Who has the right to say 'You can't smoke'? Makes me smoke MORE! Ha-HA-ha. And I think it's our own business what we do. All this whole thing has to do with people who gave up smoking and can't stand it! I think it's a big farce myself. "I Resent It More Than I Can Tell You!" she says at a rapid clip, delivering every word distinctly and discretely, as though each one were capitalized. She lights into the current nationwide anti-smoking movement with a mixture of glee and withering disdain, almost as if defending her legend against unruly hordes of nosy tobacco-haters. Once snuffed by Miss Davis, those crooked stubs would not dare to continue smoldering.
In her elegant fourth-floor apartment, just off Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Miss Davis (she prefers the courtesy title) chain-smokes Vantage filters and, with stubborn ferocity, grinds her butts into the ashtray. The iconographic image is incomplete, like a bareheaded Gloria Swanson, an unarmed John Wayne, or a clean-shaven Bogart. LOS ANGELES (1988) - Bette Davis must have a cigarette.įor without a smoke, she cannot entirely be Bette Davis. But I also think she rose to the occasion, somewhat, because she liked the attention, and liked the feeling that she was communicating - albeit through me - to her public. Not that I thought she was "performing," or putting on a Bette Davis Act I think she was probably like this most of the time. She was cantankerous and flamboyant, but I also thought there was an undercurrent of playfulness to her behavior.
Well, I'll say this: She sure knew how to be Bette Davis. But why did they? Was she just a camp figurehead because her brittle, melodramatic style of acting hadn't aged well? Or was it that she was Larger Than Life, a tough broad who had survived? Probably some of both. I remember thinking it was kind of funny and appropriate that she was living on the outskirts of West Hollywood (in the Century House on Havenhurst), mecca to the gay men who really worshipped her.
I mean, she was no Barbara Stanwyck, who was equally adept as a screwball comedienne, a tragic heroine, or a femme fatale.īut of course, I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to interview a screen legend there just weren't that many of them left. To me, she was a movie star, a part of Hollywood history (I admired the way she took on the studio bosses when they - and she - were at the peak of their powers), but with the exception of All About Eve (where she really used her movie-star mega-wattage as part of the role), I hadn't regarded her as a great actress. I just never really got the whole Bette-Davis-As-Icon thing.
0 kommentar(er)
