They just don’t make ’em like they used to!
The original diva, Bette Davis, is being honored starting Thursday with a 42-cent commemorative stamp. The stamp features the actress as she appeared in the 1950 film All About Eve. In the classic movie, she portrays an aging stage actress defending her career from a pushy young starlet.
Davis starred in more than one hundred films since her early start, during which she won acclaim for playing tough unsympathetic characters, and during her career she was nominated for more than ten of her roles. She won an Oscar in 1935 for Dangerous and in 1938 for Jezebel.
Aging with grace and style, she used the experience her years had earned her to portray a tormented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, garnering yet another Oscar nomination.
Stirring up drama with a style that Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton could only dream of, Davis was rumored to be occasionally difficult to work with and was even involved in a feud with fellow diva Joan Crawford, which both denied.
They were probably lesbian lovers secretly!
Davis died in France in 1989, choosing the epitaph “She did it the hard way” to celebrate her perseverance and success as a woman in a male-dominated industry. She was, after all, the first woman to be honored with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the first woman to be president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Her composure, strength, and inexplicable appeal will always be remembered and is even honored in song in the Kim Carnes song Bette Davis Eyes, which was just covered by Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester.
Her son, Michael Merrill, said of the postage stamp commemoration, “She would have been tremendously thrilled.”
Live on, diva!
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