Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
“I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.” -Bette Davis (via)

“I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.”

-Bette Davis (via)

“Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why Joan Crawford always plays ladies.” -Bette Davis 

“Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why Joan Crawford always plays ladies.”

-Bette Davis 

Another blooper reel (from Warner Brothers Studios) of actors cussing & flubbing their lines, this one featuring Bogart & Bacall, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Ronald Reagan, and James Cagney, among others.

“I’ll admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.” -Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) (via) Sound advice for any Friday night.

“I’ll admit I may have seen better days, but I’m still not to be had for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut.”

-Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) (via)

Sound advice for any Friday night.

“If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it.” -Bette Davis (1959, photo by Hank Walker for LIFE)

“If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it.”

-Bette Davis (1959, photo by Hank Walker for LIFE)

An Old Hollywood blooper reel (circa 1935-1945) featuring the very amusing Bette Davis, in which we learn that while “goddamn” is one of her favorite words, “son of a bitch” is Bette’s expletive of choice.

Other blooper reels previously posted here (Carole Lombard & William Powell) & here (Bogart & Bacall, Jimmy Stewart, etc.)

Bette Davis inFog Over Frisco (1934, dir. William Dieterle) “Now darling, don’t start moralizing.”

Bette Davis inFog Over Frisco (1934, dir. William Dieterle)

“Now darling, don’t start moralizing.”

“I have always been driven by some distant music—a battle hymn no doubt—for I have been at war from the beginning. I rode into the field with sword gleaming and standard flying. I was going to conquer the world.” -Bette Davis, in her 1962 autobiography “The Lonely Life”

“I have always been driven by some distant music—a battle hymn no doubt—for I have been at war from the beginning. I rode into the field with sword gleaming and standard flying. I was going to conquer the world.”

-Bette Davis, in her 1962 autobiography “The Lonely Life”

Bette Davis (with cigarette drooping from her mouth, naturally) with her maid Marie on the Warner Brothers lot (1943) “It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies. No one has ever understood the sweetness of my joy at the end of a good day’s work. I guess I threw everything else down the drain. I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.”

Bette Davis (with cigarette drooping from her mouth, naturally) with her maid Marie on the Warner Brothers lot (1943)

“It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies. No one has ever understood the sweetness of my joy at the end of a good day’s work. I guess I threw everything else down the drain. I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.”

Publicity shot of Bette Davis registering to vote at 20th Century Fox studios (1964) On contemporary politics: “But my God, the witch hunt today! Is there any human being alive who hasn’t done something bad in their youth - like maybe smoked marijuana once? And [Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan Supreme Court nominee who withdrew from consideration when his use of marijuana while in his mid-30s came to light] found it necessary to admit it! My God! It would be like Mr. Jack Kennedy sitting down and listing all the women he knew!” -Davis in 1987 San Francisco Chronicle interview

Publicity shot of Bette Davis registering to vote at 20th Century Fox studios (1964)

On contemporary politics:

“But my God, the witch hunt today! Is there any human being alive who hasn’t done something bad in their youth - like maybe smoked marijuana once? And [Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan Supreme Court nominee who withdrew from consideration when his use of marijuana while in his mid-30s came to light] found it necessary to admit it! My God! It would be like Mr. Jack Kennedy sitting down and listing all the women he knew!”

-Davis in 1987 San Francisco Chronicle interview