faye...

Whether Bette and Miriam hated each other or not they made a fantastic on screen duo.

The Hopkins one is the one where Bette dispensed with the "she was always professional, she knew her lines..." stuff. She genuinely hated the woman and hated working with her.

OP- Which one of her lines was the funniest?

I’ll start-

WHAT A DUMP!

Bette said of Robert Montgomery, her co-star in "June Bride": "He was a male Miriam Hopkins. An excellent actor, but addicted to scene-stealing."

Bitch couldn’t get along with anyone.

Actually, I find her feud with Jack Warner to be the most interesting because it really had a huge impact on the first 1/2 of her career. A fascinating glimpse into the power play of the studio system. The other feuds were just hissy fits with actresses who she deemed too vain and self-absorbed.

Jack Warner was sued by more actors than any mogul... even sweet Joan Leslie sued to get out of her contract!

Bette lost her lawsuit against Warner Bros, but gained more autonomy and better roles, so she essentially won her battle with Jack. Olivia de Havilland picked up the mantle, sued Warner Bros and won, leading to the De Havilland Law on contract extensions.

Didn’t BD write the book because Bette had suffered a stroke and had battled breast cancer and she was afraid the gravy train was about to end?

In the follow up to her memoir, Bette refers to BD as just HYMAN.

Bette valued professionalism on the set and Joan was very professional. Faye and Miriam, however, were not.

Theresa Wright said she always called Bette "Mom" after playing her daughter in The Little Foxes. I think she got along well with Anne Baxter. She got along with Henry Fonda and some othermalke costars (I think she had affairs with a lot of them). Ernest Borgnine liked her. Paul Henried was good friends with her. Dick Cavett liked her. Joe Mankiewicz got along with her. Her son Michael loved her. Not everyone hated Bette, but that's not very interesting.

She was very nice to 19 year old nervous newcomer Joan Lorring when shooting "The Corn Is Green".

They had a scene together and the director decided to do the reverse close-ups on Lorring the next day which was a Saturday. Bette had Saturdays off , so she would not be there to speak to Lorring off-camera.

Bette showed up the next day and in full make-up and costume was ready to listen and reply.

Lorring was nominated for an Acadamy Award.

Debbie Reynolds liked her too.

If I said good morning to someone and they said, "Oh, shit. Good manners." I probably would have laughed.

Olivia de Havilland also liked Bette.

So did Elizabeth Montgomery. Natalie Wood (who played her daughter in The Star) was also friendly with her.

Bette Davis HATED Miriam Hopkins, even more so than Joan Crawford.

Miriam and Bette, in the 1920s, were budding stage actresses. They hated each other. Miriam instinctively went for Bette's jugular and knew how to get under her skin. On Broadway, Miriam starred in "Jezebel." She was enraged when Bette played it onscreen. Also, there was rumor that Bette had an affair with with Miriam Hopkins's husband, Anatole Litvak, a remown director. (He directed two Bette Davis films.)

When Bette and Miriam starred in "The Old Maid", Miriam arrived on set, wearing the red dress, from "Jezebel." The filming was tough, with Miriam trying to upstage Bette. A few years later, they starred in "Old Acquaintance." The filming was a nightmare of "comeuppance." Miriam left Hollywood and returned to the stage.

Years later, Miriam returned to the screen, playing character roles. She appeared in "The Heiress", a very prestigious film. Bette starred in "Beyone the Forest", which was a critical and box office flop.

On Oscar night, Miriam sent Bette a telegram; it stated it's better to play a smaller role in a hit film, than play a starring role in a box office flip. Bette, of course, was furious. To Bette's credit, she praised Miriam's talent, but she was a "bitch, impossible to work with."

I loved the feud between Madame Bette and her daughter. BD has made claims that Bette could transform into a demon, was able to appear and disappear at will, and hex her rivals and enemies. Seriously, those are MUCH better accusations than Christina's!

Bette was pretty honest and did say Miriam Hopkins had talent. She never said Joan Craford was a good actress, as far as I know. She did say she wished she was as beautiful as Crawford. It seemed like she had the most negative things to say about Faye Dunaway, who kept her and a large group of extras waiting for a long time, on the Disappearance of Aimee movie.

