By Carolyn See,
who may be reached at carolynsee.com
Friday, March 31, 2006; C08

THE GIRL WHO WALKED HOME ALONE

Bette Davis, a Personal Biography

By Charlotte Chandler

Simon & Schuster. 348 pp. $26

"The Girl Who Walked Home Alone" retells an American fairy tale, the fable of 1940s movie star Bette Davis. Some may wonder why, after so many other biographies, this book exists at all. But others, staunch Bette Davis fans, will relish the opportunity to visit her story once again.

Born in 1908, she was a bright little girl whose emotionally withholding father ducked out on the family when she was 7, leaving her with a sacrificing but domineering mother and an out-of-focus little sister who would spend much of her life having nervous breakdowns. But Bette -- as we all know -- was born to succeed. She got summer-stock theater parts and then more theater parts and then went to Hollywood and became a big star, maybe its biggest.

She was on a par with Joan Crawford: strong, larger than life, infused with strange mannerisms, easy to make fun of, even in the early days. She preened and swaggered and smoked her way through chains of cigarettes. She made many, many movies in which she committed some transgressive deed and then was punished for it. She went from passionate to bitchy and, in her older days, made parodies of the persona that in some ways had long been a parody; she played clown hags, homicidal maniacs, witches -- more of the same.

"She brought the modern woman onto the screen," film critic Elliott Sirkin has told me, but perhaps it would be more accurate to describe her as pre-modern: In her life, as in so many of her films, she had a fine career but was spectacularly unlucky in almost every other way, paying in full -- as was expected of a woman in those days -- for wanting to have an identity of her own. She avoided women, mowed down four husbands; her daughter left home to marry at 16 and then wrote a very tough book about her.

Her assumed attitude of scorn, indignation, hauteur, plain old meanness was: Go ahead, unjust world! Do what you will with me! I may have to take it, but I don't have to like it!

American women in the '40s ate it up. They were her avid fans. Perhaps she reflected the dynamic in their lives.

Then, in the early '60s, when Davis was in her fifties, Betty Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique," and many women, almost overnight, got another idea: Wait a minute, unjust world! I don't have to take it! Instead of shattering the family china while having yet another tantrum, I can go to community college, join a women's group, get a job. Pitching fits went out of style. Davis and Crawford stopped being idolized by women and slid over into the province of camp.

This book is made up primarily of quotations from personal interviews with Davis and those who knew her. Charlotte Chandler first met Davis in 1980. The actress was in her seventies and would die in 1989. It was Davis who telephoned Chandler, Davis who wished her personal biography to be written, to be a "summing up."

But even in the first interview her quotes have a canned feeling: "Do you want to know the secret of my success? Easy. Brown mascara." And later, "The way I see it, in my films, drinking is the action and smoking is the reaction." Or, "Being hysterical is like having an orgasm. It's good for you." Or, "In selecting husbands, I confused muscle with strength. They didn't look alike, but in many respects, they were the same man. All my husbands were canaries. Tweet, tweet, tweet!" And even more chillingly, "Until your children hate you, you haven't been a good parent." (This was a few years before her daughter told the world what she thought of her mother in "My Mother's Keeper," a companion piece, in many ways, to "Mommie Dearest" by the put-upon daughter of Joan Crawford.)

Davis refers to herself as a "country mouse," a "homebody," someone who likes to dust. Other people had different opinions of her. "She seemed to feel she had a license to be rude," actress Celeste Holm remembers. "Well, maybe she did. I thought it was bad manners on her part. I never understand all the Bette Davis nuts. I think she was over-acclaimed, over-praised, over-indulged." But Holm and producer Joshua Logan are about the only ones here who say anything negative about the legendary star.

Fortunately or unfortunately, fame is fleeting by nature. At a nightclub, Davis once saw the Beatles, still young and darling and together, and went over to ask for their autographs. Not one of them recognized her. The homebody who liked to dust was livid.

You can't say this book was really "written" -- again, it's mainly a compilation of quotations, mostly by Davis. If you believe life really is a faintly grotesque, camp entertainment, you may like it. If you're a little more serious or crave reason and intelligence, you can pass this one up.

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· Jonathan Yardley finds Willie Morris.

· And spring books are previewed.