Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (27 page)

In October 1948 Bette and her husband and daughter went to New York for the opening of
June Bride,
and for a one-man show of Sherry's paintings in a midtown art gallery. Prior to the trip, when asked by the Warner's press office where she would prefer to stay, Bette requested "that the accommodations be comfortable and conservative, within my husband's price range." When the New York office reserved two rooms for her at the dignified but low-keyed Algonquin Hotel, the actress became upset.

"Bette raised the roof because the studio had been unsuccessful in securing a three-room suite for her at her favorite hotel,"
Motion Picture
reported. "Her caustic comment was: 'I'll bet you wouldn't push Joan Crawford around like this. Imagine putting me into a single room.'"

Although the advance trade reviews of
June Bride
were good ("A hilarious laughfest ... big box office potential ... should put Bette back on top," said
Variety),
some of the major New York critics were not as benign. "With eyelashes as long as the average horse's mane, she conducts herself throughout the film with the grimly competent air of a prison warden," said
The New Yorker.

"Neither Bette nor Joan could play comedy," said director Vincent Sherman. "They didn't have the flair or the timing of someone like Ann Sheridan. But of course no one at Warner's would
dare
tell them that to their faces."

June Bride
did poorly at the box office, and Davis blamed the studio for not properly merchandising the picture. After she returned to California, her meetings with Jack Warner grew stormier. "As a further annoyance to him," she said, "I always wore sunglasses, so he could not look into my eyes."

"We could not agree on scripts," said the star. "I wanted to play important parts—Mary Todd Lincoln, and Mattie in
Ethan Frome.
Mr. Warner told me that the public did not want to see me in period pictures, that I was 'a
modern
woman.' Hah! And I fell for that baloney. That's how he got me to do
Beyond the Forest."

Flop number three, and the film that would bring about her departure from the studio, was based on a popular book purchased by Warner Bros. in 1948. The lead role, that of Rosa Moline, "a twelve o'clock girl in a nine o'clock town," was offered first to Joan Crawford. "Yes, I saw either a script or the book. It was trash, an endless saga of this woman who wanted to leave her husband," said Crawford, who opted instead to play the role of the carnival dancer who wangles her way through murder, blackmail, and politics in
Flamingo Road.

The script of
Beyond the Forest
was shuffled next to Bette Davis. "I begged Jack Warner to give the part to Virginia Mayo, who was good at those sorts of roles," said Bette. Warner also offered King Vidor as her director. "Somehow they all managed to persuade me that this was going to be a
major,
important picture. And, fool that I was, I
believed
them."

"What a dump!" was the most quoted line from the film, and it summed up her sentiment during the making of the film. "Nothing can please Bette Davis today," Sheilah Graham reported from the set. "Her cameraman is no good—she's only had him for years. She battles with her director, her producer, her everything. Her nerves are keyed up so high she just has to let off steam or bust."

In a square-dance routine, she missed a few steps. She would not redo them, she told director Vidor. "The girl I play, this Rosa Moline, she's the type of a girl who could make a few missteps in this kind of a dance. How could she be perfect in a dance new to her?" she argued. But Vidor insisted that the scene be done again. "Miss Davis did not show up at the studio for two days after that," Cal York reported. "Tick fever was the reason she gave."

"She had many excuses for not going to the set," said husband Sherry. "Her favorite was laryngitis. One day she sent a note to producer Heinz Blanke saying she lost her voice and couldn't speak. Then, when Jack Warner called to find out how she was, she picked up the phone and started to scream at him."

"I used to hear her on the phone," said Marian Richards, the young governess who cared for two-year-old B.D. "She would be yelling so loud at Jack Warner you could almost see smoke corning out of the receiver. She wasn't going to budge and neither was he. When she hung up she would pace up and down for an hour, cursing him and the studio. The whole house would be steaming, and little B.D. heard everything."

"It was a hopeless situation," Bette recalled. "I was supposed to act rotten to Joseph Cotten, to ridicule him as my husband. But I
adored
Joe Cotten. Why should I want to leave him for anyone?" When asked by an interviewer why she didn't coast through the film on star quality as Joan Crawford might have done, Bette replied, "Oh I wouldn't do that. Wouldn't? I never
could
do that."

A week before the film was to be completed, prior to doing a scene where the hysterical Rosa Moline tries to induce an abortion by jumping off a highway embankment, Bette failed once more to show up for work. When Jack Warner called, she gave him an ultimatum. "You want the picture finished," she said, "then let me out of my contract."

Warner, faced with losing the eight hundred thousand dollars already spent, had no alternative but to agree to her demand.

"It was dirty pool on my part," said Bette, "but I was desperate."

Bette's Last Days at Burbank

Although she insisted that she and Jack Warner parted good friends and would "make many, many pictures together in the future," Bette's double-crossing the studio boss caused her to lose out on a forthcoming important part.

