Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (20 page)

The wound apparently healed, although Farnsworth sustained a stiff neck and was a little off balance at times. Early in August, Farnsworth called his second sister, Mrs. Jon De'Besche. "He and Bette were in New York, on their way back to California, when he called me in Connecticut, where I lived. I had a new baby girl, and he had always wanted a baby girl. Arthur was very fond of children. He told me he and Bette were trying to have some, but she didn't get pregnant. They were in New York for several days, but he waited until the last minute to call me. I said to him, 'Gee, Art, why didn't you call sooner? I would have bundled the baby up and brought her in to see you.' He didn't make sense on why they didn't visit. He was fuzzy in his head, from the accident on the stairs."

It was her husband's "shakiness" that led Bette to suspect that he was drinking on the sly. "They all drank a lot," said Mrs. Briggs, "but that didn't cause the fall."

On the train back to California, where Bette would begin production on
Mr. Skeffington
and renew her romance with Vincent Sherman, she and Farnsworth argued over their marriage. He already knew of her feelings for her director, "because she told him," said Sherman. On the train they fought, and it was said either she hit him or he fell, sustaining a second injury to his head.

"Arthur was a darling guy, but no match for Bette," a family member recalled. "He should have left her then. If he had, he would have been alive today."

In Los Angeles, on the day he collapsed on Hollywood Boulevard, one reporter claimed that Bette was with her husband at the lunch with her lawyer. Another source, writer Hector Arce, said that he had been told that the purpose of the lunch had "nothing to do with real estate. Farnsworth didn't have any money." ("We weren't a wealthy family," his sister Mrs. De'Besche confirmed. "My father was a dentist and a chiropractor.") The purpose of the lunch was in fact to save money for Bette by having her husband file a joint tax report with her. "The taxes had to be filed the following week," said Hector Arce, "so the forms were signed in the lawyer's office on Hollywood Boulevard, and walking back to their car, Farney became unsteady on his feet again. She accused him of drinking too much at lunch, and she pushed him. He fell sideways, towards the street, and hit his head on the curb."

"To my knowledge he was alone when he collapsed and hit the back of his head, and that was what killed him," said Farnsworth's sister Mrs. De'Besche.

"Of course it was an accident," Arce stressed, "but it was believed that Bette was indeed there and that she did push him. She had no intention of killing him, and if she was charged she would be acquitted. But if there was a trial the details of their shaky marriage and her infatuation with Vincent Sherman might come out. Her reputation and her career might be seriously affected. Playing a villain on screen was one thing, but in real life people were not as tolerant."

On Saturday, August 28, services for Arthur Farnsworth were held at the Church of the Recessional in Forest Lawn. At the request of the widow and Warner's publicity department, the press and the public were asked to stay away. "Rising from her sickbed," Bette was helped into the church, with Ruthie, her mother, on one side, and studio chief Jack Warner on the other. The reported mourners included John Garfield, Bette's hairdresser and makeup team—Maggie Donovan and Perc Westmore—and Vincent Sherman. ("No, I didn't attend," said Sherman. "I thought it would be awkward.")

The burial would be back East, but the body could not be moved until four days hence, when the official hearing into his death was to be held. And if the ruling was foul play, there would be a further investigation, with charges filed.

Bette wept openly as the 121st and 123rd psalms ("Farney's favorites") were read in church that Saturday morning. Distraught, when the services were over, she clutched the hand of Jack Warner and asked to speak to him privately. As the other guests filed out, she and Warner remained seated in the front pew, beside the flower-laden coffin. Placing his arm around his number-one star, Warner had to bend his head low to listen to her urgent whispers. "The details of their conversation were not heard by anyone," said Hector Arce, "and I doubt if Bette was fool enough to tell Warner about the trouble in her ill-fated marriage, or about her interest in one of his studio directors, especially since Warner could use this as leverage against her at another time. But he must have agreed to use his influence to help her, to get the inquest settled quickly. Certainly he had that power, because look what happened."

On the following Tuesday morning, wearing the appropriate mourning costume—"a loose black beret, a black blouse, and a black skirt, relieved only by a dull red and green flower pattern"— the widowed actress appeared for the inquest. "No role of tragedy Bette Davis has portrayed before the camera ever equaled her appearance before a six-man Coroner's Jury when she testified today," said the Los Angeles
Times.
"She left glamour behind her when she entered. Her face, devoid of makeup, was drawn and tired. She took the witness stand and answered questions briefly in a monotone."

When asked if she knew of any accident that the deceased might have suffered, Bette told of the incident in New Hampshire the previous June, when he fell going downstairs to answer the phone. "He was kind of wiggly there for a few minutes and very limp," she said, "but he never said anything about it."

She made no mention of the alleged subsequent fall on the train two weeks before, or of the arguments they had had over their marriage. As she talked of the New Hampshire accident, her brow would knit slightly for a moment, said the
Times,
and she would squint a bit. "He never went to see a physician. Nor did he complain," said Bette. "I never thought about the accident until the autopsy, and they asked me if I remembered any previous accident."

Taking the stand, the autopsy surgeon, Dr. Homer R. Keyes, dismissed this first fall as the cause of death: any injury incurred two months ago would have since healed. Nor was his last fall, on Hollywood Boulevard, responsible. ''A basal skull injury probably caused this man's death," said Dr. Keyes. "It didn't result from the fall, but instigated it. Consider the blood in the fracture. It is black and coagulated, not merely purple and partially congealed as it would have been if the injury had been received as a result of the fall. The fracture must have been inflicted about fourteen days ago."

