In the late eighties, I was sad to think that people who knew Bette Davis would think of her only as she was then. Having suffered a mastectomy and a stroke in tandem, she recovered, but spent the last few years of her life, when she wasn't taking the occasional t.v. movie role, as a skeletal, chain-smoking, braying old bat on "Donahue" and "The Tonight Show" and the like. Some twenty years have passed since then, but this book brought that version of Bette Davis screaming right back.
Much like her first autobiography, The Lonely Life, although choppier and less informative, this book shows Davis for the prickly, difficult person she had to have been. She is unapologetically demanding and particular. Here's my favorite example: she was in a t.v. movie called "Skyward," about a paraplegic teenager, and the main character was played by an actual paraplegic teenager, Suzy Gilstrap, in her first acting role. Here's Miss Davis' take: A real paraplegic, Suzy Gilstrap, played the part. I totally disapprove of this kind of realism. I thought the film would be better served by giving this opportunity, a super acting part, to an actress who could act as if she were paralyzed. I also felt it was cruel, if not exploitative, to expose Suzy to a new world which, from a talent standpoint, it was obvious she could never be a part of. My director and producer totally disagreed with me. They were enraptured at the idea of casting a person who was actually handicapped as the paraplegic. I mean, WOW. Listen to what she's saying there: Suzy can't act, I argued against her casting, a REAL actress would be better at playing a paraplegic THAN AN ACTUAL PARAPLEGIC. That is some unvarnished nastiness there.
That said, that's exactly what I wanted and expected from this book. You want Bette Davis to be a bossy diva, and she doesn't even try to hide it. She also covers her reaction to Kim Carnes' 1981 hit song "Bette Davis Eyes," and briefly flames her daughter B.D., who became a born-again Christian (she still preaches; look it up) with a controlling, older husband and who wrote My Mother's Keeper, a book condemning Davis as a horrible mother, which was sort of a Mommie Dearest-lite. Davis breezes through it all with her usual style.