Mother Goddam : Bette Davis

With the ruefulness implicit in her title, but also with honesty and a bitchy bonhomie that seldom adorn such Sunset sagas, Bette Davis pictures herself as Mother Goddam, a tamable shrew who never found her Petruchio. Her four marriages suffered inevitably from income-patibility. In 1946, Bette Davis earned more ($328,000) than any other woman in the U.S.; one ex-husband, clearing out with the pretty nursemaid, even sued for alimony. Says she: "The only future marriage I would even remotely consider would be with Paul Getty." But she admits that her own rapturous intensity simply "exhausted" most of her mates. "Many men." she protests, "find their fathers in women. I am the least likely father symbol extant."