Bette, "in an acute state of shock," remained in the anteroom while other witnesses were called. Two gave testimony that they had seen Farnsworth collapse on Hollywood Boulevard. They said he had been alone at the time. Meanwhile her lawyer and a representative from Warner's made some calls. After a recess, the inquest verdict was read. Reversing the examining surgeon's conclusion, the six-man panel decided that Farnsworth's death
was
caused by the accident in New Hampshire, two months previously. There would be no further investigation.

"It is impossible for me to thank individually all the persons who have been so kind to me," said a greatly relieved Bette to the press. "We are leaving today to take Farney east."

"Farney was a real charmer, but
an alcoholic who was tied to his
mother's apron strings
...
and
what a mother! Christ,
what a cold bitch."

—BETTE DAVIS

With the investigation over, Davis now had to face the journey east, and the funeral services in Vermont and New Hampshire. Fortified and protected by Ruthie, she took turns with her mother sitting with Farney's brother and his grieving, confused mother, who insisted they visit the coffin in the baggage compartment from time to time.

On Saturday, September 4, the group arrived in Albany and the funeral cortege drove to Rutland, Vermont, Farnsworth's hometown, where his mother insisted that her son be waked, in an open coffin.

According to author Charles Higham, Bette was forced to sit all night by the open coffin ... and one of Farnsworth's aunts became hysterical and began dragging the body out of the coffin.

That never happened, the deceased's sisters claimed. "I was outraged when I read the stories about the funeral," said Mrs. De'Besche. "Most of them were untrue. There was only one disagreement at the wake. Both the minister and I wanted the coffin closed. Bette and my mother wanted it open, so we went along with their wishes."

An eyewitness in Vermont said that during the wake Bette was cool to the Farnsworth clan and only displayed grief when she sensed she was being observed by the press. "It was a very difficult, very public situation," said Mrs. Briggs, "but Bette was absolutely adorable to my mother and all of us. She couldn't have been nicer, more thoughtful, or more considerate."

On Monday, September 6, the funeral services were held at the Rutland Episcopal Church. Immediately following, Bette and some members of the Farnsworth family drove to her farm in New Hampshire, leaving the deceased behind in the Rutland funeral home. "It was an emotional decision to have Arthur buried at the farm," said Mrs. De'Besche. "They had built the place together and Bette wanted him to rest there."

In New Hampshire, it was further reported that Bette and Mrs. Farnsworth, who was suspicious of the details of her son's death, had bitter words. After the blasting of rocks and the leveling of trees, when the deceased was finally laid to rest, "Mrs. Farnsworth decided her beloved son shouldn't be at Butternut at all but in the family vault in Vermont. She told Bette that Farney would have to be dug up again and shipped there," said author Charles Higham.

"The remains
were
moved," said Mrs. De'Besche, "but it happened much later. [In June 1945, according to the town clerk in Pittsford, Vermont.] Mother felt it would be easier for Bette, because she was married again, and they felt it would be easier for both of them."

"Bette and my mother were very strong ladies," Mrs. Briggs added. "But they had no fight over my brother's death. As far as we know, her marriage to my brother was a happy one, and his death was from a brain hemorrhage caused by the fall in New Hampshire."

Cloaked in grief when she returned to California in September 1943, Bette asked everyone to respect her privacy by not asking about the details of her late husband's death and his many funerals.

"She told me he was epileptic," said Joan Blondell, "and had fallen many times previously."

"She told me he was a heavy drinker," said director Irving Rapper.

After he died, they found two empty liquor bottles in his briefcase, Charles Higham stated.

"There was no odor of alcohol on his breath when he was removed to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital," Detective Sergeant H. R. Johnson and Dr. Paul H. Moore told the Los Angeles
Times
on the day of his death.

Another popular red-herring story, and one that would be repeated on Hollywood sets for years to come, was that Farnsworth had been seeing another woman. She was married, and her husband caught them in a motel and killed him. "Then they called up Bette and said, 'He's up in the EI Portal Motel. Come and get him,'" said script supervisor Bob Gary.

"No one found out the true story," said Vincent Sherman.

"The subject [of his death] was off-limits and remained a mystery, because that's what Warner's wanted," said Sheilah Graham. "You must remember the studios had enormous power in those days."

"There were certain topics Mother would not go into detail about," said B.D. Hyman, "and that was one of them."

To add to the speculation, in subsequent years Bette would also vacillate in her devotion to her late husband. "He was THE most beautiful Yankee," she told
Women's Wear Daily
reporter Nancy Collins. "It would have been forever, had he lived. He loved me, he had a good career in his own right, and he certainly had his own identity."

"It was a tragedy when he died," she told another interviewer. 'Although our marriage was headed for disaster anyway. He used me too.... He got violent."

That November, in
Photoplay,
writer Fredda Dudley reported that Bette
had
been with her husband at that last lunch on the day he died. The same month the actress spoke of her emotional guilt over the accident, to director Vincent Sherman. And three years later her next husband, William Grant Sherry, said he and his bride were walking along Hollywood Boulevard one day when they reached the spot outside her lawyer's office and "Bette turned white," Sherry recalled. "I asked her what was wrong, and she said, 'This is where Farney fell that day, after I pushed him.'"