Director Irving Rapper told the story. "My agent, Charlie Feldman, owned the rights to
The Glass Menagerie.
Jane Wyman was signed to play Laura, the daughter, and we tested various actresses for the role of the mother, including Tallulah Bankhead and Miriam Hopkins. Then Feldman thought of Bette. He asked me to talk to her because of
Now Voyager
and our friendship. I went out to the back lot, where she was finishing
Beyond the Forest.
As I approached, Bette ran across the road and fell down, dead. King Vidor saw me and yelled, 'Cut.' Bette looked up and said, 'Irving Rapper—wouldn't you know it. This is my last day of shooting and I'm flat on my ass.'"

Rapper and Davis went to her dressing room to talk. "'Well,' she said, 'it must be
very
important. You're the only one who came to see me today.' I said, 'Charlie Feldman and I want you to do
The Glass Menagerie.'
She looked at me, and after a long pause she said something very humble. 'I wouldn't like to step on the toes of Jane Wyman,' she said. She knew that Janie had been signed for the role of the girl, and she wouldn't think of taking the part away from her. This touched me so much. This was the Bette I used to know. And I said, 'How very nice of you to say that, but, Bette, few people remember the name of the actress who played the daughter in the stage play. Everyone remembers Laurette Taylor, the mother.' And Bette said, 'Oh! My God! Yes, of course.'"

Rapper was not aware that Bette had duped Jack Warner and broken her contract. "Bette was always running around saying, 'Oh, Jack Warner loves me. He's a father image,' and all that crap. I said, 'Will you make a test?' She said—and these are her exact words—
I'll tell you what let's do.
I'll make the test, and if I don't
like
it, I won't do the movie.' I thought that was fair, and I went back to Feldman and gave him the good news."

Feldman called producer Jerry Wald, who met with Jack Warner. "The next day Jerry Wald called me and said, 'Irving, I'm very glad you weren't around last evening when Jack Warner was told that you spoke to Bette Davis about doing
The Glass Menagerie.
He said, "She's leaving the studio tomorrow, and if you or Rapper or anyone else let that cunt back in, I'll fire all of you." '

"I was nonplussed," said Rapper. "Bette never said a word to me about her leaving. Then, when I told her the test was off, she tried to make me feel it was
my
fault. 'Oh, Irving,' she said, 'you just didn't try hard enough.'"

Late at night, after dubbing some lines in
Beyond the Forest,
the former first lady of Warner Brothers went to her dressing room and packed her private things in a suitcase. After leaving the bungalow, she locked the door and put the keys in an envelope, together with a note to the studio property manager. The note was her farewell salute to Joan Crawford, whose latest film,
Flamingo Road,
was the studio's top grosser. With her departure, Bette asked that her bungalow, the number-one star dressing room on the lot, be given to her worthy successor ... "to Miss Jane Wyman."

Les Femmes Sauvages

"Bette Davis and Joan Crawford
top this town's list
of
'Virile
Glamour Girls.' They're a little
aggressive. They don't purr.
They use their own initiative
and they put the motion in
motion pictures."

—DIRECTOR JOE NEMMAN

T
he 1949 release of
Flamingo Road,
with a lascivious Joan Crawford showing off her "gams" and her wide scarlet mouth clamped shut on an unlit cigarette, pleased Jack Warner, the public, and some reviewers. "Solid B.O.," said
Variety.
"A wrong girl for the right side of the tracks," said Dorothy Kilgallen, "and the question never arose that she would cross over those tracks but how she would do it." As a carnival cooch-wiggler, critic Christopher Vane said, Joan sounded too cultured, "but the minute she slings a mink across her shoulders, you're right back with the Crawford you know and understand."

To extend the momentum of tough girl Joan, Jerry Wald, at Jack Warner's request, wrote
The Damned Don't Cry.
The familiar plot showcased the star as a bored housewife who throws off the shackles of domesticity to seek glamour and excitement in the big city. Transformed to a slick model, then to a kept gun-moll, Joan had numerous costume changes, some good, biting lines, and four male costars—David Brian, Steve Cochran, Richard Egan, and Kent Smith, all of whom were willing to lie down or die at her command.

Offscreen, Crawford's sex life was just as crowded and dictated. "Predatory and possessive" was writer Barry Norman's description. Joan made the passes and established the rules. Her chosen date for an evening would drive to her house and park his car; then, using one of her two Cadillacs (a spare was always on hand in case the other broke down), with Joan behind the wheel, they would drive to a restaurant of her choice. She ordered the drinks, selected the food, directed the conversation, signed the check; then, at home, with a 'Wham, bam, thank you, Sam,' she seduced the guy and sent him on his way.

