Evening Star Newspaper, July 5, 1936, Page 60

2 Magazine Section THIS WEEK TUWICFEF a WAITRESS ¢ She won her first real fame as a movie waitress — but years before Bette Davis had carried dishes to pay her way through school. A close-up of the girl Hollywood once vetoed as “too colorless” by Jim TuLLY HER PORTRAYAL OF “MILDRED,"” THE WAITRESS, IN “OF HUMAN BONDAGE"’ ALMOST WON HER AN ACADEMY AWARD 0 win the award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the best acting of the year is con- sidered an honor. To nearly, win it the year before on short notice was also the rare distinction accorded Miss Bette Davis, the one-time waitress who became the modern Cinderella of the screen. Miss Davis was born in New England twenty-eight years ago. Her parents were in ordinary circumstances. After a long struggle with poverty, she is unusual among cele- brated Hollywood ladies in that she has neither pretense nor faise pride. Arriving at the end of a brilliant rainbow, she remembers the dark clouds on the journey. Pert, defiant, her small face one of chiselled determination, Miss Davis is not beautiful in the accepted sense. Her life, a series of character-forming hard- ships, gave her in equal measure the deter- mination to succeed, and a sense of inferiority while so doing. Like most people of capacity, she was aware of her ability. The economic lashes of necessity merely spurred her on. A sensitive girl, her ‘‘defense complex'’ was early developed. Subdued and whimsical, she has the strength of a quiet wind that precedes a tornado. Destined to be the greatest actress on the screen, she is natural as a crying child, and powerful as a woman whom life can hurt no more. The accumulated hurts of centuries are deep in the well of her being. Her ambition to become an actress caused dissension between her parents. Her father desired her to become a stenographer. Her mother had other aims. After their separation, Mrs. Davis became a photographer's assistant. By this time Bette had already appeared as an amateur in ‘‘Seventeen’’ and ‘‘The Charm School” at Cushing Academy. Her mother’s financial problem soon be- came more acute. Bette secured work at the school as a waitress in order to continue her studies. It was a bitter experience for her. The irony of it entered her soul, never to be com- pletely dislodged. If, girl-like, she was too much concerned with the blight on her social status, her schoolmates did little to appease her. By the end of the term her mother had saved sufficient money for their immediate needs. She took Bette from Boston to New York and enrolled her in John Murray An- derson’s dramatic school. The most talented pupil in the school, she was equally timid. ‘‘She was like something the rain had whipped,”’ a girl who failed as an actress and succeeded as a woman later said. If her fellow pupils did not see the golden feather in the little wind-whipped duckling, it did not escape Mr. Anderson. He learned of the desperate struggle she was having to continue her studies, and gave her a fellow- ship. For this he will be long remembered. It is no small thing to hold the stirrup while a girl with greater talent than Garbo vaults into the cinema saddle. As her mother had other children to sup- port, Bette left the school at the end of the season and applied to Eva Le Gallienne for work in her Civic Repertory Company. The waif of the emotions made no impression. She next went to Blanche Yurka. The su- perb revolutionist in ‘‘A Tale of Two Cities," Miss Yurka was then appearing on the stage in Ibsen's ““The Wild Duck.” Copyright, 1936, United Newspapers Magazine Corporation Bette was given a role. Her work won slight acclaim, and a tentative engagement with the Cape Cod Playhouse during the summer season. She reached her destination with a few dollars and discovered that the man who had engaged her had been succeeded by another. The plays in which she was to appear had been canceled. *“You might remain as an usherette,” the manager suggested. ‘“That suits me,"”” was the self-reliant re- sponse. For ten weeks she led people to their seats. Absorbed, she watched each perform- ance from the end of the aisle. An actor who later became famous in Hollywood still re- members the pensive usherette. ‘‘How were we to know that she was the greatest among us?”’ he now asks. Her salary was hardly adequate to meet her weekly expenses. She nevertheless man- aged to send two dollars weekly to her mother, who was, at this time, unable to work. A sudden shift was forced upon the man- agement in the last week. A play by Laura Hope Crews was to be put on in which a young girl sang ‘‘I Pass by Your Window." Aware of her opportunity, Bette located a church organist and practiced for several hours. Then, hurrying to the theatre, she went through the role and was engaged at $75 for the week. With this windfall of money, she left twenty-five with her mother in Boston and hurried to New York. She found work as ‘‘atmosphere” in ‘‘Broadway’’ before her money was exhausted. July 5, 1936 Mrs. Davis joined her. Mother and daugh- ter were to be separated no more. She learned ‘‘all the feminine parts in the play,” feeling that she might be given a chance “‘if someone broke a leg.” No accidents were reported. The future eminent actress remained in obscurity for the run of the play. Her first encouragement came with Richard Bennett in ‘“The Solid South.” That always volcanic and often brilliant fellow told her that she was a blending of his two daughters, Constance and Joan, without their limita- tions. This shrewd and impartial analysis came to the ears of Hollywood. She was given a screen test. Bleak and hopeful weeks followed. Those grim tormentors, hunger and despair, were never far away. When the test was appar- ently forgotten, she received an offer to come to Hollywood. With high heart she entered the cinema city. Hollywood had not yet recovered from its period of false glamour. Miss Davis, a girl in the early twenties, with lines of suffering in her piquant face, did not ‘“‘register’’ with the California officials. Unlike the deeper seeing Richard Bennett, they declared she lacked ‘‘screen personality.'’ As the term so glibly used by the ignorant and self-assured could not be defined, neither could it be disputed. It did, however, come near to wrecking the career of a highly gifted artist, Idle for months, she was at last given the small part of a wall-flower in ‘‘Bad Sister.” (Continved on page 10)