Poor Planning Mars Davis Show
by James V. Gill, The Post-Star, June 22, 1973
Poor planning and poor production marred a visit to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center by the “legendary lady of the movies” Miss Bette Davis.
The program consisted of film clips of the most memorable of Miss Davis’ films plus a personal appearance for questions from film buff John Springer and the audience.
But it evidently didn’t occur to anyone that it would be too light at 8 p.m. to show movies in the covered but open SPAC auditorium. Springer apologized and invited the audience to wander about a bit until it got dark.
When it did get dark, one of the projectors wouldn’t work—sound-wise. Evidently it didn’t occur to anyone to check them before the audience arrived.
It also didn’t occur to anyone to clean the projectors either before or during the intermission. So we were treated to a film image of Miss Davis that included a black feather that seemed to tickle her nose and a little black frog that lived in the lower left hand corner of the picture.
The clips themselves were well chosen — but of mediocre photographic quality. The sound was often so muffled as to be unintelligible.
There was no voice-over narration to lead in or lead out of a scene. Cuts were abrupt to a black screen as if edited by Springer himself with a pair of pinking shears and scotch tape.
Miss Davis fought so vociferously in Hollywood for production quality on her movies, it’s surprising she would allow such an amateurish collection of her films to be shown.
Following the film clips was made more difficult by the fact that the programs — Xerox copies of something — didn’t arrive until intermission.
Miss Davis on the other hand was delightful. She was greeted with a standing ovation and then seated herself with Springer at mid-stage to answer Springer’s four pages of questions. Her answers sounded fresh, even though you knew they had been over the same questions many times before.
She said, among other things, that she was not opposed to nudity in films as long as it fit into the story. However, she said she would never have been capable of doing a nude scene.
It was almost the last question before someone got around to asking about the so-called feud between herself and Joan Crawford.
“I wondered when you were going to get around to that. Now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty.”
She went on to pooh-pooh the whole rumor.
“We are not great friends,” Miss Davis admitted. But she said they were both professionals and that she admired Joan Crawford’s work and her glamor.
She said “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” — in which they appeared together — was made in three weeks. She said they both approached it like professionals and there were no incidents.
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