The Star | Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden | "DON'T TOUCH ME WITH YOUR WITH YOUR 10 PERCENT HANDS!"

The Star | Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden | You mean all this time we could have been friends?

DVDs:

The Star

	The Star Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden Warner Home Video, 2005 average customer review:based on 32 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

As Margaret Bette Davis got yet another good picture and earned her ninth Academy Award nomination. Davis's confident perceptive performance lends absolute authenticity as did a prop she provided. An Oscar stautette set noticeably on the car dashboard during Margaret's drunken spin through Beverly Hills was one of two Davis owned. Sterling Hayden and Natalie Wood co-star in this gripping story that has many moments of truth (Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide). The Star shines.Running Time: 90 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569683679

"DON'T TOUCH ME WITH YOUR WITH YOUR 10 PERCENT HANDS!"

Bette Davis made only one foray into "Trash Yourself Cinema," but it's such a firecracker of self-exploitation, she didn't need to make another.

Aging, frumpy, and broke, Davis stands outside the auction house where her personal effects aren't selling. "What am I bid?" the dealer barks. "One dollar? This stuff belonged to Margaret Elliot. She was your favorite movie star. She made you laugh, she made you cry. Secretly you were in love with her." Davis's agent walks out -- holding a hideous candelabra -- and she rants, "Be a scavenger! Pick my bones! Don't touch me with your ten-percent hands. Always reaching, grasping . . . you can do anything but get me a picture!"

Davis visits teen daughter Natalie Wood, who's living with Davis's ex-husband. "My six months with Daddy are up," Wood smiles. "You did come for me, didn't you?" Well, no. Davis begs off, explaining her new apartment is too tiny and she's too busy -- neatly anticipating Davis's real-life daughter later penning a nasty, neglected kid's tell-all book. Rushing home, Davis grabs her Academy Award and says, "C'mon Oscar, let's you and me get drunk!" She places the statuette on her dashboard and takes it on a boozy tour of the stars' homes. "On your right, ladies and gentlemen," Davis slurs, "is the home of Mitzi Gaynor, rising young movie star." Stopping outside a mansion, Davis says, "And that, Oscar, was the home of the wealthy, glamourous Margaret Elliot . . .

Going . . .going . . . gone!"

When this bender gets her tossed in jail, Davis hollers, "You don't seem to know who I am!" An inmate asks, "Whatta ya in for, honey?" and we expect Davis to blurt, "Bad choice of script." Her bail's paid by Sterling Hayden with whom, he reminds her, she once co-starred in "the worst picture ever made." (Worse than this?) "Where to?" he asks, and Davis shrugs, "Isn't this the end of the line? Well, yes. But since it's not the end of the movie, Davis shacks up with Hayden, recalls her studio battles when she "was sick of the tripe they were forcing me to play," and -- whenever anyone else tries to get a word in edgewise -- again mutters,

"Going . . . going . . . gone!"

Hayden helps her get a department store job selling lingerie but, when one customer says to another, "It's a disgrace for a respectable store like this to hire a jailbird," Davis snaps. "It is a disgrace," she thunders, "waiting on a couple of old bags like you!" She begs her way back into her movie studio, agrees to do a screen test for a supporting role, but when the cameras roll, the ham takes over. "You fans would love it," the director says sarcastically, but Davis -- thinking she's employed -- hurries home and says to her Oscar, "You're going to have a baby brother!"

Get this DVD, right now, before it too is. . .

Going...going...gone!

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You mean all this time we could have been friends?

I enjoyed this film very much because as usual Bette Davis gives a very powerful performance. Bette Davis is a very courageous and thoughtful actress who isn't afraid to show herself in a less than flattering way. It is because of movies like this that made her one of the most prolific and brilliant actresses in the entire history of American Cinema. If you enjoyed this movie, I also recommend The Little Foxes with Bette Davis very much. This is a totally different movie but you can tell that she worked just as hard. BTW "The Star" is not based on Joan's life, that's just another one of those representative urban legends that are attached to poor undeserving Joan's legacy.

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The STAR: Manners put on Madame Davis

In "THE STAR" STERLING HAYDEN MANAGES TO PORTRAY AN ORDINARY PERSON WHO DOES WONDERS IN TEACHING BETTE DAVIS (HERE MISS SPOILED MOVIE STAR) TO BEHAVE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING. THE PERFORMANCES ARE SO GOOD THAT WE WISH HE WAS AROUND MORE IN REAL LIFE TO PUT MANNERS ON HER. CONSIDERING JOAN CRAWFORD HATED HAYDEN ONE CAN ONLY WONDER WHAT BETTE THOGHT OF HIM

Bette for real!

Great film - not as glamorous as some - but well done and a good story. Bette Davis is at her best. Well worth the time and money.

"Come on, Oscar, let's you and me go get drunk!"

Bette Davis plays a booze-chugging Hollywood has-been in THE STAR, one of her better post-Warner Brothers acting assignments.

To say that Margaret Elliot (Bette Davis) has hit the skids would be an understatement. Flat stoney broke, about to be kicked out of her apartment, and unable to find acting work, the former Oscar-winning megastar is reduced to a glimmer of her former self. Following an all-night drinking binge--capped off by a spin around Beverly Hills with her Oscar in tow--Margaret is arrested. She's bailed out by a former co-star (Sterling Hayden). "When you're a star, you don't stop being a star", Margaret keeps telling her teenage daughter Gretchen (Natalie Wood). But stars must also live in reality...something Margaret will struggle terribly with.

Bette Davis must have identified a lot with the script of THE STAR, though I don't believe she ever did sink as low as her character does in the movie. Screenwriters Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert actually based the character of Margaret on another celebrity--none other than Davis' arch-rival Joan Crawford. The writers had been close friends of Crawford's but the relationship had soured by the time they started work on THE STAR. Davis must have relished the chance to take a swipe at Crawford--the performance is delicious. You've gotta love the scene where Margaret prepares for a screentest by rolling her fringe into bangs, applying thickly-caked lipstick and drawing high arches for her eyebrows...remind you of anyone with the initials J.C.?!

For the scene in which Margaret goes on an alcoholic bender with her Oscar statuette, Bette Davis provided one of her own (I like to think it was the award she won for "Dangerous", in which she played another actress on the skids). Another twist is the casting of Sterling Hayden as Margaret's love interest (he would later co-star with Joan Crawford in the cult favourite "Johnny Guitar"). Natalie Wood, playing daughter Gretchen, gives a distinguished performance. The cast also features Warner Anderson, Minor Watson, June Travis and Fay Baker.

The DVD also includes a new featurette ("How Real is the Star?"), and the trailer. Highly-recommended for both Davis and Crawford fans.

(Single-sided, single-layer disc). Also available as part of The Bette Davis Collection (The Star / Mr. Skeffington / Dark Victory / Now, Voyager / The Letter)

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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