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By
Miguel Pendás
Someone once asked movie mogul Jack Warner to define the term "movie
star." He answered with two words: "Bette Davis."
The larger-than-life movie star was nominated ten times for best
actress, winning twice. In 1977 she was the first female to be honored
by the American Film Institute with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
In 1969, Film Festival artistic director Albert Johnson invited
her for a tribute. "We want to do all that we can to impress
upon you the joy of doing whatever is possible to emphasize your
artistry, in appreciation for the pleasure you have brought to millions
everywhere," he wrote.
"I’ve decided to come; I think it would be fun,"
she wrote back from her home address at "1 Crooked Mile, Westport,
Connecticut." She added a list of suggestions for a clips program,
peppered with her biting comments. They included Dark Victory
("my favorite—most like my dreams for it"); Jezebel
("My revenge against Cukor for not being cast for Gone with
the Wind"); Whatever Happened to Baby Jane ("Discussion
of horror films"); Watch on the Rhine ("Idiot part,
but likable; my name made possible a play of Lillian Hellman’s
to ever be on the screen"); and Beyond the Forest ("Only
famous because of [Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid
of] Virginia Woolf; my biggest heartbreak in
later years was that Warner’s did not let me play Martha; I
would have killed for that role.")
The Festival was huge. Director Claude Jarman reported the attendance
as 70,000. Director Stanley Kramer and stars Anthony Quinn and Virna
Lisi were there for the Opening Night premiere of The Secret
of Santa Vittoria, the New Directors series featured Gordon
Parks, Susan Sontag and Haskell Wexler. And Jean-Luc Godard’s
Sympathy for the Devil closed things out. The 1969 Festival
was a moment on the cusp: the end of the old and the beginning of
the new. But no event drew a bigger crowd (2,300) than the tribute
to Bette Davis on Saturday, November 1.
Davis came onstage in a leopard-skin print outfit and intoned her
immortal line from Beyond the Forest, "What a
dump!" The crowd roared its approval. "Miss Davis was
at her best," wrote Jeanne Miller in the Chronicle,
"joking, striding around the stage of Masonic Auditorium and
even parodying herself.
"‘Do you want me to do Bette Davis?’ she said. When
the crowd answered with a resounding yes, she took out a cigarette
and proceeded to puff it melodramatically in the frantic style that
has become her trademark."
At the end of the evening she added, "A person doesn’t
have many enormous moments, even in 40 years. Your welcome to me
today was one of those moments."
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