31 Facts About Bette Davis

1. In 1962, Bette Davis became the first person to secure 10 Academy Award nominations for acting.

2. Bette Davis became the first person to earn five consecutive Academy Award nominations for acting, all in the Best Actress category.

3. In 1977, Bette Davis became the first woman to be honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award.

4. Bette Davis appeared in the television film As Summers Die, and in Lindsay Anderson's film The Whales of August (1987), in which she played the blind sister of Lillian Gish.

5. In 1977, Bette Davis became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.

6. Bette Davis was well received, and was invited to tour Australia with the similarly themed Bette Davis in Person and on Film; its success allowed her to take the production to the United Kingdom.

7. In 1961, Bette Davis opened in the Broadway production The Night of the Iguana to mostly mediocre reviews, and left the production after four months due to "chronic illness".

8. Outside of acting and politics, Bette Davis was an active and practicing Episcopalian.

9. In 1952, Bette Davis appeared in a Broadway revue, Two's Company directed by Jules Dassin.

10. In 1948, Bette Davis was cast in the melodrama Winter Meeting.

11. Bette Davis was offered a role in a film version of the Virginia Kellogg prison drama Women Without Men.

12. In 1945, Bette Davis married artist William Grant Sherry, her third husband, who worked as a masseur.

13. Bette Davis felt that Hopkins tried to upstage her throughout the film.

14. Bette Davis performed a novelty song, "They're Either Too Young or Too Old", which became a hit record after the film's release.

15. Bette Davis showed little interest in the film Now, Voyager, until Hal Wallis advised her that female audiences needed romantic dramas to distract them from the reality of their lives.

16. Bette Davis starred in three movies in 1941, the first being The Great Lie, with George Brent.

17. Bette Davis rejected the idea of her being just "a figurehead only".

18. In January 1941, Bette Davis became the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but antagonized the committee members with her brash manner and radical proposals.

19. Bette Davis refused, as she had met Arthur Farnsworth, a New England innkeeper.

20. Bette Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite.

21. Bette Davis began work on Marked Woman, portraying a prostitute in a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano.

22. Bette Davis explained her viewpoint to a journalist: "I knew that, if I has appeared in any more mediocre pictures, I would have no career left worth fighting for.

23. Bette Davis remarked, "If anybody wants to put me into perpetual servitude on the basis of that remuneration, I shall prepare to consider it.

24. Bette Davis mocked Davis' description of her contract as "slavery" by stating, incorrectly, that she was being paid $1,350 per week.

25. In 1930, 22-year-old Bette Davis moved to Hollywood to screen test for Universal Studios.

26. In 1929, Bette Davis was chosen by Blanche Yurka to play Hedwig, the character she had seen Entwistle play in The Wild Duck.

27. Bette Davis auditioned for George Cukor's stock theater company in Rochester, New York; although he was not very impressed, he gave Davis her first paid acting assignment—a one-week stint playing the part of a chorus girl in the play Broadway.

28. In 1921, Ruth Bette Davis moved to New York City with her daughters, where she worked as a portrait photographer.

29. In 1999, Bette Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.

30. Bette Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

31. Bette Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative and confrontational.