Driven. Daring. Provacative.

Temperamental. High-strung. Neurotic.

With Bette Davis, you took the good with the bad. In the movies, of course, "bad" can be better than "good" — or at least more fun — and Davis was never better than when she was being bad. As a busy contract player at Warner Brothers in the 1930s, she portrayed a succession of fast-talking, thrill-seeking flappers, molls and schemers, wised-up sisters who were sometimes too smart for their own good. But the quality of her films during this time was variable, and it was only after years of battling her boss, Jack Warner — at one point even taking him to court — that Davis earned a degree of self-determination. During her peak years and in her best roles, she created characters who were self-reliant, defiant of convention and unafraid of consequences: Julie Marsden in JEZEBEL; Leslie Crosbie in THE LETTER; Regina Giddens in THE LITTLE FOXES. These were tough-minded roles in tough melodramas. Like her rival Joan Crawford, she also made "women's pictures," but the combative Davis, once billed as "the female Cagney," reinvented what was possible in such a picture: laughing in the face of terminal illness in DARK VICTORY; fearlessly playing ugly, under Lon Chaney-like makeup, in NOW, VOYAGER; and with ALL ABOUT EVE, knowingly taking the ax to the pretensions of show biz and stardom.

Davis enjoyed a famously long career that spanned six decades, from Hollywood's Golden Age to the end of the 1980s. "Old age is not for sissies," she liked to say, and she walked the talk by working steadily until her death in 1989. By then, Davis's outsized public persona had long ago superseded the great work of her youth, the lines between the star and her screen persona blurring every time she'd use one of her characters' more quotable lines as a catch phrase on the talk show circuit. But Davis's best work endures. Her acting, though mannered, displays remarkable intuitiveness and, at times, surprising subtlety. And her one-of-a-kind physicality — with those outsized eyes — ensures her undying uniqueness. There hasn't been anyone like her before or since.

Davis received an impressive 10 Oscar nominations for Best Actress during her career, winning for DANGEROUS in 1935 and JEZEBEL in 1938. In 1977, she became the fifth recipient of AFI's Life Achievement Award, the first woman to be so honored.

On the occasion of her centenary, rediscover one of Hollywood's true originals: Bette Davis.

AFI member passes will be accepted at all screenings in the Bette Davis Centennial Series.

ALL FILMS NOT RATED

ALL ABOUT EVE

"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!" says Davis's screen apotheosis, A-list actress Margo channing. But it's she who gets bumped off by her duplicitous protegee Anne Baxter as the ambitious Eve Harrington, a young starlet who models herself on Davis only to supplant her in a win-at-all-costs rise to stardom. The most nominated film in oscar history with 14, winning six, including Best Picture, Director and Screenplay nods for Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

DIR/SCR Joseph L. Mankiewicz; PROD Darryl F. Zanuck. US, 1950, b&w, 138 min.

Friday, April 4, 7:00; Saturday, April 5, 3:30; Sunday, April 6, 1:00; Tuesday, April 8, 7:00

Just Added — Encore Week!
Friday, April 25, 1:10, 4:00, 6:45, 9:30
Saturday, April 26, 6:45, 9:30
Sunday, April 27, 1:10, 4:00, 6:45, 9:30
Monday, April 28, 1:10, 4:00, 6:45, 9:30
Tuesday, April 29, 1:10, 4:00, 6:45, 9:30
Wednesday, April 30, 1:10, 4:00, 6:45, 9:30
Thursday, May 1, 1:10, 4:00, 6:45, 9:30

Pre-Code Double Feature!
THE CABIN IN THE COTTON

"Ah'd like to kiss ya, but I just washed my hayuh," Bette Davis tells Richard Barthelmess in an amusingly arch Southern drawl as a plantation boss's daughter flirting with her father's up-by-his-bootstraps employee. Soon Barthelmess ditches his plain-Jane girlfriend for flashy bad girl Davis, until duty calls - in this case, unfair labor practices and a lynching. A classic Warner Bros. "social problem" film of the 1930s - with a dash of the sexy.

DIR Michael Curtiz; SCR Paul Green, based on the novel by Harry Harrison Kroll. US, 1932, b&w, 78 min.

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FOG OVER FRISCO

"Probably the fastest movie ever made." - film curator William K. Everson

Delirious fun! "You promised to turn over a new leaf after your last scandalous escapade," financier Arthur Byron tells his high-living, low-life-loving daughter Bette Davis over breakfast, after another late night out. A socialite with criminal tastes, Davis gets in over her head with gangsters, and after a breathless turn of events (the butler's not who he says he is, nor is the boyfriend, and there's a secret code that has something to do with a yacht in the bay) stepsister Margaret Lindsay solves the mystery - having first escaped her kidnappers!

DIR William Dieterle; SCR Robert N. Lee and Eugene Solow, based on the story by George Dyer "The Five Fragments". US, 1934, b&w, 68 min.

Saturday, April 12, 4:00; Monday, April 14, 6:30

Double Feature: Bette and Cagney! Bette and Bogie!
JIMMY THE GENT

Before battling her way to starring roles and top billing, Davis gave great support early in her career, as these two films demonstrate. In JIMMY THE GENT, she and James Cagney trade rapid-fire quips in a blithely amoral cult classic of screwball comedy. Davis is the former employee of con-man private dick Cagney, sucked back in to his whirlwind schemes after having gone straight.

