If you haven't noticed the 3rd DVD Collection of Bette Davis' terrific films, it was just released for her 100th birthdate: April 5th, 2008. See my reviews of the 1st, 2nd & 3rd Collection of DVDs, as well as, the individual reviews of each film, for the details.

I am most fond of this 3rd Collection out of the 3, thus far. Here's why: the more I view and review Bette Davis' films, the more impressed I become with the less well known ones. For instance, Davis' performance in "Dangerous" was rewarded by the AFI with an Oscar. Even though the folklore is that this Oscar, which her son, Michael Merrill, inherited, was a 'consolation prize' for Davis' performance in "Of Human Bondage." She was nominated for an Oscar by write-in votes because the public was outraged that her personification of Mildred Rogers hadn't been nominated for the Best Actress Oscar by the AFI. Davis herself didn't believe her performance in "Dangerous," or the film itself, was Oscar material. Then, she was awarded the Best Actress Oscar for personifying Julie Marsden in "Jezebel."

If I were on the AFI Board of voters, "Now, Voyager," "Deception," "Little Foxes," "Another Man's Poison," "The Corn is Green," "The Whales of August," "Petrified Forest," "Great Lie," "All About Eve," "Mr. Skeffington," "Old Acquaintance," "Winter Meeting," "The Nanny," "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?," "Dead Ringer," "Pocketful of Miracles," and "All This and Heaven Too," would all have earned her Best Actress Oscars: neither "Dangerous," nor "Jezebel," would have.

Of that rather lengthy list of my Davis favorite films, there is no way I can pick which one is best. They are quite different films. The women Bette Davis incarnates in each of these films are distinctly different characters.

Alice Faye was a raving beauty, fantastic singer, and great screen actress at the same time that Bette Davis was toping the charts performing in dramas. However, Alice Faye was Alice Faye...always. Faye was always vulnerable and super sensual. That's not at all how Bette Davis constructed herself on screen. Bette Davis wasn't Bette Davis on screen; instead she went into character roles that have the widest range an actress has ever spanned.

In "Whales of August," Davis is fearless to be on screen when she is dying, truly frail, and elderly. Yet, one of the last one-liners that grabs me every time I hear her speak it is too true to her own life: "Let's not fight...we're strong stock and we've precious little time." The lady who wouldn't stop acting as long as she had "high heels and a make-up case," kept her word.

Acting with her real 4th husband, Gary Merrill, in "Another Man's Poison," the couple uses their own home as the main set. Merrill, as an actor, is no match for Davis. But, just watching the wife & husband team in their own home putting on a show for us feels so intimate.

"Deception," is a great Warner Bros. contract actors film with the master actor Claude Rains, who trained Sir John Gielgud, and Paul Henreid reunited after their memorable previous joint endeavor, "Now, Voyager." Davis  stole the scenes from every actor, including Bogie. But in "Deception," Claude Rains and Bette Davis are an absolutely perfect match for one another--as actors. Both of them unleash their all of performance energy. When they play scenes with each other, I literally get up out of my seat my heart is pounding so hard with excitement.

During Dick Cavett's 1971 interview with 63yo Bette Davis, who is vivacious during that TV broadcast, she remarks that if there were a sequel to "Now, Voyager," Charlotte Vale would work for and marry Dr. Jacquith. Claude Rains was Jacquith to her Miss Vale and Rains was clearly her favorite of all actors with whom to perform.

William Wyler was Davis' favorite director who had the wherewithall to seduce the best performances out of his leading lady. It showed that Bette Davis was deeply in awe of and in love with Wyler. Much like it showed that Katherine Hepburn was likewise with Spencer Tracy. Both were forbidden loves.

When Marilyn Monroe makes her silver screen debute in "All About Eve," Bette Davis so dominates each scene that Monroe slips by hardly noticed! When Ann Margaret makes her screen debute in "Pocketful of Miracles," Davis is abolutely regal enough to utterly up-stage the sex-appeal of the red-headed bombshell-to-be. Davis has been made-up as age-d. Later on when she plays Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt in "Little Gloria...Happy at Last," an off screen television mini-series about young Gloria Vanderbilt's inheritance causing a major custody battle and media frenzy, Bette Davis actually looks like the regal lady she was made-up to appear to be as the transformed "Apple Annie." Only this time, in "Little Gloria," her hands clearly show she's close to the actual age of the woman she's playing...and beautiful to look at and to behold as a character. I want Davis' Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt to be my grandmother or mother-in-law. I desire each version of Davis' elderly women in my life more than I desire Ann Margaret or Marilyn Monroe in either of their debutes.

Therefore, Bette Davis changed what the standards for a woman being desirable are through the characters she brought to life. She made them larger than life characters and that's what she called acting. You see, Bette Davis believed that acting should deliver characters that are larger than the real lives of the actors or audiences.

When Bette Davis died on October 29th, 1989, she was traveling in Europe to receive an acting award. The audiences who became her following could not believe she had died. I've thought about that for about 5 years and wondered why? Here's the conclusion I've drawn: Bette Davis was so convincing an actor that the characters she incarnates became real in our minds. Since they are still very much alive on film, it's harder to believe that the lady who brought them to life for us is no longer with us.

I wasn't even born by the time Davis had reached her acting prime; therefore, I'm part of her following after her life was over. She is alive and immortal whenever I want her to be because I own lots of her art. For as long as I keep her alive in my mind, I ask myself, isn't she with me?

Knowing about her on and off screen, on and off television sets, has permanently changed who I am...for the better. In some ways, she's been one of my favorite teachers. What she's taught me to do is think, speak up, and be true to myself and others. Bette Davis has taught me not to take myself so seriously. While watching some of her most famous recorded but not included in the films footage when she has mishaps on the job, I learn about who this larger than life "yankee lady" really is: a woman who was able to find humor in the mishaps that she lived out in front of a cast of co-workers, producers, directors, & major bosses who had enormous power-over her. Though she was determined to be known as the best actor in dramatic roles and made her dream come true, she is hillarious to watch when she makes mistakes. There's not time for her to think up something clever to say when she blows a scene, so she's being herself, the real Bette Davis who is put on the hot spot.

That's how I judge her character as a person. How she handles herself when things go wrong when the stakes are super high and the pressure of the spotlight is all on her shoulders. What does Davis do? She makes everyone else laugh, time and again. She laughs at herself, too. It remains remarkable today that this five foot two, ordinary looking yankee girl, had courage enough to secure her dream in the trap door of her mind and go for it until she made it happen. Since Davis could stick with her dream and achieve it, she's a role model who shows us still that in order to get where we're going we have to pave our own path. No one else is going to do that for us.

It's like swimming. If we think that someone else is going to drag us to the other end of the pool, we're sunk! Sink or swim, anyone?