Bette and Joan The Divine Feud (9 page)

"We met previously," said Davis, "at a party at Marion Davies'."

"I met many lovely people at Marion's," Crawford insisted, "but Miss Davis was
not
one of them."

At Warner's that day Crawford, the bigger star, was "her usual gracious self," said St. Johns, "while Bette did her best to ignore her, keeping those huge eyes of hers fixed like a bayonet on Franchot." The visitors stood on the sidelines and watched Davis emote in the scene where she visits Tone in his office and tells him he is a sap to believe she ever loved him.

"You! With your
fat
little soul and smug face. I've lived
more
in a single day than you'll ever
dare
live," said Bette as Joyce Heath.

"It was a powerful scene," said St. Johns. "The contrast in style between her and Franchot was striking. I could sense Joan standing to attention beside me. She knew that Davis could never compete with her sexually, but talent-wise? That was another horse race indeed. And Bette was
the
champion in that field. Joan knew that, and so did Franchot. You could see the sparks flying off him as he worked with Bette. She was the first real actress he had worked with since he came to Hollywood. There was also some talk that he was writing a script for both of them to do. But Joan put a stop to that, real fast. Three days after
Dangerous
was finished, despite her objections to marriage, she took off with Franchot to New York, and the next thing we heard they were married in New Jersey."

"It was Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne who made me change my mind about marriage," said Joan in 1935. "They managed to blend their professional achievements so magnificently well with their private life. They inspired Franchot and I to humbly enter the same happy union."

Whatever anger Bette Davis felt when she learned that Crawford had married Franchot Tone, her unhappiness was lifted when Jack Warner told her he had bought the rights to the hit New York play
The Petrified Forest,
and she would play Gaby, the leading female role. In November 1935 filming was already under way, while
Dangerous
was being given a fast edit for a December release, to qualify Bette for Academy Award consideration. Another reason for the haste was Jack Warner's desire to capitalize on the success of Franchot Tone in
Mutiny on the Bounty,
released on November 7. The M-G-M film was a giant hit, with Tone receiving the best reviews of his Hollywood career. The Warner Bros. merchandising department was told to feature the actor prominently in the ads and photos for the Bette Davis movie.
"
LOOK OUT FRANCHOT TONE!
—you're in for the toughest
MUTINY
—you've ever faced, when
BETTE
DAVIS
rebels in
DANGEROUS
,"
was one of the popular logos.

Davis, when told of the campaign, said she didn't mind the emphasis being placed on Crawford's new husband. "Franchot was a swell guy, a really top-drawer person," she said. 'And at the time I felt the picture needed all the help it could get. It wasn't something I was crazy about."

The critics felt otherwise. "Penetratingly alive
...
electric," said the Los Angeles
Times.
'A strikingly sensitive performance, in a well-made bit of post-Pinero drama," said the New York
Times.
Oscar voters were similarly impressed. In January 1936 she was listed as one of the nominees for Best Actress.

Davis wasn't going to attend the ceremonies, she insisted. The nomination was a gesture of sympathy, for being ignored the year before. On March 5, the morning of the banquet, she came down with the flu (a psychosomatic condition used by Crawford on
her
Oscar day), but, bullied by her mother, Bette agreed to attend with her husband, Ham. She would not get "gussied up," however. Her hair, back to its original "mousy brown," had already been permed, and instead of a formal gown she pulled a navy print dinner dress from her closet.

Arriving at the banquet at the Biltmore Hotel with Ham and her mother, Bette found there was no room for them at the studio's front table, where Jack Warner sat with producer Hal Wallis and directors Michael Curtiz and Max Reinhardt (with two films,
Captain Blood
and
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
in the running for Best Picture). Placed at a table at the side of the room, Bette applauded enthusiastically as one by one the major awards bypassed Warner Bros. and went to RKO for Best Script, Score, Best Actor (Victor McLaglen), and Best Director (John Ford) for
The Informer.
Bette was also sure that RKO would pick up Best Actress, for Katharine Hepburn
(Alice Adams).
When D. W. Griffith went to the podium to announce the winner, she managed to smile.

