Remembering Bette Davis

The year was 1964. Bette Davis was filming “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” on the 20th Century-Fox lot. I was a young, wide-eyed, and newly arrived Hollywood correspondent for a daily newspaper in Mexico City. Having been a long-time admirer of the star, I requested an interview with her, only to be told by the publicist in charge, “Miss Davis eats little boys like you for breakfast.”

Somehow the interview took place. The encounter went extremely well. She laughed, she told me stories, she answered all my questions, and when we were finished she turned to the publicist and told him, “Finally, you bring me somebody who knows what he’s doing.” That was the best welcome to Hollywood a journalist might have had.

Flash forward to 1986. I’m president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. Bette Davis has agreed to make her first public appearance at the Golden Globe Awards after her stroke and surgery.

Backstage, I told her the story of our first meeting and how much it had meant to me. The look she gave me was of total incredulity. “I have never said any such thing in my life,” she boomed in the most-imitated way of talking of any Hollywood star. God love Bette Davis.

JORGE CAMARA

West Hollywood