Bette Davis: Acting and Not Acting Her Age

Abstract

Towards the end of 1988, an 80-year-old Bette Davis, after seeing the first week’s rushes of her scenes for Larry Cohen’s Wicked Stepmother, was so shocked by her frail appearance that she withdrew from the project.¹ Emaciated and ravaged by time and illness (including breast cancer, a stroke and a broken hip), Davis quit, fearing that — as she later reported to Nina Easton of the Los Angeles Times — ‘it could seriously be the end of anybody ever hiring me again’ (Easton, 1988: 6). As it turned out this was the end, but it was actually a wonder that she was hired for this film in the first place. As Easton noted in her article, ‘Bette Davis Smoking Over Stepmother’, most studios were reluctant to hire actors with health problems due to the high cost of obtaining insurance to cover losses if s/ he died or fell ill during production. In this instance, Larco Productions had acquired (no doubt, costly) insurance for Davis and the insurance company duly paid out to the tune of a million dollars when the aged star withdrew, enabling 44–year-old Barbara Carrera to be hired as a replacement.² Consequently, the film was completed and released (on video rather than in cinemas) in 1989. This, Bette Davis’ final film, makes for painful viewing as she limps and stumbles through her scenes. Although struggling to move and deliver her lines, she does manage occasionally to glare malevolently with those celebrated eyes of hers, while puffing incessantly on a cigarette. Nevertheless, this was a sad end to a long and illustrious film career.