It's funny how I don't like any of the actresses Bette doesn't like!

There was something about the movie, Skyward, where either Ron Howard or Anson Williams said she was only contractually obligated to stay until a certain date, and even though they wanted her to stay the following day to film an improved ending, she refused. But then the next day when they were filming she showed up to watch!

Bette wise kind to up and coming actors: Olivia de Havilland, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Janis Wilson, Joan Lorring, Debbie R., Ann-Margret, etc. At least she picked on her own size...

I forget which book I read it in, but in the Broadway show, The Night of the Iguana, she alienated her costars and one of them noted that she seemed to love to fight. At one point I think she even got into a physical fight with Patrick O'Neal. Then at one point she because distraught and cried, "Everyone hates me!" She seemed to make things chaotic.

[quote]She never said Joan Craford was a good actress, as far as I know.

But she always credited Joan as being a professional, r23.

[quote]r23 = Faye Dunaway, who kept her and a large group of extras waiting for a long time, on the Disappearance of Aimee movie.

TRUTH

R29 Tell us more.

My favorite Miriam Hopkins scene-stealing story involved not Bette Davis, but the former Queen of the Warner Bros Lot, Kay Francis, in "Trouble in Paradise."

Kay and Miriam were shooting a scene in which Kay's character is having breakfast in bed and Miriam is sat on a chair beside her. In the two-shot, Miriam is supposed to be in profile, but take after take, she kept angling her chair so that her full face was in the frame.

Kay complained to the director Ernst Lubitsch, so Lubitsch had the chair nailed to the floor! Supposedly, Miss Francis ended up ingesting nearly a dozen eggs to complete that one scene.

Now back to Bette... Even though Bette and Kay were often pitted against each other at WB, they remained friends and mutual admirerers. Bette sympathized with Kay when she was demoted to B-pictures: "Jack Warner was despicable to Miss Francis. I felt awfully sorry for her, and it certainly scared every actress in town."

R28 That's true. But I was pointing out she seemed to pointedly ignore any mention of Joan's acting talent. I mean Crawford was a decent actress. Not Bette Davis level, but she wasn't untalented.

I wonder how she got along with Mary Astor in the Great Lie. That film rarely gets talked about. Astor gets to do all the hysterics in this scene while Bette plays the quiet stoic. Wait for the amazing double slap at the end.

R33 I've always read they got along great. I think they both wrote good things about each other in their autobiographies.

[quote]She never said Joan Craford was a good actress, as far as I know.

When Bette was asked about her new studio mate, Joan Crawford, and any potential rivalry between them, Bette responded with, "Miss Crawford is a movie star, and I am an actress." Make of that what you will.

I've told it so many times on DL, r30.

It was filmed in a Masonic Temple in Denver...hot summer day...no air-conditioning. Extras were asked to show up in period clothing and payment was...a boxed lunch.

We sat...and sat...and sat. Faye just wasn't coming out. Finally Bette came out in her pin curls. She was self-deprecating about her looks and asked that no one take pictures. Nobody did. She ended up singing I've Written a Letter to Daddy.

I remember Bette *always* had a cigarette in her hand going to and from her trailer. I regretted not searching around for one of her butts as I can't think of a more appropriate Bette Davis memento.

r33 - Bette and Mary realized the script had problems and worked together to improve it. Mary's role was supporting and Bette didn't care if it was showier if it improved the film.

I think I've read that Bette was even instrumental in securing that role for Mary Astor when Warner didn't want Mary.

In her dishy autobiography Esther Williams Million Dollar Mermaid goes out of her way to slander Bette, with whom she never even worked. IIRC they were SoCal neighbors or attended the same neighborhood parties where Esther said, Bette would get rip-roaring drunk and insult everyone. Esther wasn't much kinder about Joan Crawford and their days together on the MGM lot when Joan returned to make Torch Song.

But then Esther had a lot of cruel things to say in that vile book.

RJ Wagner adored Bette and vice versa. Even after Natalie's murder...uh, death.

