![]() ![]() She thought there was something second-rate about not having a mother, that she wasn’t good enough-not altogether the woman she should be, not quite the actress people kept telling her she was.Ī movie role was a nice coat to slip into, to disguise, not reveal, who she was. Let’s say that ‘poor’ is something I understand. All right, let’s just say I had a terrible childhood. ![]() She found it a bit embarrassing herself and in self-defense made her childhood a taboo subject for much of her life. There is nobody to explain Barbara Stanwyck. Pop psychology wants us to understand Bette Davis in terms of her stage mother, Katharine Hepburn by explaining her doctor father. The norm of her childhood was struggle, confusion, and pain, but she learned not to blame anybody. I just wanted to survive and eat, and have a nice coat, she’d say late in life. ![]() Not that it led to any folie de grandeur. In her daydreams her parents had been rich, but somebody had got it all mixed up. To assume made-up characters more raffish, witty, and lovely than her own self made hurts and failings go away. ![]() To crawl into fictional skins, to step into the pool of fused, dedicated light and hear a director’s call for action suspended the banality of living. To get up in the morning and, on a soundstage, to become more intense and riveting than the reflection in the bathroom mirror fulfilled her deepest existential need. Acknowledgments Chapter 1 I Hope She Lives ![]()
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