Susan Sarandon and Lauren Bacall have got Bette Davis prize
As part of Boston University's yearlong celebration of the centennial of the birth of screen legend Bette Davis, actresses Lauren Bacall and Susan Sarandon are to be honored there on Sept. 18.
Rex Reed will host the event at which Bacall will receive a medal of honor while Oscar champ Sarandon gets a lifetime achievement award. At the event, the U.S. Postal Service will unveil a stamp in honor of Davis as well.
While the school houses the papers and memorabilia of the indomitable Davis, who was born 40 miles away in Lowell, Mass., the two Oscars she won for "Dangerous" (1935) and "Jezebel" (1938) sit 3,000 miles away at academy headquarters.
After Davis' death in 1989, her longtime companion and heir Kathryn Sermak sold them. When they came back up at auction, Steven Spielberg bought them and returned them to the academy. He paid $578,000 for the "Jezebel" Oscar in 2001 and picked up the 1935 "Dangerous" award in 2002 for a mere $180,000.
Davis had been determined to be the first actress to win three Oscars. After all, she claimed credit for giving Oscar his nickname, had served as the academy's president for a stormy few months in 1941, and was the first to reach the milestone of 10 nominations (not counting her unofficial 1934 write-in nod for "Of Human Bondage"). After triumphing for her first two official nominations, that third win eluded her. Even four more nominations in a row (1939-1942) and then another in 1944 did not produce another Oscar.
By 1950, the one-time queen of Warner Bros. was without a contract. As luck would have it, Claudette Colbert, who had beaten write-in candidate Davis for that Oscar in 1934, had to withdraw from playing the part of an aging actress in "All About Eve." Davis leaped at the last-minute offer and gave one of her truly great screen performances as Margot Channing. Though she won best actress from the New York Film Critics Circle, her hopes for that elusive third Oscar were derailed when her on-screen nemesis, Anne Baxter, insisted on competing in the lead category.
Subsequent vote-splitting allowed Judy Holliday ("Born Yesterday") to pull off a surprise win. The screen newcomer also bested Eleanor Parker ("Caged") and sentimental favorite Gloria Swanson ("Sunset Boulevard"). At age 53, Swanson thought this might be her last big shot at academy gold (she was right) and was devastated when she lost. Upon hearing the sad news, she whispered to a stunned Holliday, "Darling, why couldn't you have waited till next year?"
By contrast, disappointed Davis gave another Oscar-worthy performance, exclaiming, "Good! A newcomer won, I couldn't be more pleased." Six months later, Davis would win the consolation prize of best actress at Cannes.
It would be two years before Davis would get another nod. That one, in 1952, came for playing a washed-up Oscar winner in "The Star." In one of the campier scenes in a mediocre movie, she drives drunk while one of her real pair of Oscars sits on the dashboard keeping her company. Alas, her over-the-top performance did not bring her a third trophy.
It would be a full decade before Davis was nominated again, this time for her bravura performance opposite Joan Crawford in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?". However, just as her costar's maneuverings had kept Davis out of the winner's circle for "Eve," so too was it to be with "Baby Jane."
Crawford was crushed that she wasn't nominated. Though she had won an Oscar for "Mildred Pierce" in 1945 and would get two more nods –- including one for "Sudden Fear" in 1952 when both she and Davis lost to Shirley Booth for "Come Back, Little Sheba" –- she had never been a critics darling like Davis. However, she was popular with the mainstream media and she worked her not inconsiderable charms on a less-than-stealth campaign against her costar.
And come Oscar night, Crawford would be the one holding the Academy Award, having engineered to accept should absentee nominee Anne Bancroft prevail, as she did, for "The Miracle Worker." The savvy star milked this moment for all it was worth, and kept printers' ink flowing when she flew to Gotham to present the gold to the winner working on Broadway.
One of the other losers in 1962 was Katharine Hepburn, who had received her ninth nod for "Long Day's Journey into Night." The Yankee original had won an Academy Award with her first nomination back in 1933 for "Morning Glory," but been an Oscar bridesmaid ever since. All that would change in the coming years as she'd win an Oscar for each of her next three nominations –- "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), "The Lion in Winter" (1968), and "On Golden Pond" (1981) –- thereby setting a record of four lead wins that seems certain to stand for a while yet.
Read more about Davis' outrageous perf as an Oscar has-been in "The Star," CLICK HERE. See clip below!
(Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox)
'deconstructing baby jane' was enjoyed by 75 at theater for the new city as part of the halloween ball
75 attended the play 2 million attended the parade
the lure of jane hudson ms davis & the fiendish genre conjured by screen greats crawford & davis continues
the actors could not be topped
lissa moira ellen martin george trahanis john derik larry gutman
wow!
Posted by: dr larry myers | November 01, 2008 at 02:17 PM
Dr. Larry Myers has it exactly right.
His ground breaking opus, "Deconstructing Baby Jane," pulls back the curtain on a career that even to this day informs the very soul of American film.
Posted by: Desmond Sigh | October 27, 2008 at 11:11 AM
was Bette Dvis the greatest film actress of the 2oth century?! Can You Name another, please who comes near to her output,her style, her...yes..genius
I can only honor her by writing my play "DECONSTRUCTING BABY JANE"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: Dr Larry Myers | September 24, 2008 at 11:41 AM