Her
mother supported the family by becoming a photographer which
paid for all of Bette's schooling. She went through her
adolescence without a father and attended countless schools. During
this time Ruth  Elizabeth
became known as Bette. The unique spelling was derived
from Balzac's novel, Cousin Bette. After
some years at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and a summer
season in 1928 with director George Cukor's stock company in
Rochester, NY, Davis went on to Broadway starring in Broken Dishes
and Solid South.  Then
came the call to Hollywood. At first, Hollywood didn't know what
to do with her because at that time glamour and physical beauty
were prerequisites for female stardom. She acted in all different
types of roles and genres, often
with much success. She survived because she had a sheer force
or personality that made us think she was beautiful, make us
weep for her, or make us loathe her.
During
her early career she was  contracted
to Universal where she was put into boring roles and, as a
result, in this period she became known as the "little
brown wren". She only made a few noteworthy films during
this time, Waterloo Bridge and Bad Sisters in 1931. After six
motion pictures she felt she was a failure and was ready to
return to New York when she received a phone call from renowned
character actor George
Arliss asking her to appear in his next film, The
Man Who Played God for Warner Brothers.  She
was to play his love interest in the film and even though his
age of 64 was almost comical to her 25, it was a success. She
thought this was her most important picture and she has been
quoted as saying, "I did others I liked better and
which were far more significant, but there was something about
appearing as Mr. Arliss's leading lady which gave me standing".
Because of this film she won a long term contract with Warner
Brothers where she worked for 18 years.
During
the 1930's she was in many splendid films such as Three
on a Match, Cabin
in the Cotton, and 20,000
Years in Sing Sing with Spencer
Tracey. However, she was unhappy with the roles she was
receiving and defied the studio by going to England to make
pictures. She lost the battle, but she won the war since now
the studio gave her better films. She won her first Oscar nomination
for Of
Human Bondage with Leslie
Howard, and then won it for  Dangerous in
1936 with Franchot
Tone and finally for Jezebel in
1939. Jezebel has often been thought to have been a consolation
prize for not getting the role of Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with
the Wind. She also married her first husband, Harmon Nelson,
during this period and divorced him in 1939.
The
1940's was when she truly became her own personality. During
WWII she spent many hours with the Hollywood Canteen. Inspired
by New York's Stage Door Canteen, Bette transformed a once-abandoned
nightclub into an inspiring entertainment facility. "There
are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud
of. The Hollywood Canteen is one of them," Bette later
commented. In 1980, she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian
Service Medal, the Defense Department's highest civilian award,
for running the Hollywood Canteen.
 Even
though she spent much of the war years with the Hollywood Canteen,
she made many of her most famous films during this decade such
as Dark
Victory, The
Letter, The
Little Foxes, Now
Voyager, Mr.
Skeffington, to name a few (all of which she was Oscar
nominated). In Now Voyager, she has the famous scene with Paul
Henreid where they exchange cigarettes. Davis smoked all
her life. During this time she married her second husband,
Arthur Farnsworth who died in 1943 and then she was married
again in 1945 to William Grant Sherry whom she divorced in
1950.
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Dangerous
