In 1936, due to poor film offers, she attempted to free herself from her contract, and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career.

She was praised for her role in Marked Woman (1937) and won a second Academy Award for her portrayal of a strong-willed 1850s southern belle in Jezebel (1938), the first of five consecutive years in which she received a Best Actress nomination; the others for Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941), and Now, Voyager (1942).

She led the miniseries The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978), won an Emmy Award for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979), and was nominated for her performances in White Mama (1980) and Little Gloria...

Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 film, television, and theater roles to her credit.

[6] In the fall of 1921, her mother, Ruth Davis, moved to New York City, using her children's tuition money to enroll in the Clarence White School of Photography, with an apartment on 144th Street at Broadway.

Hastily dressed in an ill-fitting costume with a low neckline, she was rebuffed by the film director William Wyler, who loudly commented to the assembled crew, "What do you think of these dames who show their chests and think they can get jobs?".

[18] Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, considered terminating Davis's employment, but cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for Bad Sister (1931), in which she subsequently made her film debut.

[citation needed] Universal Studios renewed her contract for three months, and she appeared in a small role in Waterloo Bridge (1931), before being lent to Columbia Pictures for The Menace, and to Capital Films for Hell's House (all 1932).

[51] While on a shopping spree in Paris, Davis publicly declared to the press that she intended to defy Warner Bros' legal injunction and make the film in England.

[56] In 1937, Davis starred with Humphrey Bogart in Marked Woman, a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano, and a film regarded as one of the most important in her early career.

The Letter (1940) was considered "one of the best pictures of the year" by The Hollywood Reporter, and Davis won admiration for her portrayal of an adulterous killer, a role originated onstage by Katharine Cornell.

[67] In 1943, Davis told an interviewer that she had molded her film career on her motto, "I love tragedy," and ironically, until Pearl Harbor, she had been recognized as the American favorite of Japanese moviegoers—because to them, she "represented the admirable principle of sad self-sacrifice.

[69] Davis and John Garfield were the driving force who were credited with organizing the canteen, along with the aid of 42 unions and guilds in the industry, plus thousands of celebrity volunteers from the Hollywood Victory Committee and beyond.

[78] She received her seventh Oscar nomination for Now, Voyager.During the early 1940s, several of Davis's film choices were influenced by the war, such as Watch on the Rhine (1943), by Lillian Hellman, and Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), a lighthearted all-star musical cavalcade.

Director Vincent Sherman recalled the intense competition and animosity between the two actresses, and Davis often joked that she held back nothing in a scene in which she was required to shake Hopkins in a fit of anger.

Highly distraught, Davis attempted to withdraw from her next film Mr. Skeffington (1944), but Jack Warner, who had halted production following Farnsworth's death, persuaded her to continue.

Davis played Miss Moffat, an English teacher who saves a young Welsh miner (John Dall) from a life in the coal pits by offering him education.

[85] The critic E. Arnot Robertson observed:Only Bette Davis...could have combated so successfully the obvious intention of the adaptors of the play to make frustrated sex the mainspring of the chief character's interest in the young miner.

The film was a considerable success, and brought renewed attention to its veteran cast, which included Joseph Cotten, Mary Astor, Agnes Moorehead, and Cecil Kellaway.

Over five successive nights, a different female star discussed her career, and answered questions from the audience; Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, Lana Turner, Sylvia Sidney, and Joan Crawford were the other participants.

She played supporting roles in Luigi Comencini's Lo Scopone scientifico (1972) with Joseph Cotten and Italian actors Alberto Sordi and Silvana Mangano; Burnt Offerings (1976), a Dan Curtis film, for which she won the award for Best Supporting Actress at the Saturn Awards; and The Disappearance of Aimee (1976); but she clashed with Karen Black and Faye Dunaway, the stars of the two latter productions, because she felt that neither extended her an appropriate degree of respect and that their behavior on the film sets was unprofessional.

She raised her children largely as a single parent.In 1983, after filming the pilot episode for the television series Hotel, Davis was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy.

[140] The film earned good reviews, with one critic writing: "Bette crawls across the screen like a testy old hornet on a windowpane, snarling, staggering, twitching – a symphony of misfired synapses.

As early as 1936, Graham Greene summarized Davis: Even the most inconsiderable film ... seemed temporarily better than they were because of that precise, nervy voice, the pale ash-blond hair, the popping, neurotic eyes, a kind of corrupt and phosphorescent prettiness ...

"[147] During the making of All About Eve (1950), Joseph L. Mankiewicz told her of the perception in Hollywood that she was difficult, and she explained that when the audience saw her on screen, they did not consider that her appearance was the result of numerous people working behind the scenes.

[148] While lauded for her achievements, Davis and her films were sometimes derided; Pauline Kael described Now, Voyager (1942) as a "shlock classic",[149] and by the mid-1940s, her sometimes mannered and histrionic performances had become the subject of caricature.

John Springer, who had arranged her speaking tours of the early 1970s, wrote that despite the accomplishments of many of her contemporaries, Davis was "the star of the thirties and into the forties", achieving notability for the variety of her characterizations and her ability to assert herself, even when her material was mediocre.

"[153] In 2006, Premiere magazine ranked her portrayal of Margo Channing in the film as fifth on their list of 100 Greatest Performances of All Time, commenting: "There is something deliciously audacious about her gleeful willingness to play such unattractive emotions as jealousy, bitterness, and neediness.

Angela Lansbury summarized the feeling of those of the Hollywood community who attended her memorial service, commenting, after a sample from Davis's films was screened, that they had witnessed "an extraordinary legacy of acting in the twentieth century by a real master of the craft" that should provide "encouragement and illustration to future generations of aspiring actors".

[165] Attempting to explain her popularity with gay audiences, the journalist Jim Emerson wrote: "Was she just a camp figurehead because her brittle, melodramatic style of acting hadn't aged well?