Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Famous Members of Their Entourages (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) (98 page)

“I was paid $35,000, little Ronnie $1,258.”

Gore was astonished that after all these years, Bette still remembered the exact figure Reagan had earned on that film. “The joke was on him,” she continued. “Ronnie went through the entire movie not knowing he had been cast as a homosexual.”

“Well, Bette, did you realize you were playing a lesbian?” Gore provocatively asked.

“What in hell do you mean?” she retorted. “I married George Brent in that movie.”

“Please, I watched
Dark Victory
the other night,” Gore said. “It’s obvious that Geraldine Fitzgerald is in love with you. How could you not have noticed the lesbian sub-text? Just listen to Tallulah Bankhead sound off on the subject. When she did
Dark Victory
on Broadway in ’34, she told me she definitely was aware she was playing a lesbian.”

“Bankhead should know all about playing a lesbian. As for Reagan, he is a BAD ACTOR. Jack Warner wanted him to play opposite me in
This Our Life
(1942). I nixed him in favor of George Brent, who was also my lover off screen as well.”

***

On the night of April 20, 1956,
The Catered Affair
was previewed at the Fox Beverly Theater in Beverly Hills, garnering mostly positive reviews. Many critics, however, thought Bette was far too regal a character to be convincing as a Bronx housewife.

Bette thought
The Catered Affair
would become one of her more remarkable achievements, a showcase for her versatility on the screen.” Her heart was broken when the film didn’t duplicate Borg-nine’s success with
Marty
, and she didn’t walk off with another Oscar,” Gore said.

[When Reagan functioned as governor of California (1967-1975), he told certain friends, “I don’t care for the Lady (i.e., Bette Davis) personally, professionally, or politically.”

His friend, actor-dancer George Murphy, repeated his comments. But over the years, both Reagan and Davis softened their positions on each other...somewhat
.

In 1987, when Bette was honored in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center for her lifetime achievements, Reagan paid her an ambiguous tribute. “Bette Davis, if I’d gotten roles as good as yours and been able to do them as good as you, I might never have left Hollywood.”

In spite of that, in 1989, Davis rejected Reagan as a presenter at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City. The event had been staged in her honor
.

However, after he left his office as U.S. president in 1989, she said, “Reagan was not a very talented actor, but he gave a very good job as president, and he made us all very patriotic. I miss him.”]

One night, Bette invited Gore to her home for dinner. At the time, she was still married to Gary Merrill. He’d played her lover in
All About Eve
. Celeste Holm, one of the film’s co-stars, claimed that “Gary and Bette spent more time banging off screen than emoting on screen.”

When Gore arrived at Bette’s home, Merrill was not there. Neither was her daughter, Barbara Davis Sherry, who apparently was visiting a girlfriend’s home.
[In 1985, Davis’s daughter, using her married name (B.D. Hyman), published a highly critical and highly controversial memoir of her mother
, My Mother’s Keeper
, which chronicled Davis as an overbearing and emotionally destructive alcoholic, and detailed a wrenchingly difficult mother-daughter relationship.]

“It was a night to remember,” Gore later said. “It was obvious that the Merrill/Davis marriage was coming apart, and I heard plenty about it from a raging Bette.”

“He’s drunk all the time,” she charged. “Not only that, but he doesn’t satisfy me in bed. I demand satisfaction from a man—or else out the door he goes.”

“When Gary is bored and wants to stir things up, and for no apparent reason, he will physically assault me or my daughter, B.D. Once time, Gary came home and found B.D. visiting with her girlfriend from school. He beat up both of them, and I had to pay off the family with my own money. Before they took the money, they insisted on having their daughter examined by a doctor to determine that she had not been sexually assaulted by Gary. Not only that, but when he comes into the house, he heads for the bedroom and pulls off all his clothes. He walks around the house nude, not only in front of B.D., but also in front of visitors.”

After Gore and Bette were served dessert, Merrill stormed into the house. He was dead drunk.

“Gary, this is Mr. Gore Vidal, a distinguished novelist who’s writing the screenplay for
The Catered Affair,”
Bette said.

“I’ve heard of you,” Merrill said, not bothering to shake Gore’s hand. “You’re in that Christopher Isherwood, Tennessee Williams set, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged,” Gore responded.

Merrill went over to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff drink before disappearing into the downstairs bathroom.

Bette and Gore adjourned to her living room, where a maid served coffee.

In a few minutes, Merrill emerged from the bathroom, “stark, raving jaybird naked,” as Gore later expressed it. “He wasn’t the first man I’d seen in the nude, so I didn’t faint on sight. I think he’d been playing with himself to look more impressive.”

“Gary, I suggest you wear a towel in front of our guest,” Bette enunciated in her most “socially proper” voice.

“I don’t think this faggot wants me to wear a towel, now, do you, Mr. Distinguished Writer?” Merrill asked.

“It’s your home and you can suit yourself,” Gore said.

“In that case, I have a request for you, Mr. Distinguished Writer.” Then Merrill’s face turned bitter. “Mr. Faggot, why don’t you suck my dick?” Then he shook his penis near Gore’s face. Gore studied it rather clinically. “Give me a raincheck,” he said, rising from his chair and heading for the hallway. He called back to Bette, thanking her for the dinner.

Before he could leave, Bette and Merrill were engaged in a knockout fight. He did not come to her rescue, because he believed that this physical violence was merely a form of foreplay.

As Bette’s biographer, Barbara Leaming, wrote, “Bette often sought to provoke Gary to the physical violence she appeared to confuse with ardor. She goaded him with reminders that he failed to earn as much money as she did at acting, and with merciless mockery of his inability to satisfy her in bed. She would shove and push at Merrill until he knocked her to the floor with his fist. Whereupon Bette would let loose blood-curdling shrieks of pain, shouting ‘DON’T HIT ME!’”

In 1959, at MGM, Gore was asked to adapt a literary work into a movie script. In this case, it involved a reworking of
The Scapegoat
, a crime thriller originally written (and published in 1957) by the English author, Daphne du Maurier. MGM’s intention involved using it as a vehicle co-starring Bette Davis in a supporting role opposite the supremely talented English actor, London-born Alec Guinness.

[In time, Guinness would be best known for his six collaborations with director/producer David Lean, including
The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Dr. Zhivago.
At the time of her collaboration with him, Bette had seen only one of Guinness’s movies, the 1949 black comedy
, Kind Hearts and Coronets
, in which Guinness had interpreted the roles of eight different characters. That film’s director had been Robert Hamer.]

The Scapegoat’s
plot involved a French nobleman who encounters his exact lookalike (a French-speaking Brit) and, through a trick, trades places with him. The unwitting British lookalike eventually learns that the Frenchman has murdered his wife and wants his British “twin” to be blamed and convicted for the crime.

Davis had reluctantly agreed to play a supporting role because she needed the money. She was cast as the nobleman’s formidable, overbearing, and dope-ridden mother,
La comtesse de Gué
, and her scenes would depict her in bed.

After Bette was introduced to Guinness, she reported to Gore, “I find him overbearing, egotistical, snotty, and a dreadful actor.” As for
The Scapegoat’s
director, Robert Hamer, she said, “The son of a bitch was drunk when I met him.”

Bette also complained to Gore that when she agreed to her involvement in the picture, she had been promised Cary Grant as the male lead, but he’d turned the role down.

After having drunkenly ventilated her complaints to Gore, Davis was horrified when she ran into him the following day. She’d just learned that Guinness was also the co-executive producer of the film, and that as such, he’d have enormous control over the final scenes and the editing. She’d later accuse Guinness of “maliciously leaving out my best scenes, which ended up on the cutting room floor.”