Mary created quite a stir with her 'do.

Esther Williams was a despicable cunt.

R37

She called Mary personally and apologized for asking her to screen test, " Some idiots have to be convinced"

Bette also came to hate Susan Hayward when she played her mother in Where Love Has Gone. But I'm not sure if Bette ever discussed the details of that battle.

I think on the Broadway production of The Night of the Iguana, at least some of Bette's wayward unhappiness was due to her expectation that Tennessee Williams planned to expand her role when she signed on to do the play. By the time they opened on Broadway, he not only didn't expand it but cut lines, making the character of Maxine almost a supporting role. She also didn't trust the director Frank Corsaro.

[quote]Bette also came to hate Susan Hayward when she played her mother in Where Love Has Gone. But I'm not sure if Bette ever discussed the details of that battle.

Bette didn't want to wear the white wig because she felt her character would have had her hair died. And I don't know how she felt about Susie remaking Dark Victory the year before.

Davis behaved so badly on Night of the Iguana there’s even a BBC radio play about it called “Everybody’s got Conditions.”

When she found out Tennessee Williams wasn’t going to rewrite her part, the leading man wouldn’t go to bed with her and Margaret Leighton was better liked by the cast, and ultimately got great reviews and won the Tony she made it her mission to cause the play to close. For all her talk about being this great professional, she was anything but.

I’m a huge fan, but she was a nasty, mean-spirited bitch.

Barbara Lemmings biography is very good for anyone who wants to read about her feuds and antics. So much self-inflicted heartache. Of course it could always be blamed on someone else and it always was.

No wonder BD is such a nut.

Did Susie personally force Bette to wear the white wig?

It's the one negative that she said about the filming that I can remember, r46.

[quote]When she found out Tennessee Williams wasn’t going to rewrite her part, the leading man wouldn’t go to bed with her and Margaret Leighton was better liked by the cast, and ultimately got great reviews and won the Tony she made it her mission to cause the play to close. For all her talk about being this great professional, she was anything but.

Your source, r45?

That radio play linked at r45 got 2 things wrong just in its introduction. Tennessee Williams might very well have courted and begged Katharine Hepburn to be in Night of the Iguana, but surely it was to play Hannah Jelkes, the role eventually played by Margaret Leighton, not Maxine, for which Hepburn couldn't have been more wrong. And Bette had indeed been on the stage, the Broadway stage, at least a couple of times since 1929: The World of Carl Sandburg in 1960, one year prior to Iguana; and Two's Company, a musical revue in 1952.

I'm not r45 but those stories about Bette's time in Iguana have been discussed in many books and articles and interviews over the years. Just google 'em.

Apparently Bette was only 9 years older than Susan Hayward so perhaps Hayward made a stink about Bette's hair/wig causing the stink.

Yes, r50 as well as Bette's side of the story. That's why I was asking r45 for specifics. Thank you for sharing that invaluable google tip though.

Please let us know what you find, r52.

Yeah, r53....no.

[quote]Bette said of Robert Montgomery, her co-star in "June Bride": "He was a male Miriam Hopkins. An excellent actor, but addicted to scene-stealing."

Robert Montgomery was also a right-wing Republican and Bette hated his politics. She was a lifelong liberal Democrat.

[quote]Didn’t BD write the book because Bette had suffered a stroke and had battled breast cancer and she was afraid the gravy train was about to end?

Pretty much. BD and her useless husband didn't like to work and Bette supported them at a very comfortable level for two decades. When she had the strokes BD thought Bette was going to die and she wrote the book for the money. I read the book years ago and Bette wasn't what anyone would call abusive. She drank too much and could be overbearing and overly involved in her childrens' lives but that's hardly abuse. The "conflicts" in the book were just the usual family arguments that everybody's had with a parent.

I can't remember where I read this but Bette did a horrible, awful movie in the early 70s called Bunny O'Hare. Jack Cassidy was in it and he and Bette had never met. On the first day of filming, Jack walked into the hair and makeup trailer (Bette was already in there) and the first thing he said to her was "Bette you've got one good fuck left in you and I'm the one who's going to give it to you." Bette nearly fell out of her chair because she was laughing so hard. She and Jack got along very well for the duration of filming.

