Bette Davis: A Goddamned Dream

 

Bette Davis by Terry O'Neill. O'Neill has said: 'I took this in the apartment of Miss Davis - as she was always addressed - the year after her stroke. When I arrived she knew exactly where she wanted to be photographed ... and had chosen her gown. She epitomised the true professionalism of a special generation of brilliant Hollywood stars.' 

There is an inability among actors--most actors--to be honest about this deal we have made with what we think is our art. It is rarely art, and when it approaches something like art, you are witnessing something that came about because of some serious battles, demands, and refusals.

Here's the deal, and we have to own it: If people don't buy your dream of being an actress, then it will not happen. That is reality, and it's best to pack up and dream another dream. Or wait a while to see if you improve or tastes change, but no studio can or should employ you because you have a Goddamned dream or wish. I believed I was talented, that I had a place in this industry, but I was prepared to deal with the possibility that I was mistaken. Once I had proven that I could be good, and that people would come and see me...well, nothing was going to stop me.

Now, the dream suffices. I now have learned to simply turn away from someone who comes to me with talk of dreaming and hoping, but very little talk of working and studying. These dreamers find clusters of other dreamers--most unproven--and find comfort in a room of people who really believe that the consummation of all they saw for themselves is just beyond reach. I went to one of these things, and I couldn't place one of them. Who the hell are these people? There is a reason, I assure you, that you cannot find work or have not been confirmed in your belief in yourself, and it's a hard thing to swallow.

I know why I cannot get the work I would like: I am old, and I am old-fashioned, and it is almost impossible to find a use for me. I have to accept this, just as I accept the roles for which I am ridiculed, but I take them because I hope I can bring some worth to them, and because I have to eat and support people. No one takes care of me at all. And no one tells me if I belong on a screen or a stage.

Actors are so frequently dumb with hope that they will believe anyone who tells them to hang on, to dream with them, to pay the fee, to hold the hands in the class. Holding hands in a class! Goddammit, why is talent the last thing to be considered, but a dream is seen as enough for some fool to claim they're an actor, an artist?

And everything stinks.

[Oh, Bette, it's so much worse now.]

James Grissom

2022