DIR Michael Curtiz, SCR Bertram Millhauser, based on the story The Heir Chaser by Laird Doyle and Ray Nazarro. US, 1934, b&w, 67 min.

with
THE PETRIFIED FOREST

The film that made Humphrey Bogart a star, as the fugitive killer Duke Mantee who takes several people hostage in a lonely desert diner while attempting to evade a manhunt. Davis shines as a naive young dreamer caught up in Bogart's danger, trading her customary fire for cool understatement and providing a well-tempered counterpoint to the menace around her.

DIR Archie Mayo, SCR Delmer Daves, based on the play by Charles Kenyon and Robert E. Sherwood. US, 1936, b&w, 83 min.

Sunday, April 13, 1:00; Tuesday, April 15, 6:30

OF HUMAN BONDAGE

Davis's performance earned her industry-wide recognition as a serious actress, though not, controversially, an Oscar nomination (Davis believed her win for DANGEROUS in 1935 was a "makeup" for the slight). The first of several screen adaptations of the W. Somerset Maughm novel was a breakthrough role for Davis: her first shot at a prestige film after several years of variable casting in the Warners factory, and, as the impulsive, uncaring wanton who brings down good doctor Leslie Howard, a precedent setter for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters.

DIR John Cromwell; SCR Lester Cohen, based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham; PROD Pandro S. Berman. US, 1934, b&w, 83 min.

Saturday, April 19, 1:00; Wednesday, April 23, 7:00

JEZEBEL

Davis's first of three films with director William Wyler, who guided her to some of her greatest performances. Davis didn't get the part of Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND (can you imagine?), but she starred in this other tale of the antebellum South and won her second Oscar for Best Actress. Headstrong and petulant Davis is the belle of New Orleans, but her reckless ways - including wearing a red gown to a white-dress ball and flirting with old flame George Brent - drive upright fiance Henry Fonda into the arms of good girl Margaret Lindsay.

DIR William Wyler; SCR Clements Ripley, Abem Finkel, John Huston and Robert Buckner, based on the play by Owen Davis. US, 1938, b&w, 104 min.

Sunday, April 20, 1:00; Tuesday, April 22, 6:45

DARK VICTORY

Bette Davis: "Judy Traherne is what I'm like. She was 98 percent me." At a chic restaurant, Long island socialite Judy Traherne (Davis) announces "I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative!" to her doctor beau and best friend, having discovered the secret they've been keeping from her—that her brain tumor means she has only a year to live. What follows runs the gamut from drunken despair to boozy high living, with Davis's own rebelliousness, fierce self-determination and private neuroticism informing her character as never before.

DIR Edmund Goulding; SCR Casey Robinson, based on the play by George Emerson Brewer Jr. and Bertram Bloch; PROD Hal B. Wallis. US, 1939, b&w, 104 min.

Saturday, April 26, 12:30; Monday, April 28, 6:30

THE LETTER

"With all my heart, I still love the man I killed." Romantic intrigue leads to murder in exotic Malaysia, in one of William Wyler's best movies with one of Bette Davis's greatest performances. The bravura opening sequence has shots ringing out in the tropical night, Davis with gun in hand, and her former lover dead on the floor. We know she did it, but will nobly suffering husband Herbert Marshall help her beat the rap? Seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, and Actress for Davis.

DIR William Wyler; SCR Howard Koch, based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham; PROD Jack L. Warner and Hal B. Wallis. US, 1940, b&w, 95 min.

Saturday, April 26, 6:00; Sunday April 27, 12:30; Tuesday, April 29, 7:00

THE LITTLE FOXES

Director William Wyler's third and final film with Davis provided her on of her juiciest roles, the brilliant and ruthless Regina Gidden, one of a trio if scheming siblings in a moneyed Southern family during the Gilded Age. Davis enlists her grasping nephew Dan Duryea in a plot to out-maneuver her eually geedy brothers on a hot deal, until nobly suffering husband Herbert Marshall interfers. Unfortunately for him, no one stands in Regina's—or Bette Davis's—way! Photographed by the great Gregg Tolland, fresh off his groundbreaking work in CITZEN KANE.

DIR William Wyler; SCR Lillian Hellman, based on her play; PROD Samuel Goldwyn. US, 1941, b&w, 115 min.

Wednesday, April 30, 6:30; Saturday, May 3, 3:10; Sunday, May 4, 3:10

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?

"Sister, sister, oh so fair, why is there blood all over your hair?" Maverick filmmakers Robert Aldrich's lurid Hollywood gothic, a smash hit in 1962 and an enduring camp classic, benefited tremendously from the inspired casting of Davis and real-life rival Joan crawford as two crazy sisters, both washed up actresses, living together ain a decrepit mansion in a kind of antagonistic symbiosis. Davis's former former child star dreams of making a grand vaudevillian comeback, but to do so she'll need to rid herself of her crippled, needy sister Crawford.

DIR/PROD Robert Aldrich; SCR Lukas Heller, based on the novel by Henry Farrell. US, 1962, b&w, 134 min.

Friday, May 2, 9:20; Saturday, May 3, 9:20; Sunday, May 4, 9:20