Actor Kirk Douglas had just scored with his first hit picture,
Champion,
when he received a telegram of praise from Joan. It included her phone number and the invitation to call. He called. They made a date for dinner. She mapped out the entire evening, down to the route to the restaurant. He switched restaurants, but back at her house Crawford took charge again.

"The front door closed and she slipped out of her dress, in the hallway," said Kirk. "'You're so clean
,'
she murmured. 'It's wonderful that you shaved your armpits when you made
Champion.'"

Kirk didn't have time to explain to Joan that he was a blond, with fair hair under his arms. He made love to her on the hallway floor, and afterward she brought him upstairs to see her kids, who were strapped into their beds. "It was so professional, clinical, lacking in warmth, like the sex we just had. I got out fast," said the actor.

For industry gatherings, Joan established another set of rules for escorts lucky enough to be seen by her side. Arriving at premieres and parties, when the photographers asked for her picture, her escort, depending on his name quotient, was expected to stand at her side or back to her right and smile, not at the camera but at Joan, adoringly. If she had to give a few words to a radio broadcaster or print interviewer, he would remain by her side, still smiling but mute, then accompany her through the theater lobby or nightclub foyer. Once they had taken their seats, he was not allowed to leave her side, even to go to the bathroom, unless she was in comfortable conversation with someone else—and then his absence would be timed. He was also to be on constant alert when her cigarettes needed to be lit, or her drinks replenished. If she agreed to dance with another, he was to jump up, pull back her chair, then remain seated in his own until she returned. Under no circumstances was
he
allowed to dance with another. When she returned to their table, she expected him
there,
ready to jump up and welcome her back with an affectionate touch and a suitable line of welcome. At the evening's end he would drive her home, cater to her physical needs if necessary, then collect his car and depart. She would time his journey home, then place a call to ensure he was there and not in "some other woman's bed." If he wasn't home, "furious retribution would be faced by that escort at their next meeting."

In the fall of 1949 attorney Greg Bautzer was still involved with Crawford. Their on-again, off-again affair lasted four years, and Bautzer later described his tour of duty with the star to the London
Daily Telegraph.
"Her tempestuous almost masculine personality made this office quite perilous," said Richard Last, who asked Bautzer what it was really like to be the star's devoted vassal, charged with carrying her knitting bag and hidden vodka bottles. "I still have four scars on my face which she put there," said Bautzer. "She could throw a cocktail glass across the room and hit you in the face, two times out of three."

Daughter Christina recalled Greg as "boisterous, fun-loving, the most handsome, dashing man alive." However, she confessed that at age ten she was often scared of the screaming, yelling, kicking, and pounding that went on late at night when Greg stayed over. "I wasn't afraid for my mother," she said. "I was afraid for myself. Mother never seemed to be hurt the next day, and she kept seeing this man." One time, during the heat of a fight, Joan climbed out on her balcony, yelling for the police. Greg followed, "calling her dirty names," so Joan climbed up on the roof, and the neighbors heard everything.

"Both she and Greg have a flair for the dramatic," Sidney Skolsky reported. "She threw him out of her house constantly. Once he arrived home with his hands bleeding."

Another time he fell asleep during one of Joan's Sunday-night movie shows. She told her guests not to wake him and then tiptoed out of the room, leaving him in darkness. "He woke up at 7 AM the next morning, alone, with the screening room door locked," said Hedda Hopper. "The theater had a kitchenette, so he cooked some breakfast, smashed a window and went home. Joan called him later in the day and screamed: 'How
dare
you leave my home without washing the dishes?'"

There were many benefits, of course, to his affair with Joan, Greg admitted. Beyond the obvious, the great sex ("A night with Joan was better than a year with ten others"), she provided valuable clients for his law firm. Through her, he met and handled Joseph Schenck, Jerry Wald, John Garfield, Ingrid Bergman, Jane Wyman, and Ginger Rogers. It was the latter star who caused the permanent split between Crawford and the attorney.

In October 1949 Joan and Bautzer attended a party in honor of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Hosted by Louis B. Mayer, it was held in the Garden Room of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, with most of Hollywood's royalty attending. Loretta Young wore red taffeta; Roz Russell was in white chiffon; Barbara Stanwyck wore black satin and diamonds; and Joan "looked breathtaking ... in green taffeta, with red roses caught up in the folds of the dress." Greg Bautzer, wearing the white tuxedo and red cummerbund that Joan had given him, looked good enough for Ginger Rogers to monopolize his talents on the dance floor. "Looking divine, they danced every dance, leaving Joan fuming at her dinner table," Louella Parsons jotted in her notebook.

The story of Joan's revenge on their way home that night has often been told, but it bears repeating. She was driving, of course, and, pulling over to a deserted stretch of road, she said to Greg, "Darling, would you check the rear tire? It feels flat." Bautzer got out of the car and walked to the rear; as he leaned over to touch the tire, Joan gunned the motor, and the car took off in an earsplitting peal of rubber. She had left him, in his white tuxedo and dancing shoes, stranded on a dark, deserted road, somewhere north of Beverly Hills.

