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“... Ilearned​ only recently, from Charlotte Chandler’s biography, that Bette Davis had taken her first name from a Balzac novel, not knowing, apparently, that the character in question was ‘rather a bitch’. All too appropriate, we might think, since Davis referred to the people she played in movies as ‘all those bitches I had to take everywhere with me ...”

“... me as good as anyone’s. Now Picador have published Blue in Chicago, a collection of stories by Bette Howland, born in 1937, a Jewish writer from a working-class neighbourhood in Chicago. She married and divorced Howard Howland, a Wasp whose family came over on the Mayflower, leaving her a single mother to two boys; she was taken up by Saul Bellow, who ...”

“... who was just as comfortable writing for the Times. His books include studies of those gay icons Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe, but he also published works on exorcism and Israel. Sometimes his work wore trousers, sometimes a frock. The first version of Drag appeared in 1968. Times have changed. Not only is popular culture now rich in images of ...”

“... its decor. The rococo had perhaps stronger sexual than political associations: Balzac’s Cousine Bette of 1846 records the use of the ‘Pompadour style’ by the eminent decorator Grindot for the love nest of the repellent bourgeois Crevel and the mercenary and promiscuous Madame Marneffe.But it could also be merely feminine. In Thackeray’s The ...”

“... was probably O’Grady we wanted to hear from. There was no shortage of available guests, though: Bette Bourne, best known then for appearances with the troupe Bloolips, said yes, and so did two members of La Gran Scena Opera Company. We were hoping for a certain amount of technical discussion, perhaps even scraps of a masterclass, and had borrowed a screen ...”

“... the sight of its putative leader being upstaged by Errol Flynn (Santa Fe Trail, 1940), stood up by Bette Davis (Dark Victory, 1939), outdrawn by assorted celluloid cowboys (1936-57, passim) and out-acted by a chimpanzee (Bedtime for Bonzo, 1951). Here in the United States we cannot, alas, share the joke. For one thing, a Federal Election Commission ruling has ...”

“... women’, to whom women in the audience could relate; and ‘exaggerated women’ in the Bette Davis mould. Barton suggests that Lamarr falls into the ‘fantasy’ category and that her dreamlike image ‘threatened to overwhelm her reality’. It certainly threatened the lives of her children. Her daughter said that when she was packed off to ...”

“... O’Hara, named ‘Pansy’ by Miz Peggy throughout her manuscript, ever be cast for the film? Bette Davis was thought of, to Bette Davis’s disgust. Norma Shearer was thought of. Eventually, eventually, Vivien Leigh was chosen by Selznick. She is said by Miss Edwards to have looked extraordinarily like Margaret ...”

“... winning out against brittle sophistication.The supreme exponent of brittle sophistication was Bette Davis, and for my aunties in particular she was someone to emulate. With her clipped tones, raised eyebrow and mocking smile Bette was a standard-bearer for shop assistants everywhere and in the 1940s you could find her ...”

“... Bogart repeating his classic 1936 role, Henry Fonda doing Leslie Howard, and Lauren Bacall as Bette Davis. The show went well. Bogart, always a bit of a snob, and once chucked out of Andover, was impressed that Dunne had been to Williams College. He invited the nobody kid to a party at his home in the Holmby Hills. Dunne knew he was out of his element ...”

“... citizens come and go, having emptied their honest bladders. But nothing. Not a nibble. Probably a Bette Davis movie on the television or something. But it’s very, very quiet. When suddenly the doorway is darkened by the massive form of Mr Right. HENRY: Mr Right? CHARLES: Mr Right. Absolutely dead-centre me. Tall, bronzed. Crisp, hyacinthine curls. Built ...”

“... famous persona, are mingling, too, with many who are long dead. Ronald Reagan and Meryl Streep, Bette Davis and Robert De Niro jostle closely together in several large spaces, chambers for different sins in the afterlife – for vamping, sharp-shooting, taxi-driving – while a flickering crowd comes and goes in an endless loop on screens and monitors. The ...”

“... Exaggerated women is the category with the biggest stars: ‘ferocious women like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and Katharine Hepburn’, on the one hand, and, on the other, excessively noble women like Loretta Young and Greer Garson. Garson was preceded by Norma Shearer and followed Deborah Kerr – ‘and lest anyone think we have left such ...”

“... to Hollywood for the first time in the Sixties, when Robert Aldrich, resisting the advances of Bette Davis, asked her to repeat her portrayal of June Buckridge in the film version of Frank Marcus’s The Killing of Sister George. Sister George was an important turning-point. Her career had brought her to the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham, and Mother ...”

“... You may not like the book, but you will be impressed by the index. There’s Bette Davis and Joe Davis and Sammy Davis Jr. There’s Basil Dean and James Dean, Jack Warner of Dock Green and Jack Warner of Hollywood. Jayne Mansfield lines up alongside Mantovani, and Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery is discovered between Maria Montez and Dudley Moore ...”