Some suggest Davis's eyes were the result of the autoimmune thyroid condition, Graves' disease. Swelling the muscles around the eyes and surrounding tissues, the condition pushes the eyeballs forward, causing them to protrude, limiting their movement.
Bette Davis easily has the most famous eyes in history. While the All About Eve star graced the big screen for 50 years and was best known for her portrayals of strong and independent women, no doubt it was her eyes that stole the show.
Davis was known for her forceful and intense style of acting. She could be combative and confrontational with studio executives and film directors, as well as with her co-stars. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech, and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona that has been often imitated.
That is the iconic Bette Davis, star of memorable movies such as “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” and “All About Eve”. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1983, and after undergoing a mastectomy, suffered four strokes.
Though she made her name while her hair was bleached a soft platinum blonde, Davis wasn't always a golden girl — she originally rocked this soft medium brown shade.
Bette Davis, the actress known for playing strong, independent women, had deep blue eyes. Her signature eyes made her famous. However, during the era of black and white cinematography, those blue eyes often tended to be photograph in black and white and appeared brown or hazel.
They were accentuated by blue eye shadow and layers of false lashes with brown, not black, mascara. I was to learn later that Bette customarily took this kind of care with her appearance when meeting someone for the first time.
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
Married four times, Davis eloquently conveyed the vicissitudes of stardom in her autobiographies, The Lonely Life (1962) and This 'n' That (1987). She also provided running commentary for Whitney Stine's account of her film career, Mother Goddam: The Story of the Career of Bette Davis (1974).
Davis won Oscars on her first two nominations for “Dangerous” in 1935 and “Jezebel” in 1938. Strangely Davis won for arguably the two least acclaimed and remembered films of her 10 nominations. The other bids were for: “Dark Victory” (1939), “The Letter” (1940), “The Little Foxes” (1941), “Now, Voyager” (1942), “Mr.
The meaning behind Kim Carnes' 1980s classic “Bette Davis Eyes” actually holds a warning. The song starts out enticing, but soon turns sour, becoming a tune of advice to anyone lured in by the woman depicted in the lyrics.
Grammy nominations followed, and when the 24th annual awards were held at the Shrine Auditorium, it was a night of triumph for both the writers and the performer. “Bette Davis Eyes” won both the Record of the Year Grammy, for Carnes and producer Val Garay, and Song of the Year, for DeShannon and Weiss.
"Bette Davis Eyes" is a song written and composed by Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon in 1974. It was recorded by DeShannon that year but made popular by American singer Kim Carnes in 1981 when it spent nine non-consecutive weeks at the top of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
On May 10, 1977, Joan Crawford died from a heart attack at her New York City apartment. At the time, outlets reported Bette's response to her colleague's death as they quoted her: "You should never say bad things about the dead, only good… Joan Crawford is dead? Good."
It was a critical and box office success, and earned her another Best Actress Academy Award. Davis was at the peak of her career in the late 1930s and early-to-mid 1940s, at a time when she was one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood and turned down parts she found inferior.
Not quite: "Bet" is the correct pronunciation for Bette, as it is a French name—but Bette Davis pronounced her name "Betty" regardless, so "Betty" is the correct pronunciation for her.
Bette wanted her character to be extremely white with her eyes and mouth outlined dramatically and a little beauty mark on her cheek. As Davis said, “I wanted to look outrageous, like Mary Pickford in decay.”
Early on, Bette Davis made the decision to create her own makeup for Jane. "What I had in mind no professional makeup man would have dared to put on me," said Davis. "One told me he was afraid that if he did what I wanted, he might never work again.
Miss Davis swims so well that she was once a member of an otherwise male lifeguard crew at Ogunquit, Maine, and rides horseback daringly, having learned on fractious studio steeds she was warned against but nevertheless tried early in her film career.
