The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography [Hardcover]

Charlotte Chandler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 2006

Noted film biographer Charlotte Chandler interviewed Bette Davis extensively in the last decade of her life, resulting in a biography in which the great actress speaks for herself. Chandler also spoke with directors, actors, and others who knew and worked with Davis, and includes brief synopses of all of her theatrical films. Here are some more examples of Bette's wit to be found within these pages: "I'm the one who didn't get the man, which is the more interesting character on the screen, but in real life sometimes I wish I could just have been the girl who got the man, and kept him. I got four husbands and several lovers, but I didn't keep any of them. I was invited to the White House, but no man stayed to share my white cottage." "My favorite actor with whom I never played, professionally or personally, was Laurence Olivier. I admired everything about him. He was a great actor, and he was my dream man. Literally and figuratively. Larry was my fantasy lover, the perfect man, or at least I thought he would be. He was not only beautiful, but intelligent."

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The eyes have it—that cool, knowing gaze that doesn't quite conceal the wounded heart of a romantic—but the words of golden age Hollywood's grande dame also have their charms in this beguiling biography. Chandler, biographer of Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder, interviewed Davis (1908–1989) shortly before her death and simply presents her reminiscences with a minimum of scene setting, along with (inadequate) synopses of her movies. Davis meanderingly recounts a life worthy of the great melodramas she specialized in, revisiting her financially precarious childhood, her rise to fame and wealth, her four failed marriages, countless affairs, two abortions and a heartbreaking rift with her daughter after the latter wrote a spiteful tell-all. Eternally boy-crazy, she waxes dreamy—and bawdy—about various leading men including Errol Flynn ("a beautiful thing"), Laurence Olivier ("an Adonis") and Howard Hughes ("Howard Huge he was not"). Davis is alternately imperious, catty, generous and self-dramatizing; the reader never forgets that she is an actress, and Chandler complicates her version of events with commentary by colleagues, lovers and enemies. Still, artifice is the soul of Tinseltown, and in Davis's memoirs one hears the authentic, engrossing, gloriously manipulative voice of Old Hollywood. Photos. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Chandler, author of such celebrity biographies as Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends (1978); I, Fellini (1995); and Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder--a Personal Biography (2002), returns to tackle screen legend Bette Davis. This book, which is based on a series of extensive interviews conducted shortly before Davis' death in 1989, reads more like a conversation, with the story told mostly in Davis' own words. Readers will enjoy the familiar tone and casual anecdotes as the actress openly discusses everything from her father's early abandonment of the family to her desire to become an actress and her mother's sacrifices to make that dream happen to her infatuation with several of her leading men, her four marriages and two abortions, her pain and outrage over her daughter's portrayal of her in a tell-all book, her blatant opinions of other actors and actresses, her troublesome reputation, and much more. Brief synopses of her movies are included. Readers will enjoy finding that her famously bombastic personality is allowed to shine through. Kathleen Hughes
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (March 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0641802528
• ISBN-13: 978-0743262088
• ASIN: 0743262085
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #170,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Home Alone, April 4, 2006

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography (Hardcover)

You have to admire Charlotte Chandler just for the way she prints a photo of herself with Bette Davis on the back cover, and in the photo she, Chandler, is wearing either the goofiest hat ever designed for a woman, or perhaps the worst haircut an author ever received. It is the kind of upswept hairdo we associate with Lillian Russell and the Gibson Girls, but different somehow, with the texture of a minor, pale fur like rabbit or nutria. In contrast Bette Davis, stroke and all, looks like she's got it all together. What a delightful book, compiled from houts and hours of taped conversations in which Davis details all of the movies she made (87 feature films, thirteen TV movies, one miniseries) as well as the men she made along the way. Yes, some of the material is familiar, such as Davis' worship of her mentor George Arliss, and her devotion to William Wyler who, for all I know, may indeed be America's greatest director but I doubt it. However, many of the comments Davis makes here are completely new to me. And in addition, Chandler interviews many of those who worked with Davis and solicited their opinions about "This N That."

I enjoyed reading George Cukor's comments on Davis' appeal. Though he never directed her in a film, he was the man who picked her out to join his stock company while still working in the stage repertory system. "Even in Rochester, young as she was, Bette has styar quality,. 'Do you know what the secret of star quality is?' he asked me. 'It's being irritating. The great women stars have an irritating quality, each in her own way, individually irritating. It's a part of what makes them distinctive. Katharine Hepburn, Garbo, Olivia de Havilland, with all that sweetness of Melanie, each had that oh-so-irritating quality.'" I don't know whether this says more about Cukor or the women he finds irritating, but it's something to think about, and rarely so well expressed.

Another intriguing story is the one of the "film that got away," Irving Rapper's proposed biopic (from the 1947-8 period) of Mary Todd Lincoln, in which Davis might have played the conspiracy-ridden first lady, committed to a mental hospital after her husband was assassinated and her son died. Todd Lincoln had an unusual friendship with a black milliner which would have been part of the script too, at least as Rapper describes it, alas a great part for someone like Ethel Waters or Marietta Canty lost to us forever due to lackluster studio response. Instead, Davis and Robert Montgomery made JUNE BRIDE, a horse of a different color indeed.

Did you know Greer Garson was asked to play the part of THE NANNY? I didn't, and there's an amusing story that goes along with that (pp. 245-6).

You have to give Chandler props as well for the bizarre collection of blurbs that decorates this volume! How on earth did she land Pavarotti, Liv Ullmann, and Michelangelo Antonioni to say things like "Formidable!" on the book jacket?

Most of the stars and studio personnel interviewed by Chandler give Bette Davis nothing but good marks; on the other hand, there's always Celeste Holm, who's been practicing a dill pickle sourness for years now when it comes to the topic of ALL ABOUT EVE. She'll outlive us all, preserved in acid like a car battery.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A BEST BETTE!, March 12, 2006

By 

Alan W. Petrucelli (THE ENTERTAINMENT REPORT (ALAN W. PETRUCELLI)) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography (Hardcover)

Charlotte Chandler --- whose biographical takes on Groucho, Fellini and Hitchcock are considered some of the best --- now takes on Mother Goddamn herself, Miss Bette Davis. What makes the book stand out from the surfeit of other Bette bios are Chandler's candid conversations she had with the actress during the last decade of her life. Riddled with never-before-told stories of intrigues with various actors, producers and directors, they offer a glimpse into the valiant side of Miss D, instead of simply an extension of the parts Davis played. Chandler's talent lie in using her subject's own words, supplemented by recollections of others who knew her, to make an often-told story fluid and fascinating. And the photos ain't bad either. A best Bette!

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A DIFFERENT SPIN...., April 25, 2006

By 

Mark Norvell (HOUSTON) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this latest biography on Davis. While the movie caps were trite (and I already knew them all), what I liked was Davis' seemingly endless stream of verbalized thoughts running throughout. She was an amazingly intelligent and sensitive woman as well as a sublime and professional actor. Having already devoured Whitney Stine's accounts "Mother Goddam" and "I'd Love to Kiss You..." again and again, Chandler's book was another addition to sides of Davis I hadn't known. For instance, while the late Mr.Stine was male, Chandler is female and Davis seemed to open up more frankly to her, especially about sex. Plus she was more open about her childhood and relationship with her father that plagued her through a lot of her life. There are also rare photos I hadn't seen before. If you've read Stine's books, then I heartily reccommend this as well. Davis was a multifaceted persona and human being and there is stuff here to engross you. Please enjoy.