Hollywood Never Knew What to Do with Bette Davis

The most painful betrayal of Bette’s life didn’t come from a co-star or a studio executive; it came from her only daughter. In 1985, B.D. Hyman published My Mother’s Keeper, a memoir that cast Bette as monstrous: controlling, narcissistic, cold. The timing was cruel.

Bette was recovering from a stroke and undergoing cancer treatment. She never forgave her. The woman who had survived Hollywood’s cruelties was brought low by her own blood. She once said she could handle being hated, just not by someone she had once rocked to sleep.