Customer Reviews

The Lonely Life

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This is an excellent autobiography written by the lady herself. I never even knew this book existed until it was mentioned on TCM during a Bette Davis movie marathon in April. Published in 1962--it was written at least a year before her work on "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" so no mention is made of the film since the experience had yet to happen. But what you get in this book is a real sense of who Bette Davis was and how she became the great legend we all know & love. Her opinions, philosphies (rants?) on Hollywood, acting, actors, actresses, men and sex are worth the price of the book alone--which BTW was a real steal @ only $6!!! She makes no bones about her notorious ability to go on a film set & wreak havoc: "I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business." Her strong bond with her self-sacrificing mother Ruthie is the central theme throughtout the book. Her relationships with the phycially abusive men in her life is the real tragedy here. The title "The Lonely Life" comes from her personal beleife that "One cannot rely on people. One has only ones work to sustain him at the end of the day". And at the end of the day, Bette had her work and what a body of work it was! If you are a Bette Davis fan and you have't read this book, you must get it.

Bette Davis wrote this: "We[Sandford Dody and I] were collaborators in every sense of the word."

I searched the net for Sandford Dody, a professional ghost writer, and found Ghostwriting 1199 by Brooks Peters, including the following paragraph:

'Dody had worse problems with Bette Davis in her eccentric 1962 look back at her career, The Lonely Life. Introduced to the notoriously temperamental star by mutual friend Kaye Ballard, Dody hit it off with Davis, and the book came easily. "I wrote it exactly the way she talks," Dody recalls -- "electric, with short, punchy sentences. The publisher loved it. The Ladies Home Journal bought rights to it. But Bette refused to read it. When she finally did, she was guilt-ridden that she hadn't actually written it. So she tore into it with a hatchet, changing everything. The book needed surgery, not butchery. It was the worst case of egomania I'd ever seen."'

I'm not a movie maven and not a Bette Davis fan, but the book is well paced and readable.

I recommend this book, it is frank, honest and has a humility I never knew she had. She was great & difficult as they were. I could not put it down.