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Summary
Summary
For ten years Kathryn Sermak was at Bette Davis's side--first as an employee, and then as her closest friend--and in Miss D and Me she tells the story of the great star's harrowing but inspiring final years, a story fans have been waiting decades to hear.
Miss D and Me is a story of two powerful women, one at the end of her life and the other at the beginning. As Bette Davis aged she was looking for an assistant, but she found something more than that in Kathryn: a loyal and loving buddy, a co-conspirator in her jokes and schemes, and a competent assistant whom she trained never to miss a detail. But Miss D had strict rules for Kathryn about everything from how to eat a salad to how to wear her hair...even the spelling of Kathryn's name was changed (adding the "y") per Miss D's request. Throughout their time together, the two grew incredibly close, and Kathryn had a front-row seat to the larger-than-life Davis's career renaissance in her later years, as well as to the humiliating public betrayal that nearly killed Miss D.
The frame of this story is a four-day road trip Kathryn and Davis took from Biarritz to Paris, during which they disentangled their ferocious dependency. Miss D and Me is a window into the world of the unique and formidable Bette Davis, told by the person who perhaps knew her best of all.
Author Notes
Kathryn Sermak is the co-founder of the Bette Davis Foundation and co-executor of the Bette Davis Estate. In addition to Bette Davis, Kathryn has been personal assistant to HH Princess Shams Pahlavi; French actress, Isabelle Adjani; the statesman and journalist, Pierre Salinger; astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Motown Founder, Berry Gordy Jr.; famed American designer, Patrick Kelly; and the co-creator of Where's Waldo , Michael Gornall. Kathryn was also among the first to receive the Personal Assistant Career Award in 2003. Visit her at missdandme.com.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bette Davis was demanding and a perfectionist, Sermak writes in her lively memoir about being the two-time Oscar-winning actress's personal assistant. As Sermak writes, Davis valued loyalty and discretion in employees and work was her salvation. These may not be earth-shattering revelations, but Sermak's story concentrates less on the famous star and more on her own maturation while employed by Davis from 1979 to 1985. Hired as a "girl Friday," Sermak soaked up the life lessons Davis imparted, such as how to give a firm handshake and how to stand out from the crowd. The prickly-turned-warm relationship between these two women unfolds on movie sets, the hospitals where Davis recovers from a stroke, and during a scenic road trip through France. There are also tense episodes surrounding Davis's relationship with her family, especially her daughter, B.D., who secretly writes a tell-all memoir about mama. This nice-not-nasty book is not going to satisfy fans of TV's Feud looking for gossip-there is only one real dig at Joan Crawford, Davis's famous bête noire-but it will appeal to those who want an insider's view of Davis, even if the focus is mainly on the insider. Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary Agency (Kathryn Sermak); Linda Loewenthal, Loewenthal Company (Danelle Morton). (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A chronicle of the last years of a cinema legend as told by her personal assistant. Would anyone familiar with Bette Davis' reputation as headstrong and independent be surprised to learn that she yanked out the bushes of a Long Island beachfront property she rented for a weekend because she didn't like the way they looked? Sermak, co-executor of Davis' estate, was a 22-year-old Southern California native in 1979 when she jettisoned a plan to pursue a career in clinical psychology and took a job as the 71-year-old actress's personal assistant. This book covers the years in which Sermak was Davis' live-in assistant, accompanying her to film sets, cooking her meals, and staying by Davis' side during and after the star's 1983 mastectomy and stroke. (The author movingly renders these scenes.) Davis was as much a mentor to Sermak as an employer. She told her to change the spelling of her first name because "one of the big battles in life is to stand out from the crowd," gave her lessons on posture, and even hired a butler to teach her the protocol for a formal dinner. One might have expected this book to be a hagiography, but, refreshingly, the author shows not only Davis' kindness, but also her cruelty, as when she rudely declined a dinner invitation from Sermak's mother. The author gets bogged down in extraneous detail, with rambling accounts of conversations and long descriptions of the meals she and Davis enjoyed. However, the book is a poignant portrait of an aging screen icon reduced to taking her medicine with swigs of Ensure Plus and struggling to live her life with the grandeur to which she had become accustomed. Sermak writes of Davis' tutelage, "she was training me for a world that was fading from view." The author ably documents Davis' growing realization that, long before her death in 1989, her time was already passing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
Sermak first met Bette Davis in June 1979, when she interviewed for a job as her personal assistant. She was blissfully ignorant of Davis's career as a highly decorated Hollywood leading lady; her only previous encounter with the star was as a 7-year-old, fleeing the television room in a fit when "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" aired. It took a considerable hunch on the part of Davis, then in her early 70s, to hire the 20-something college graduate from San Bernardino as her girl Friday. But the relationship that began as something cold, detached and on occasion quite severe soon evolved into a generous and loving companionship that lasted up to Davis's death a decade later. In her deeply personal, strangely enthralling account, Sermak describes the initial demands placed on her: She had to perfect the art of the three-minute egg, learn to comport herself in a dignified manner and unlearn her habit of saying "O.K." (Davis fined her a quarter for each utterance). Davis even insisted that she change the spelling of her name to make it "more distinctive." Sermak's narrative gains momentum when she recounts the road trip she took with Davis in 1985, just the two of them, from Biarritz to Paris. Davis wrote a short poem for the occasion, "The Mad Women of Chaillot," and took particular delight in the freedom of being away from the Hollywood spotlight, even if she occasionally couldn't resist looking back ("Ah, if Joan Crawford could see me").
Table of Contents
Preface | p. 1 |
1 I Have a Hunch About You | p. 16 |
2 On the Set in London | p. 34 |
3 The Pygmalion Year | p. 60 |
4 Family Reunion | p. 90 |
5 All for Love | p. 119 |
6 Gigi's Return | p. 136 |
7 The Battle Begins | p. 150 |
8 Back in California | p. 164 |
9 Pierre's Visit | p. 173 |
10 The Breakdown in San Ysidro | p. 187 |
11 On the Beach in Malibu | p. 200 |
12 A Farewell from Bede | p. 212 |
13 Road Trip: Day One-Biarritz to Bordeaux | p. 221 |
14 Road Trip: Day Two-Bordeaux to Poitiers | p. 236 |
15 Road Trip: Day Three-Poitiers to Orleans | p. 244 |
16 Road Trip: Day Four-Orleans to Paris | p. 253 |
Afterword: Denouement in San Sebastian | p. 258 |
Acknowledgments | p. 275 |