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Bette Davis and Gay Men

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Shortly after I came out of the closet, but before I became a film buff, friends insisted I rent certain films that I had then not seen including All About Eve, Auntie Mame, The Women and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Within a short space of time, I did just that, enjoying all those films, save the last one.

While I appreciated Bette Davis in All About Eve, in Baby Jane, I found her performance over-the-top and irritating. It seemed a far cry from one of my first experiences of her work, the under-appreciated, well-acted 1987 film, The Whales of August.

In Baby Jane, it seems Director Robert Aldrich so delighted in Davis’ bitchy performances from previous films that he wanted to make that quality define his lead. Other directors followed suit, with Roy Ward Baker‘s 1968 film The Anniversary portraying Davis as a dominating mother, manipulating her grown sons.  How far she had come from one of her best performances as Charlotte Vale in Now, Voyager who learned to break free from a mother who manipulated her!

Why is it that so many gay men prefer Bette Davis in her more bitchy roles to her more nuanced performances like that in Now, Voyager?  The “Eighteen Films Every Gay Men Should See” in The Unofficial Gay Manual include Baby Jane and All About Eve, ignoring such films where directors show her only briefly (if at all) as rude or intemperate.

To be sure, Davis demonstrates considerable range in Eve, yet when my peers talk about that latter flick, they focus on her most cutting lines and bitchiest scenes.  As I mentioned in a prior post, we seem to “discount (or downright ignore) the vulnerability she so masterfully portrays, a vulnerability that often puts that bitchiness into a psychological context.”

All too many of us prefer Bette Davis when she becomes a caricature, expressing the worst stereotypes of feminine behavior in exaggerated forms. As I work my way through a collection of her early films, I rediscover an actress who practically portrays the full gamut of feminine emotion.

Why is it that so many of us seem to prefer the dark side of femininity which our peers so often caricature in their drag performances?

Yet, throughout her career, Bette Davis portrayed far more than that dark side. A quick review of her best performances shows a far broader range of femininity than that we see in drag shows. Take a gander at some of these flicks and you’ll see what a gifted actress Bette Davis was: Dark Victory, The Petrified Forest, Now, Voyager, All About Eve, The Virgin Queen, Jezebel, Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, The Corn is Green.

(Bear in mind that while the performances may often be iconic, the films aren’t always as good as their lead.)

Comments

  1. _Baby Jane_ is one of the great portraits of insanity in cinema. Yes, it’s starkly drawn. That’s the nature of horror films, especially psychological horror films. She achieved a really deep, convincing, twisted and pathetic (evoking pathos – remember your Aristotle) picture of madness. And the makeup/wig job was reportedly her idea!

    That’s how I justify admiring her _Baby Jane_ as art. Now, as to why gay men should be particularly associated or attached to it, I have no idea. Maybe it’s the whole feminine-pathos thing, the same reason gay men are supposed to be attached to Judy Garland.

  2. #1 cont – But with far more hostility and malice mixed in the pathos, of course.

    Is it because gay men really have more overbearing mothers, that many of us find dark, controlling and/or pathetic mother-figures fascinating? I don’t know. I’m not sure gay men’s mothers *are* more overbearing than straight men’s. A lot of straight men have very overbearing mothers. But perhaps gay men, on average, are more sensitive to it. Since gay men, on average, are probably a little more sensitive and feminine than the average straight man.

  3. Haven’t watched those others. The only Davis flick I’ve watched all the way through was Another Man’s Poison. My brother and I watched it on TCM one night during a drinking session on the patio. We loved it.

  4. Hey Daniel: Check out the movie “Mr. Skeffington” from NetFlix with Bette Davis and Claude Rains. Great movie with a Jewish theme. On the other hand, I just rented Bette movie where she gets a brain tumor–blanking on name. That one wasn’t as good. “Mr. Skeffington “is great, however. Also check out “Dead Ringer” featuring the cemetary at Washington Blvd and Normandie–excellent Bette Davis playing identical twins.

  6. She’ll tease you
    She’ll unease you
    Just to please ya
    She’s got Bette Davis eyes
    She’ll expose you, when she snows you
    She knows ya
    She’s got Bette Davis eyes

    Kim Carnes. . .AH THE 80’s

  8. Dan, you clearly know a lot more about film than I, but Bette Davis’ performances always leave me cold, unmoved and wanting to see anything with Kate Hepburn as an antidote. But for film savorists who are gay, she’s the grand dame. Someone commented that the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots would have been much bigger, more butch and successful if Bette Davis has died rather than Judy Garland the week prior. Later that year, a Bette Davis tribute drew one of the biggest crowds ever to the SF Film Festival.

    I think Bette’s still popular with gays because she acts the part of a movie star –self-absorbed, grandly dramatic in the face of self-created impossible positions, over-the-top emotions at the ready, dysfunction in hyperdrive and the tenacity to work at being relevant long after her NormaDesmond moments occur. For some gays, she’s us and our Patron Saint Most Accessible.

    The best line from a filmophile biography of Davis? “Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother, Ruthie. Bette demanded attention from birth, which led to her pursuing a career in acting.”

    Now, doesn’t that say legends?

  12. As an aside, both Davis and Crawford were to be reunited in a film after “Baby Jane.” But Crawford did not want to share billing and refused. The result? Davis got Olivia de Havilland under contract and renamed the film “Hush, Hush…Sweet Charlotte.”

    The film was done outside of Baton Rouge, so it is a true on-location film.

    Just asking to all my Southern sisters (Bruce, TGC et al) – which film do you most relate to as a Southerner of the following: Gone With the Wind, Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte?

    Would love to hear your feedback.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  15. How about Deliverance? (Kidding, just kidding.)

    Books that best capture the South? So many great ones. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of my all-time favorites. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, A Confederacy of Dunces, anything and everything by Mark Twain, Cormac McCarthy, Faulkner…

  16. #13 – Sorry, Matt, those slipped my mind. All good additions, though. One that I particularly like is “Fried Green Tomatoes,” since my parents both had families that ran restaurants in the South during the Depression.

    #15 – So, Iggy, do you squeal like a pig? 😉

    Just kidding. Also, speaking of Southern writers, don’t forget Alexandra Ripley, Flannery O’Connor and Tennessee Williams. All great ones.

    Now after all that reminiscing, I’m hankering for some BBQ in this cold weather.

    Regards,
    Peter H.