"The winner is Bette Davis, for
Dangerous,"
said Griffith, whereupon Bette felt she was "going to be very sick."

Making a short speech, the actress was polite, displaying the barest of emotion, although she claimed later that inside she was happy to the point of exploding.

Leading a standing ovation, Jack Warner beamed from table one, while at table two a vanquished Best Actor nominee, Franchot Tone, leapt to his feet as Bette passed by and embraced her. "Oh, God, he was always a gentleman, the tops," she recalled. Franchot's wife, however, remained seated, with her back to the Best Actress, until her husband said, "Darling!" Turning her head, the immaculately groomed and spectacularly beautiful Joan Crawford looked up, then down at the Best Actress winner and said, "Dear Bette! What a
lovely
frock."

"I was told by any number of people that my outfit was an insult to the Academy," said Bette. "One reporter wrote that I wore an inexpensive housedress. That was not true. My dress was simple but expensive, a
dinner
dress. It suited the occasion perfectly, because I didn't feel I deserved to win. So why be a hypocrite about it?"

"
BETTE DAVIS ALMOST LYNCHED BY ADORATION ON VISIT HERE
," said the headline of the New York
Daily News
when the actress visited New York for a visit in April. ''A crowd of 500 tried to tear down the ropes and get to Davis," the paper reported. "Seven cops pushed and shoved, somebody made a pass at somebody else, and only the blond young actress's calmness prevented much greater excitement."

Meeting with a reporter in the bar of her hotel, Bette confided she had left some "minor professional problems" back in California. Anxious for good scripts, she had wanted to play Elizabeth the First, in
Mary of Scotland,
at RKO. But her boss refused to loan her out again. "So I decided I needed a long rest. And here I am!" she said, not letting the reporter know that she had also refused to do retakes for her new picture,
The Golden Arrow.
And that there was another serious issue at stake. The recent Oscar winner wanted more money, a lot more money, for her professional services. A Warner's press release issued at this time described Bette Davis as "a very easy person to know. Young, healthy, wealthy and happily married to a person she loves."

The "wealthy" part did not amuse the actress. "When I arrived in Hollywood," she said, "I was treated as a poor cousin. I soon learned that you are treated according to your salary scale."

Although she now lived in Crawford's neighborhood, Brentwood, in a rented house owned by Greta Garbo, her monthly expenses were enormous. She was the main support of a family that included her mother, her sister, her husband, a maid, and a chauffeur. "I have no savings," she told the New York reporter, "no expensive furs or jewelry." Her salary at Warner's was modest, that of a featured player, but she hoped it would soon be adjusted upward, "commensurate with her importance as an Oscar winner and star."

To ensure those changes, Bette had hired a new agent. His name was Michael C. Levee. He was a respected, astute businessman, whose other clients included Cecil B. De Mille, Merle Oberon, Dick Powell, Ben Hecht, and the leading box-office star of 1936, Joan Crawford.

At the start of that year Bette was making twelve hundred dollars a week, which was considerable for those Depression years but paltry compared with Joan Crawford's annual salary of $241,453. With Joan's representative as her agent, Bette demanded more money and perks. She wanted what Crawford was receiving, and more. "How much is Joan making?" she asked Levee. "Does she get free clothes, a car, promotional expenses?" Levee, who preferred to treat such matters as confidential to each individual, was reluctant to release this information to Bette. "My
God!"
said Bette. "Every time Crawford has a headache or a bowel movement she calls Hedda or Louella Parsons, and you're giving me this 'confidential' _____?"

While Bette vacationed in New York and Boston, Levee submitted her new requests to Jack Warner. Along with a large boost in her salary, she asked for approval of scripts, directors, and cinematographers; star billing above the title; three months of vacation a year; and the right to do one outside picture a year during her vacation time.