After walking the three miles to his home, Bautzer said, the usual procedure would be to send flowers the next day and beg for Joan's forgiveness. This time around he didn't bother. He stayed away from her for a month; then he began to date Ginger Rogers in public. The first time they bumped into Joan, she cut them dead. The second time they met, she threw names in their faces that reportedly "mortified Ginger."

"I am sorry that Joan and I didn't remain friends," said Bautzer the lawyer. "It upset me greatly when she took her business to another firm."

"Bette most admires men who
dominate her—yet she always
marries men she can dominate."

—SIDNEY SKOLSKY

"Davis, like Crawford, liked to
create scenes. They enjoyed
provoking men to violence.
When satisfied they would yell
'Cut.' But real life can't be
controlled as easily as the movies
and sometimes they suffered for
their little dramas."

—ADELA ROGERS ST. JOHNS

The same month that columnists reported on the parting of Bautzer and Crawford, the news flashed that Bette Davis' third marriage was also on the rocks. She was said to be heartbroken. "Aries are the most romantic fools on earth," Davis mourned, claiming the man she had loved and married turned out to be a fortune hunter
and
a wife beater. "I was told that before he married me he told some of his Marine buddies that he intended to marry a wealthy woman," she said. "His mother also warned me not to marry Sherry, because he had a violent temper. On our honeymoon in Mexico he pushed me out of the car on an open highway. In our hotel room he threw a trunk and almost killed me."

Other acts of violence were reported by Bette. He pushed her down a flight of stairs, then knocked her out with a flying ice bucket. Yet some friends from that period seemed to recall a different William Grant Sherry. Irving Rapper visited the couple from time to time and recalled that Sherry was a "quiet sort of chap, very much in love with his wife and child." Rosalind Russell, who bought one of Sherry's paintings, remembered him as "a talented artist, soft-spoken always and very polite, not at all the bully type."

"It was fascinating to watch this couple at dinner parties," said Sheilah Graham. "Sherry looked pleasant, but he opened his mouth only to eat, never to talk, because Bette carried that end of the ball herself."

Born in East Hampton and raised in New York, where his father was a carpenter for the Theater Guild, Sherry was often described by Bette as an ex-boxer, but his professional time in the ring was limited to one fight at Madison Square Garden. "I was looking at guys who were becoming vegetables," he said. "I wanted no part of that, so I quit boxing and became a physiotherapist." While recuperating from a war injury at the San Diego Naval Hospital, he became a medical illustrator and was asked to join a clinic in Philadelphia, but opted instead to pursue a career as a fine-arts painter in Laguna, where he met Bette. "I never told any Marine buddies that I wanted to meet a wealthy woman," he said, "because I was never in the Marines. I was a Navy man, and I never had any buddies. And my mother never warned Bette not to marry me, because they never met until the day of the wedding."

Bette said that Sherry's dedication as an artist fell short of hers, and his frustration had a frenzy that terrorized her.

He had a ferocious temper, Sherry, an established painter, said in 1988. "But Bette enjoyed making me violent. She would keep after me, criticizing me in public and needling me at home. She would push me until I eventually exploded. But I didn't do half the things she said I did."

What about the time she said he threw her down the stairs?

"That never happened."

And the ice bucket that knocked her unconscious?

"That never happened."

And the traveling case he threw at her in Mexico?

"Yes, that happened. It was a small trunk. I was unpacking, and she had been at me all afternoon about some silly thing. She kept needling and needling me. I kept telling her to be quiet, and she wouldn't, so I picked up the case, which was on a stand, and I threw it at her. She was standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, and when she saw the case coming, she ducked. It took a big chip out of the doorjamb and scared the daylights out of her. But it did shut her up, for a while."

He loved his wife dearly, he said, and he believed the feeling was mutual. Then he was told that she had married him only so that he could give her a child. "She had three abortions when she was younger, but she never told me that. Now she was getting older, and she wanted a child, a healthy baby. I was a good candidate. I didn't drink or smoke. I was in excellent physical shape, and she liked my background. I was also crazy about her."

"His adoration of me, quite naturally, excited me," said Bette.

"We had a lovely marriage at the beginning," Sherry continued, "but after the baby came everything changed. She didn't seem to want me around anymore."

"He wanted to be indispensable to me, and that of course was impossible," the star insisted.

"She used to call me 'a goddamned puritan' because I didn't like her drinking and swearing. 'I can outdrink and outswear any man,' she said. I didn't doubt that, I replied, but what an unladylike thing to brag about. Another time she told me, 'I've always been able to put men under my thumb, but I can't you.' I said, 'Bette, why don't you stop trying, and maybe we can have a decent marriage?'"