The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography

This is a beautifully written biography by someone who knew the legend her self. Unlike Sikov's biography, Chandler is able to give us more insight than we can gather by watching her films. The details are extraordinary, but there is something else which strikes the reader. It is Bette's voice which comes through the pages clear as a bell. Davis requested that Chandler write her biography, and the result is powerful. No one delivers the story of Bette's life better than she can her self, and Chandler allows her to do that. All of Bette's wit, spunk and vitality are intact in this engrossing biography. Bravo!

The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography is a recommended pick for any collection strong in movie star biographies, especially those which aren't overstocked on Bette Davis coverage's already. Film biographer Charlotte Chandler interviewed Davis extensively in the last decade of her life, so this biography includes many of Davis' own words and insights, rather than the usual third-party analysis from those who just have had her films and reference materials to work from. A centerfold of black and white photos completes a wonderful coverage, highly recommended for any library strong in film biography.

You have to admire Charlotte Chandler just for the way she prints a photo of herself with Bette Davis on the back cover, and in the photo she, Chandler, is wearing either the goofiest hat ever designed for a woman, or perhaps the worst haircut an author ever received. It is the kind of upswept hairdo we associate with Lillian Russell and the Gibson Girls, but different somehow, with the texture of a minor, pale fur like rabbit or nutria. In contrast Bette Davis, stroke and all, looks like she's got it all together. What a delightful book, compiled from houts and hours of taped conversations in which Davis details all of the movies she made (87 feature films, thirteen TV movies, one miniseries) as well as the men she made along the way. Yes, some of the material is familiar, such as Davis' worship of her mentor George Arliss, and her devotion to William Wyler who, for all I know, may indeed be America's greatest director but I doubt it. However, many of the comments Davis makes here are completely new to me. And in addition, Chandler interviews many of those who worked with Davis and solicited their opinions about "This N That." I enjoyed reading George Cukor's comments on Davis' appeal. Though he never directed her in a film, he was the man who picked her out to join his stock company while still working in the stage repertory system. "Even in Rochester, young as she was, Bette has styar quality,. 'Do you know what the secret of star quality is?' he asked me. 'It's being irritating. The great women stars have an irritating quality, each in her own way, individually irritating. It's a part of what makes them distinctive. Katharine Hepburn, Garbo, Olivia de Havilland, with all that sweetness of Melanie, each had that oh-so-irritating quality.'" I don't know whether this says more about Cukor or the women he finds irritating, but it's something to think about, and rarely so well expressed. Another intriguing story is the one of the "film that got away," Irving Rapper's proposed biopic (from the 1947-8 period) of Mary Todd Lincoln, in which Davis might have played the conspiracy-ridden first lady, committed to a mental hospital after her husband was assassinated and her son died. Todd Lincoln had an unusual friendship with a black milliner which would have been part of the script too, at least as Rapper describes it, alas a great part for someone like Ethel Waters or Marietta Canty lost to us forever due to lackluster studio response. Instead, Davis and Robert Montgomery made JUNE BRIDE, a horse of a different color indeed. Did you know Greer Garson was asked to play the part of THE NANNY? I didn't, and there's an amusing story that goes along with that (pp. 245-6). You have to give Chandler props as well for the bizarre collection of blurbs that decorates this volume! How on earth did she land Pavarotti, Liv Ullmann, and Michelangelo Antonioni to say things like "Formidable!" on the book jacket? Most of the stars and studio pe

A wonderful book on THE Greatest female cinema actor. DAVIS, unlike others, rarely had the great actors standing at her side to "assist" in her greatness, nor did she have a wealthy family to support her dream, but she did have TALENT. And Ms. Chandler's book is a great read, I read one evening, and I have frequently picked it up to enjoy - again, again.