Book Review: "The Lonely Life" by Bette Davis

Bette Davis is one of my favourite people on the planet and really, this autobiography is written in her classic style of dark wit, class and sultriness that was so iconic of her own acting and turbulent personal life. After a short introduction, we are thrown into her world of being proper and wanting a good reputation through doing things that were considered to be ladylike and well-mannered. Obviously, this did not work and Bette Davis turned into the classiest actress who also had a massive personality and was most importantly, a woman with a gigantic amount of courage and power. Her ability exceeded most of the actresses of her day and her writing will prove to you that she is also one of the most interesting people of her era.

The story starts off with her introduction on her life and then moves into where her family came from - the English side and then what happened afterwards. Moving through her grandparents and her parents and then all the way through to her - she tells the narrative of her family life. Then, we move on to her love life as she struggles to get the attention of the opposite sex and then, as she gets older, she is more and more wanted. Bette Davis then tells us about how she got into the business and built her name. From her role in "Of Human Bondage" all the way through to "Mr. Skeffington", "Dark Victory", "The Letter" and the film that is considered her magnum opus - "All About Eve".

Throughout her career, she has had a classic wit that comes through in the use of condescending wit and sarcasm. This is mostly done by her incredibly detailed narrative style which come all with their own off-shoots of criticism, culture and opinion. Just have a look at what she says about herself in retrospect:

"Obviously, I have lived in a permanent state of rapture. I was never able to share it with a mate. It exhausted them. I evidently drove them mad; but I was as helpless as they. Once you've heard the sound of that distant music, you're deaf to everything else. The Yankee in me is still appalled by my repeated attempts at marriage. Knowing that I failed at the impossible doesn't help. My mistake was the repeated trying. What can you do when the newspapers call your husband 'Mr. Davis'? How helpless and yielding can a woman be when her weekly salary exceeds his annual income? What Mrs. could I have been to avoid this?...Morality to me is honesty, integrity, character. Old-fashioned in the words straight from Emerson, Thoreau and my grandmother. There are new words now that excuse everyone. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. The people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch. People love their mavericks in the grand manner..."

As we move through the book we learn that she is not bitter about the arguments and rivalries she has had with other stars, obviously here she is referring to the grand rivalry she had with Joan Crawford. Honestly, I am quite surprised that Bette Davis bore no ill will towards her and in the book, there is not much animosity shown to be between the two, though I would like the question how truthful that really is.

All in all, the book is a grand representation of a figure that was larger than life, grounding her back to earth in order to tell her story herself, without anyone trying to do it for her. It is a brilliant, beautiful and skilled piece packed with feuds, families, marriages, love and obviously, acting - something she does better than most.