Jack Warner listened to Levee, then sent a telegram to Davis. In essence, it ordered the star to get back to work for retakes on her next film. He refused her requests, whereupon Bette instructed Levee to break her contract and place her with another studio, preferably M-G-M, the home of Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford.

The Lion versus the Penitentiary

Years later, during the making of
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,
columnist Sidney Skolsky wrote that the root of the trouble between Crawford and Davis began with the disparity in their studio backgrounds. "Joan resembles M-G-M," said Skolsky. "Bette resembles Warner's. The war is between two kingdoms, two Movie Queens, each with an ego that has to be fed with driving activity."

M-G-M in 1936 was "a walled city and fortress," said Skolsky. The studio had more power, more money, more fame than any other picture studio in the world. It also had more stars "than there are in the heavens," including Joan Crawford, number three in prestige at the studio, behind Garbo and Norma Shearer, but number one at the box office. "Joan never knew reality when she was toiling within the high white walls of the M-G-M kingdom," said the columnist. "She was protected, pampered, her ego was fed carefully so it would blossom, and at the end of every week there was a pot of gold waiting for her at the cashier's window. There was only one flaw: Joan was completely ruled by the Dictator of the M-G-M kingdom—Louis B. Mayer."

Mayer was the Pope, and the M-G-M girls were medieval chattels. When Joan was unhappy, Mayer met her complaints with promises, flattery, and advice. "If the problem was important enough, he would cry a little. He could turn on the tears faster than any actor. It was said often, but not to his face, that his initials, L. B., stood for Lionel Barrymore."

"Meanwhile over the hill and into the valley," said Skolsky, "there is the Kingdom of Warner's, vastly different from M-G-M. Called 'a plantation' by some, and 'the penitentiary' by others, among the peasants there is Movie Star Bette Davis. She had talent, drive and disobedience. She rebelled frequently against the warden, Jack Warner."

"Warner and L. B. Mayer were alike in one respect," said director George Cukor; "both men loved movies. But Warner was a businessman first. He did not respect talent like Mayer did. ['I'll go down on my knees and kiss the ground talent walks upon,' said L. B.] Making the deal, Warner would promise you everything for your picture, then renege on his word if it cost him more money."

Jack Warner was also not a father figure to his stars, Skolsky stated. But that was all right with Bette Davis. "She didn't need a father image as Joan Crawford did. Bette was already a papa to her mother and younger sister."

In April 1936 Davis, who would eventually settle in to become "the look and form of Warner Brothers' films," was adamant about leaving the studio and moving to M-G-M, where she felt she would receive the money, respect, and prestigious films that were her due. She soon learned this was not possible. Mayer would not talk to her agent as long as she had a contract with Warner, and that contract, Bette discovered, could not be broken.

But Jack Warner was willing to be fair. He raised Bette's salary to sixteen hundred dollars a week, and at her agent's urging she agreed to return to Los Angeles, to begin work on a new film, titled
God's Country and Woman.
She collected on her new salary for four weeks, then refused to begin the picture unless the rest of her demands were met.

"She's a very stubborn young lady," Mike Levee told columnist Sheilah Graham. "She told Warner she wanted $ 3,500 a week, all radio rights and permission to make outside pictures."

Comparing Bette with his other star client, Joan Crawford, Levee described Davis as "suspicious ... impulsive ... too eager to take charge of everything." Whereas Joan, in matters of business, deferred to her advisers.

When Levee tried to reason with Bette Davis, advising her to go back to work and meet Jack Warner in an amicable frame of mind, she accused him of kowtowing to the boss. She ordered Levee to step aside, saying that she and her lawyer would handle the negotiations. Levee in turn resigned. "The grief is not worth the commission," he told Sheilah Graham. When her lawyer questioned her aggressive tactics, she fired him also.

On June 20, with new legal counsel, Bette met with Jack Warner, Hal Wallis, and two studio lawyers. According to the minutes of the meeting in the studio files, Warner opened by asking Bette "to be a trouper," to do the new picture at two thousand dollars a week, with her favorite cameraman, Sol Polito. Bette said no. She stuck to her request for a new contract "along the lines previously requested."