Davis and Montgomery both were involved in Screen Actors Guild politics.

Bette was an admirer of Mary Astor and Astor in turn said Davis handed The Great Lie to her on a silver platter and an Oscar win. And of course, Astor did "Sweet Charlotte" with Bette before Astor retired...

Apparently as much as she was a gifted screen actress, Bette doing theater left a lot to be desired. There was a story in one of the books about the opening night of "Night of the Iguana". In one of the scenes Bette is talking to another actor while people are playing volleyball in the background. An extra accidently hit the volleyball over in her direction, hitting her in the head. But rather than work with the mishap, Davis stood there stone-faced and continued with the scene not even acknowledging it. She didn't last long before she was replaced.

"Miss Moffat" was a complete disaster where Davis would frequently forget her lines and start joking around with the audience and do bits from her old movies.

"Miss Moffat" was ill-suited for Bette. Audiences wanted to see Bette Davis as Margo Channing on the stage, they didn't want to see her as a prissy schoolmarm. "The Corn Is Green," which was the source material, was not one of Bette's best movies.

All of those old-time movie divas were complicated personalities. Davis, Crawford, Garbo, Dietrich, Stanwyck, etc. They all had a lot of issues.

R8

I love knowing that Robert Montgomery was a scene stealer.

They were also women, r62. The 19th Amendment didn't get added to the Constitution until 1920. The actors could have it all. They had wives to bear and bring up the children. I cut them a lot of slack.

R60, Bette would brag that she came from the theater, but she only did one or two Broadway plays in one season; plays that had a brief runs and not at all memorable. And her stage training was limited. Eva Le Gallienne rejected Bette for her troupe for being "insincere" and "frivolous," while George Cukor had her in his company for one season, an experience he described in his memoirs: "She had her own ideas, and though she only did bits and ingenue roles, she didn't hesitate to express them."

Later in her career, when asked how she prepared for her roles, Bette repeated Claude Rains quote, "I learn the lines and pray to God." Thus, Bette never developed a technique that could carry her through a live production. In movies, she could do take after take if she flubbed her lines, but on stage she had to be more agile, which she was not.

[quote]All of those old-time movie divas were complicated personalities. Davis, Crawford, Garbo, Dietrich, Stanwyck, etc. They all had a lot of issues.

You try being a woman and navigating through Hollywood and the studio system back then. You had to be tough. And if you weren't damaged when you got into the business, you definitely were by the time you were midway through your career.

Most of those actresses came from poor to common stock, totally ill-prepared, personally and professionally, for the worldwide fame and attention and temptations that were suddenly available to them. It was quite a head trip, especially knowing that so much depended on their looks that would soon fade.

Interesting how most classic Hollywood stars came from poverty-stricken backgrounds. Someone like Katharine Hepburn was an exception. Today it's just the opposite. If they're not nepo babies, they're from upper middle class or wealthy families.

Part of that, r68, is you have to be rich nowadays to survive the beginnings of a career in theater or film. You have to be able to sustain life in NYC or LA or London without making any money.

[quote]Interesting how most classic Hollywood stars came from poverty-stricken backgrounds

Most, r68? Hardly.

Bette was replaced by Shelley Winters for "Iguana." Shelley writes about the whole mess in her second book. Bette called Shelley and warned her about the production and why she was leaving a hit play so soon. Seems that Margaret Leighton and Patrick O'Neal worked together to make Bette look bad during the play. They subtly moved during critical scenes when Bette was supposed to be the focus, thus taking the audience's attention away from her. ( I guess another version of scene stealing.) Bette felt outnumbered and didn't feel like fighting it out with the show runners who had been made aware of what was going on. Shelley wrote that she did go to see the play and everything Bette told her turned out to be true. Leighton and O'Neal were very unprofessional.

Winters worked with her acting guru, Lee Strasberg, to reimagine the part of Maxine and managed to turn the tables on her co-stars. Taking back the focus of her scenes.