[Name Redacted]’s Reviews > Bette Davis: A Biography > Status Update

VERY glad I picked up Leaming's biography. Most of the others are straight hagiographies or salacious exploitation material -- Leaming just gives you thoroughly-researched, exhaustively-documented facts. And the fact is that Davis was a deeply troubled woman who suffered from the consequences of a tumultuous childhood with an absentee father + a manipulative, suffocating mother...& took it out on EVERYONE around her.

This is painful. Every other bio of Bette Davis I've read, including the one about her rivalry with Joan Crawford, takes Davis' public word as gospel...except it turns out that what Davis publicly said often contradicted the facts AND what she wrote/said in private. We have the receipts. This is no hagiography, just an unflinching look at who she was. It's not pretty, just sad.