"We build stars around here," said Warner, "give them every chance. Then they turn around and demand everything." He repeated his offer of two thousand dollars a week. "And I'll do better. Six additional yearly options, for another six years, going up to four thousand eventually. I can't top that."

"That's a six-year contract," Bette shouted. "A five-year contract is long enough! And after five years I'll be too damn old to be in pictures."

"How foolish of you, Bette," said Jack, "to believe you'll be too old then. You'll only be thirty-five."

"Thirty-
three
," Bette snapped back.

And for the moment they laughed.

"
STAR STRIKES!
Bette Davis Angry at Producers," the newspapers reported on July 1. "I'm ready to quit for good," she said. "There are certain things I'm entitled to. And I'm damned well going to get them; or else!"

"It's all being fixed up amicably," said a studio spokesman. "Nothing serious at all. She'll be back."

On a Sunday morning, at 12:05
A.M.
, to avoid being served legal papers, Bette and her husband left Los Angeles, bound for Vancouver. From there they went to Montreal, then on to England, where the actress was scheduled to make two films for an independent producer. Her strategy was inspired by Jimmy Cagney, said Joan Blondell, who told the story of how the feisty little Irishman bested the big studio mogul. "Jimmy was always complaining about the low salaries we were getting while Jack and his brothers raked in the millions. But we all had firm seven-year contracts and, short of dying, there was no way we could break them. Then Jimmy found a way. One day his wife, Frances, was driving along Hollywood Boulevard and saw Pat O'Brien's name billed above Jimmy's on a movie marquee. She called Jimmy, who had a first-billing clause in his contract. He told Frances to take a picture of the marquee. He sent the picture to Jack Warner and told him he had infringed upon his contract. He quit the studio. They sued. But meantime Jimmy made two pictures for an outside producer, and Warner lost the suit. He begged Cagney to return, which he did, for more money and a cut of the gross profits. When Bette heard of that, she decided what was good for Cagney was twice as good for her."

Bette would not be victorious, however. "I was a woman," she said. "I was told I had no right fighting like a man. Jack Warner was determined to teach me a lesson."

In England, during September 1936, shortly before Davis was to commence work on her first film for producer Ludovic Toeplitz, Jack Warner had an injunction served on the actress, which prevented her from working for another employer. "There was a principle at stake," said Warner, "whether a highly paid star could dictate to a studio, and make only those pictures that pleased her. If Bette were to win, all the studio owners and executives in Hollywood would get trampled in the stampede."

When the case went to trial in London that October, Jack Warner was present in court. His lawyer called Bette "a very naughty girl" and ridiculed her charges of slavery by telling the judge, and the press, that his client was paying the actress two thousand dollars per week. "With America still locked into the depression, that princely sum could feed a family of four for a year," wrote one reporter.

The main issue was not about money, but about better scripts, Davis tried to argue. And to downplay her star image, she appeared for trial each day wearing the same tweed coat, skirt, and sweater, with a matching hand-knit beret. In court Bette attempted to use another "theatrical" device. Each day she sat with her eyes fixed directly on the judge—trying to stare him into submission, to settle the case in her favor. ("Silly of me, wasn't it?" she said. "I am not a very good hypnotist.")

The British courts agreed with Warner. Bette's contract was valid. She lost the case.

In November she returned by boat to the United States. "This is a real sock in the teeth," she told a reporter. "I am back to serve another five years in the Warner jail."

Getting off the train at Union Station in Los Angeles, she felt a gloomy sense of
déjà vu.
Her reception was the same as when she had first arrived, six years earlier. There was no one on hand from the studio to meet her.

"I was back to square one," she said. "I had to start all over again. Only this time I was a hundred thousand dollars in debt from the court costs. I didn't beg for parts, but I took whatever they gave me. I was also ostracized by many people. The lesson I learned was a good one. Artists live lonely lives, but they wage lonelier battles."