Kate Chisholm

I, Bette Davis

Plus: two award-winning plays on the World Service that crackle with energy

Bette Davis, 1940 (Photo: STF/AFP/Getty) 
issue 18 April 2015

It was called Frankly Speaking and by golly it was. The great screen actress Bette Davis was being interviewed by not one but two men: George Coulouris, with whom she co-starred in Hollywood, and a BBC producer. ‘It’s a little sad for some of us who adore your work that a lot of your best performances have been in fairly trivial films,’ said the producer, Peter Duval-Smith, as if to tempt Davis into dishing the dirt on the directors who made her what she became.

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