Won Two Academy Awards : Screen Legend Bette Davis Dies in Paris Hospital at 81

Bette Davis, the two-time Oscar winner whose toughness, huge eyes and haughty, cigarette-smoking style made her a movie industry legend, has died at 81, her longtime lawyer said early today.

Davis died late Friday in a Paris hospital after returning there from the San Sebastian film festival in Spain, said lawyer Harold Schiff.

Davis appeared in more than 80 films, including “Jezebel,” “All About Eve,” and “Of Human Bondage.”

She was nominated for Academy Awards 10 times and won an Emmy in 1979 for the television production “Strangers--The Story of a Mother and Daughter.”

She won her Oscars for “Dangerous” in 1935 and “Jezebel” in 1938.

Her screen heroines were often strong women--as uncompromising as the actress was off-screen.

She once suggested the lines for her own epitaph: “Bette Davis--She Did It the Hard Way.” That included a 1985 comeback after suffering from cancer, a stroke and a broken hip in quick succession.

Her success story was one of Hollywood’s most unlikely tales. Lacking the looks of a traditional Hollywood glamour girl, the skinny youngster with the huge eyes relied on her acting skill and took roles nobody else wanted, playing nasty women more often than nice ones.

“My entire career was never based on looks or glamour or sex,” she once said. “It was an absolute miracle that people came to watch me act.”

She sought happiness in marriage, but after four husbands declared that she had failed and would never marry again. When she wrote her autobiography, she titled it, “The Lonely Life.”

She was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908 in Lowell, Mass., the elder of two daughters of Harlow and Ruth Favor Davis. Her parents were descended from early New England settlers--Pilgrims and Huguenots--and Davis was always proud of her heritage.

Davis’ parents separated when she was 7, and through her childhood she lived alternately with her mother and in boarding schools. As a teen-ager she showed talent in school theatrics and decided to become an actress.

She won a scholarship to study with drama coach John Murray Anderson, ushered at New England theaters in the summer and won small roles in stock company shows before making her New York stage debut in “The Earth Between” in the 1920s.

During her first Broadway hit, “Broken Dishes,” Davis was given a screen test by movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. Unimpressed, he scolded a talent scout for wasting his time.

However, her stage reviews caught the attention of Universal Pictures, which offered a three-month contract and brought her to California in 1930.

Her film debut came the next year in “Bad Sister.” Five other pictures followed.

When the studio dropped her contract, Warner Bros. picked it up and in 1932 gave her a co-starring role as an ingenue in “The Man Who Played God.”

It was the beginning of her 18-year association with Warner’s, a sometimes stormy period in which Davis was known for her famous quarrels with studio chief Jack Warner. Yet when Warner was asked in later years to define the term “movie star,” he said simply, “Bette Davis.”

In 1934, Davis was loaned to RKO for the role that would establish her reputation--the sullen heroine Mildred in “Of Human Bondage.”

All full obituary will appear in Sunday’s editions of The Times.