It's Not Over Till the Fat Lady Writes Her Memoirs

As the foregoing makes reasonably clear, Zsa Zsa Gabor is an idiot and her book is unbelievably stupid. But it does have one thing going for it: it is at least a self-contained unit. By this I mean that Zsa Zsa's poignantly imbecilic book did not inspire her daughter Francesca Hilton to go out and write a second imbecilic book (Magyar Mommie Dearest) refuting her mother's dewy-eyed recollection of events, nor did it inspire any of her numerous husbands to go out and write books (How Rosy Was My Ruby When Her Sausage Was So Spicy) refuting their daughter's version of events. Zsa Zsa's book is probably the last we'll be hearing from or about Zsa Zsa.

How different is the case of Bette Davis. Here we have an incredibly talented actress, a winner of every acting award imaginable, the object of almost universal admiration, a woman who was clearly everything Zsa Zsa was not: gifted, intelligent, thin and not related to Eva. Yet, just like Zsa Zsa, as soon as Bette takes her pen to paper, she feels compelled to make a complete fool of herself in public.

"I cannot linger with Persian subtlety on the rim of a rose," Davis writes in her hopeless 1962 autobiography The Lonely Life. "I must suck it dry and move on."

Ignoring for the moment Bette's Omar Khayyamesque prose, we see in this statement the actress's unequivocal attitude toward her myriad of husbands, her children, her co-workers and even her doting public. Don't ask me to do you any favors because I've got other roses to suck dry.

The revised 1990 paperback version of The Lonely Life is an astonishing book for 10 reasons:

1) It contains a truckload of lies about her relationship with her husbands and her children.

2) It contains lines like: "I was always eager to salt a good stew," which presumably describes her relationship with fourth husband Gary Merrill.

3) It contains a few additional chapters, tacked onto the book just before she died in 1989, to let Bette defend herself against charges leveled by her despicable daughter B.D. Hyman, in the 1985 book My Mother's Keeper, that she was a bitch on wheels.

4) It contains a tasteful little epilogue by Bette's personal assistant Kathryn Sermak reminding everyone what a bitch that daughter B.D. was.

5) It contains a "Memorial" section in which all the people who weren't present at Bette's funeral service get to read what David Hartman had to say about her.

6) It contains all the lyrics from the song "I Wish You Love," which Davis herself had recorded--and, yes, this version was played at Davis's funeral.

7) It contains a reproduction of a handwritten letter Bette wrote to her

mother.

8) It only costs $5.95 in Canada.

9) It doesn't have even one picture of B.D. in it, not even a baby picture, long before she grew up to be the vindictive, mud-slinging daughter-from-hell who just about killed her mother--and probably did it deliberately considering that she published My Mother's Keeper not long after Bette's mastectomy.

10) It's written with Persian subtlety and sucks dry.

Incidentally, one of the reasons Bette had to go back and add those extra chapters is because in 1962, when B.D. was still in high school, Mom had unwisely written this about her offspring: "Brimming over with joy and enthusiasm and a love of her horses that is now centered on her very own mare, Stoney-brook, she is utterly trustworthy and responsible. She is a young woman of whom I am proud."

Foolishly, Davis had also written: "If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent. My children will tell you that I haven't made it easy. I believe, if home is not sometimes a jungle, they will eventually be unfit for the outside world."

Apparently, B.D. was more than prepared for the outside world, because by the time she'd grown up and turned Stoney-brook into glue, she was ready to tear Mom to pieces in My Mother's Keeper. In addition to calling her mother a slut, a drunk, a child abuser, a liar and a woman known to appear at the top of the stairs during a party in a see-through nightie and tell the assembled throng below that she would like a glass of warm milk, B.D. (does this stand for Bondage & Discipline?) was ladylike enough to publish the book while Mom was still alive. Thus, although My Mother's Keeper lacks the riveting clothes-hanger scenes that make Christina Crawford's Mommie Dearest so appealing, it makes up for that by being published soon after mom had a mastectomy and her heart went on the fritz.

Keep up the good work, B.D.

What's really nice about the Davis Family Chronicles is the Rashomon Effect, where, with each successive memoir by each dysfunctional family member, a clearer picture of the truth emerges. First, Bette writes her autobiography telling the world that her husbands were pigs but that she was just swell. Then B.D. publishes her autobiography telling everyone that Mom's fourth husband, Gary Merrill, used to stroll around the house sipping martinis stark naked when she was a little kid, scaring the hell out of the maids, and that Bette was a lush and a pig who recruited one of B.D.'s former swains in the hope that his reappearance in her life would wreck B.D.'s marriage with a man Bette disapproved of.

Then Gary Merrill publishes his autobiography, Bette, Rita and the Rest of My Life, denying everything B.D. says about Bette and himself, but doing so in language so evasive and unconvincing that we come away convinced that at least half of what B.D. has alleged is probably true--certainly that naked martini incident, anyway. Then Bette Davis responds to all the other responses by giving a bunch of exclusive interviews to a deranged sycophant named Whitney Stine (I'd Love To Kiss You... Conversations With Bette Davis) who must be completely bonkers judging from the fact that he withered away just five days after Bette's death.

What a crew.

The Lonely Life has one genuinely interesting chapter: the one where Bette Davis cooly analyzes the on-screen relationship between Hollywood glamour boys and women who can really act. That chapter lasts six pages. The rest of the book is devoted to evening the score with everybody who ever crossed her, and to dispensing pearls of wisdom that seem like they came from Zsa Zsa's mouth. "It is said that it is virtually impossible to rape a woman," Bette writes. "I contend that it is equally impossible to emasculate a man."

I think Bette is confused.

She's also confused when she writes: "The act of sex, gratifying as it is, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superin-tendency. The whole ritual is a grotesque anachronism, an outdated testament to man's waning power."

This is undoubtedly true, but as grotesque anachronisms and outdated testaments to man's waning power go, it's one of the best, particularly when oral sex is involved.

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