Bette Davis Net Worth
Bette Davis had an estimated net worth of $2.5 Million at the time of her death according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Who Inherited Bette Davis Wealth?
Bette left a $1 million estate, according to her last will and testament. She left Michael Merrill her adopted son, the majority of her estate. Her close friend and personal assistant Kathryn Sermack was the other beneficiary.
Who is Bette Davis?
Ruth Elizabeth “Bette” Davis was an American actress with a 50-year career and more than 100 performing credits.
She was a well-known actress who specialized in playing characters who were cynical and sarcastic in a variety of film genres, such as historical dramas, suspense thrillers, romantic comedies, and modern crime melodramas. Her most well-liked roles, though, were in love stories. She was the first actor to receive ten Oscar nominations and win two of them.
Bette Davis Early Life
Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as “Betty”, was born on April 5, 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Her parents were Ruth Augusta and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney and former law student from Augusta, Maine. Barbara Harriet was younger sister to Davis. Following their parents’ divorce in 1915, Davis and her sister Barbara spent three years as boarders at Crestalban in Lanesborough, Massachusetts.
Bette Davis Illness
Despite a protracted period of poor health, she continued acting in films and on television despite her career going through several phases of eclipse. After receiving a breast cancer diagnosis in 1983, Davis had a mastectomy.
She had four strokes two weeks after having surgery, which left her speech slurred and caused paralysis in her left arm and the left side of her face. With the help of her personal assistant Kathryn Sermak, she started a protracted course of physical therapy and partially recovered from the paralysis.
Bette Davis Death
In 1989, Davis passed out during the American Cinema Awards and she later learned that her cancer had come back. Her health quickly declined while she was in Spain, but she had recovered enough to travel there and receive recognition at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. She left for France because she was too weak to make the lengthy trip back to the United State.
On October 6, 1989, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, she passed away at the age of 81-year-old age.
At Burbank Studio’s stage 18, where a work light was turned on to signify the end of production, a memorial service was held by invitation only.Along with her mother Ruthie and sister Bobby, she was buried in the Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her name was written in capital letters.
Bette Davis Love Life
She was married four times, divorcing three and widowed once.
Bettes relationship history according to Who’s Dated Who.
Bette Davis was previously married to Gary Merrill (1950 – 1960), William Grant Sherry (1945 – 1950), Arthur Farnsworth (i) (1940 – 1943) and Harmon Nelson (1932 – 1939).
Bette Davis was in relationships with Franchot Tone (1939), George Brent (1939 – 1940) and William Wyler (1937 – 1938).
Bette Davis had encounters with Robert S. Taplinger (1940), Howard Hughes (1938), Robert Aldrich and Anatole Litvak.
Bette Davis Children
Bette Davis was known to have one biological child Barbara Davis. Then adopted Margot Merrill and Michael Merrill.
Bette Davis relationship with Barbara Davis Hyman
Bette Davis relationship with her daughter Barbara Davis Hyman ” B.D. Hyman” deteriorated when Hyman became a born-again Christian and attempted to persuade Davis to follow suit.
In 1985 upon her return from England to film the Agatha Christie mystery Murder with Mirrors , she learned that Hyman had published a book “My Mother’s Keeper” in which she chronicled a difficult mother-daughter relationship and depicted scenes of Davis’s overbearing and drunken behavior.
Despite the acrimony of their divorce years earlier, Gary Merrill defended Davis. Interviewed by CNN, Merrill said that Hyman was motivated by “cruelty and greed”. Davis’s adopted son Michael Merrill ended contact with Hyman and refused to speak to her again. Davis also disinherited her.
Bette Davis Career
After performing on Broadway in New York Davis relocated to Hollywood in 1930 at 22 years to chase her career as a film actress.
She achieved her critical breakthrough as a rude waitress in Of Human Bondage (1934) after a run of poor movies, despite not being one of the three Academy Award contenders for Best Actress that year. Davis received her first nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of a down-and-out actress in Dangerous (1935), which she went on to win the following year. Although she lost the court battle, her 1937 effort to leave Warner Brothers Studio signaled the start of more than a decade as one of the most renowned leading ladies in American cinema.
The same year, she starred in Marked Woman, one of her most important early films. Davis was nominated for Best Actress for the first of five films in a row, the others being Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942). Davis won a second Academy Award for Best Actress in 1942 for her performance as a resolute 1850s southern belle in Jezebel (1938).