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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | 921 DAVIS | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Author Notes
Barbara Leaming is the author of numerous biographies including Churchill Defiant, Katharine Hepburn, and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story. Her articles have appeared in several publications including New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and the Times of London.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Leaming's portrait of Davis, sympathetic yet frank about her horrible treatment of family and friends, is flatly written but insightful. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Strong, honest, vivid biography of a colossal egoist, by the author of distinguished lives of Rita Hayworth (If This Was Happiness, 1989), Orson Welles, and Roman Polanski. This is a rapid but rich full-dress portrait of a matchlessly magnetic actress whose chains of self-centeredness grew ever heavier as she aged and who finally withered into ``the sorry spectacle of a great talent pigheadedly wasted.'' Knowledgeable readers will recognize that Leaming has not seen and does not weigh the individual value of every film Davis (1908-89) was involved in. When she focuses on the major works, however, she does so thoroughly and settles finely on the star's acting. Leaming does Davis the honor of seeking the heart of her work as avidly as she does the springs of a life made lonely by bottomless egoism and many adulteries and abortions. Davis's great character flaw apparently was inherited from a mother and grandmother who wanted to break into a male-dominated world and failed. Her self- sacrificing mother, who was deserted by her husband when Davis was seven, became a portrait photographer to support Davis and her addled younger sister. Young Davis was given to rages that seem both genetic and to stem from her fury at being imprisoned in apartment life while all her well-heeled friends lived in large houses with servants. These beginnings set the template from which Davis never wavered: She was a virago. A stage career led to films but she kept her temper in check until her role as the great bitch Mildred in Of Human Bondage released it and led her into endless battles with Warner Brothers, for which she made 51 pictures in 18 years. Leaming makes clear that Davis's battles were always for money and power and sprang from quarrelsomeness. Excellent especially on Davis's tics and mannerisms and how they undermined her ferocious energy and greater possibilities. (Sixteen-page b&w photo insert--not seen.)
Booklist Review
While there have been several memoirs about Davis in the last few years, and, of course, the infamous Bette-bashing tome by her daughter, B. D, Leaming fills the biographical bill by offering a well-researched, more definitive book about the actress. Leaming had access to Davis' personal papers and diaries, collected at Boston University, and she was able to interview many of Davis' closest friends. Even so, she seems to have found few sources willing to speak on Davis' behalf; the one person who might have been on the actress' side, longtime companion Kathryn Sermak, appears not to have been interviewed. Maybe there's just not much good to say about Davis, apart from her acting ability (though she did make many clunker movies, as Leaming documents). Fierce about her career, maniacal toward men, fanatical toward her daughter, Davis found some relief from her demons in alcohol, which did nothing at all for her personality. Leaming insightfully portrays her subject as a virago, a word that combines in its two meanings--either a loud, overbearing woman or a woman of great stature and strength--both sides of the Davis persona. Still, it is regretfully the unsure shrew who learned manipulation at her mother's knee, rather than the gutsy, independent dame, that comes across most forcibly here. This is a strong biography, several cuts above the formulaic star bio treatment, but it tells a very sad story. (Reviewed Mar. 1, 1992)0671709550Ilene Cooper
Library Journal Review
In contrast to the high regard in which Davis is held as a movie actress, her offscreen stature has been steadily eroding in recent years. What seemed the harshest blow came several years ago with her daughter B.D. Hyman's cathartic memoir, My Mother's Keeper (Morrow, 1985), which portrayed Davis as mean, selfish, and a coward in the face of her abusive third husband, actor Gary Merrill. Now comes the first biography since Davis's death in 1989, which apportions the familiar praise for her screen performances with an exhaustively detailed portrait of a petty, insecure woman. Ultimately, claims Leaming, Davis was a rebel without a real cause when she fought the studio contract system in the 1930s; her rebellion was more of a movie-pose than a real struggle for independence. Ultimately, this is a very sad story. For popular collections.-- Thomas Wiener, formerly with ``American Film'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
