Fasten Your Seat Belts: The Passionate Life of Bette Davis

by Lawrence J Quirk

Overview

The illuminating, comprehensive biography of Bette Davis, one of the most electrifying Hollywood stars ever to grace the silver screen.

With a career spanning six decades and more than eighty films, Bette Davis is synonymous with Hollywood legend. From her incandescent performance as Margo Channing in All About Eve, to her terrifying, psychopathic Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Davis generated electricity wherever she appeared, whatever she did—and not just on the silver screen. Her personal life was as passionate as her career and was so fiery that it eventually consumed her.

In this landmark biography, Lawrence J. Quirk takes us behind the scenes of all of Davis’s movies, from her early unpromising roles, to her commanding presence at the pinnacle of stardom, to her degrading exploitation in horror films at the end of her career. Quirk delves into Davis’s four unhappy marriages, as well as her frosty, manipulative relationships with her three children. Also revealed are her many affairs through the years with leading men, bit players, servicemen during World War II, and, very late in her life, much younger men, who repaid her by using her and deserting her. Intense, volatile, ruled often by her emotions, Bette Davis was described by one critic as "a force of nature that could find no ordinary outlet."

Fasten Your Seat Belts brilliantly explores the life and career of Bette Davis to show us the fascinating original she was.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062795533
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	157,351
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Lawrence J. Quirk was one of the nation’s leading film authorities who wrote over twenty books on film and the media and many articles about Bette Davis over a forty-three-year period. Quirk was the editor and publisher of the film journal Quirk’s Reviews, the director of the James R. Quirk Memorial Film Symposium, and the donor of the prestigious James R. Quirk Awards to deserving film figures. He died in October 2014.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

1 Spawned in Witch Country 1

2 Struggling to the Surface 15

3 Hollywood 27

4 Warner, Zanuck-and Arliss 49

5 Ham, Sex, and Other Things 71

6 Battling Toward the Big Break 91

7 Of Human Bondage-and Recognition 109

8 Grinding out the Warner Sausage 129

9 The First Oscar-and Its Aftermath 143

10 The Great Rebellion-and the Return 153

11 Bette O'Hara? 177

12 Jezebel, Oscar II, and Wyler 187

13 1939: The Great Year 215

14 The Old Maid and Elizabeth: Davis at Her Zenith 235

15 The Fourth Warner Brother-and Farney 257

16 Popeye the Magnificent 287

17 War Bonds, Now, Voyager, and the Canteen 309

18 The Quintessential Bette Davis Movie 367

19 Sliding Downward with Sherry 383

20 Renaissance-and Gary Merrill 417

21 Back in the Doldrums 475

22 The Horrors 489

23 Bette Davis: Survivor 523

24 A Legend-But Alone 539

25 The Lioness in Winter 583

A Bette Davis Film Listing (With Stage Roles and Some TV Films) 591

A Selective Bette Davis Bibliography 595

Index 597

Editorial Reviews

Much has been written about actress Davis, but little has been very revealing, or comprehensive--until now. Davis's autobiography ( The Lonely Life , LJ 9/1/62) was a typically glossy Hollywood caricature, and the update This 'n That (LJ 3/1/87) was more of a reply to her daughter than autobiography. In Whitney Stine's Mother Goddam (1974; Berkley, 1984. pap.) Davis herself answered and often contradicted the text, but this was the public, cigarette-waving Davis. Appearing soon after Davis's death, Quirk's monumental book is actually the culmination of years of research by the celebrity biographer. Though Davis's six-decade film career is discussed, as is her personal life, what is most evident here is the passion of this woman, so often hidden behind an outspoken, and in later life, crusty exterior. This effort may or may not stand as definitive, but right now it's the only one that reveals as much. Highly recommended.-- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty. Free Lib., Seaside, Cal.

Library Journal