I, Bette Davis

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. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Davis replied, not a woman to be tricked into anything.

‘Who do you think made you a star?’ Duval-Smith persisted.

‘Me myself,’ said Davis. ‘And my sweat, blood and tears…’

‘Nobody helped you?’

‘Beyond that, there were the fabulous public relations people. They presented us to the public.’

Davis had a point. The Hollywood studios invented PR in the 1930s, taking over their stars and remodelling them for public consumption. But it was daring of her to ignore the directors, producers, money men behind all those films. Nothing was going to get in the way of her achievement, or her passion for motion pictures. ‘I loathe theatre,’ she said. ‘I loathe the life.’ Adding, as if we hadn’t already understood her point, ‘I loathe sitting around all day and wanting to work all night.’

There’s something about this interview (first broadcast on the old Home Service in 1963 and aired again on Radio 4 Extra on Tuesday) that’s so raw, so bristling with energy and life. It was startling, and absolutely gripping. Davis, who died in 1989, refused to be drawn on her private life (those four marriages) or that infamously venomous relationship with Joan Crawford, her co-star in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? But you don’t feel cheated by her unwillingness to confide.