Bette Davis Eyes
When I was fifteen I worked at McDonald’s part-time after school and on weekends. One night at work the manager told me I had a phone call, which was against the rules. It was Dad, though, so I wouldn’t get in trouble for the personal call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, you don’t get off till seven tonight, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you find a ride home or take the bus?”
“Why can’t you pick me up?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Well, we’re hungry and we’re going to go out to the Round Table for dinner.”
“What about me? I want to go to the Round Table!”
“But you don’t get off till seven. You’ll have to shower when you get home—” he was right. I smelled like a greasy burger when I got off work— “and by the time we got to the restaurant it would be close to nine. Just eat a Big Mac or something.”
I ate Big Macs all the time. The Round Table was a semi-fancy restaurant. Going there was a treat. A treat I was going to miss. I pointed out that the buses didn’t run after 6 on the weekend. He told me to take a cab and he’d pay me back. I hung up without saying goodbye.
I was in a bad mood when I got home at 7:30. I not only didn’t shower, I didn’t change out of my McDonald’s uniform. Everyone could just deal with my stink when they got home from their wonderful meal. I hadn’t eaten a Big Mac or anything else at work. If I couldn’t eat a nice meal with the family, I wouldn’t eat at all. Bob the Martyr. I sat in Dad’s chair, hoping my stench would rub off on the tweed material of the recliner.
I turned on the TV and flipped through the channels, ignoring any programs I liked. Bob the Martyr wasn’t interested in watching shows he enjoyed. Back then there were only seven or eight channels to cycle through. Channel Six, the independent channel, was showing a black & white movie. Perfect. If it was in black & white then it was old and had to suck.
I had no idea what it was about; it had started fifteen or twenty minutes before I tuned in. Some pop-eyed woman was in a doctor’s office failing to light a cigarette. Yawn. Oh look, she has a brain tumor; that’s why she can’t light a Marlboro. I didn’t realize that was a symptom of noggin cancer.
Good Lord, her eyes are enormous. Oh, what a surprise: Dr. Heartthrob saved her life. If that’s what passed for a heartthrob in the olden days, I’m glad I live in the here and now. What’s this? She’s NOT cured? They aren’t not going to tell her? Holy crap, she found out anyway. She’s devastated. She never said a word but didn’t need to. Those eyes! Who is this woman who can say so much with those eyes? When she confronted Dr. Hottie it broke my heart. “I’m so ashamed!” she said, accusing him of pretending to love her since would be dead soon and it wouldn’t cost him anything. I looked for the newspaper and found the tv listing.
Dark Victory, 1939, Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart. Bette Davis? I’ve heard of her but never seen her before. I turned my attention back to the TV. Bette was on a drunken tear, singing in a bar with a wino played by Ronald Reagan. Humphrey Bogart played a stable hand with a ridiculous Irish accent. After the drunken night with Ronald Reagan, she encouraged Humphrey Bogart to have his way with her.
Please don’t, Bette. You’ll only be even more ashamed later.
I won’t walk you through the whole movie, but in the final reel when she said, “Funny, I can still feel the sun on my hands” and I realized she was losing her sight, signifying the end, I lost it. I hadn’t found it ten minutes later when the screen faded to black just as the front door opened. Mom, Dad, Sister, and Joe came in, sated from their family outing.
Mom saw me sobbing in the family room and the smile fell off of her face. “What is it? What’s wrong? Who died?” she demanded, fearing the worst.
“Bette Davis!” I sobbed.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Mom was disgusted. Sister and Brother were confused. Dad thought it was hilarious.
The next day I went to the Mini Mart down the street and bought a TV Guide. I studied every listing, looking for movies starring Bette Davis. In her later works she was still a dynamo, but it was the old black and white movies that enthralled me. And it seemed that every week there were two or three from which to choose: The Letter; The Little Foxes; Now, Voyager; Of Human Bondage; All About Eve; The Man Who Came to Dinner; Jezebel; The Petrified Forest. There were many more but those first five films turned me into a rabid fan.
I collected old photographs of her. I bought all of her biographies. I found a book devoted to old Hollywood glamour shots of her. I learned that she defied Jack Warner and the studio contract system, unheard of by any actor, but especially a woman. She was the first female president of the Screen Actors Guild.
And my God, she was beautiful. I fell in love with her a hundred times. I had no idea until years later that she was a gay icon. My first car was a 1965 Dodge Coronet. I named the car Bette. After my fifteenth Bette Davis movie I thanked Dad for not including me in that Round Table dinner.
In my junior year, in English 3AP I answered a test question comparing two authors, by saying one of them was like watching Barbara Walters and one was like watching Bette Davis: both tell you what you need to know, but one is much more entertaining.
When I returned to college a few years ago I took a history of mass media class. One night only a handful of students bothered to show up, which angered the professor. He gave us a pop quiz, either to reward us for being there, or to punish those who skipped class, I’m not sure. The week before he talked some about the movie Gone With the Wind (by the way Bette had been considered for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, but Jack Warner wouldn’t let her make a movie for MGM unless they also used Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler so the deal fell through). Anyway, there was only one question on the multiple-choice pop quiz: What was the greatest movie released in 1939? A, Gone With the Wind? B, Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein? C, The Great Train Robbery? Or D, Debbie Does Dallas?
I was faced with a dilemma. If the point of the quiz was to reward me for being there, it wouldn’t make any difference what I answered. But if the point of the quiz was for me to say the best movie of 1939 was Gone With the Wind, I was in trouble. I answered, “None of the Above. The best movie of 1939 was Dark Victory, starring Bette Davis.”
I shared that on Face Book and several friends from high school remarked that they were impressed/surprised/dismayed that after forty years I still found opportunities to incorporate Bette Davis into test answers in school.
I am not quite as obsessed as I once was. But I never miss a viewing of All About Eve, Dark Victory, Of Human Bondage, or The Letter. Some of her lines still give me chills. “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” “I hope you die. I hope you die soon. I’m waiting for you to die.” “Every time I let you kiss me I wiped my mouth. Wiped my mouth!” “I’m so ashamed!” “Ann, be my best friend. Go now.”
Even though I’ve heard her say it at least thirty times now when she says, “Funny, I still feel the sun on my hands,” I cry like a baby.