hair fetish. He didn’t like too much of it. I had a hairy chest and a messy head of hair.” This is Gary Merrill on how Mankiewicz overruled Zanuck in casting him, rather than John Garfield, as Bill Sampson. Since the time of All About Eve is one Broadway season, October to chilly late spring, Bill needn’t bare his chest. And in the movie his head of hair is more kempt than Margo’s.
“I never tried to get the part in All About Eve , never called an agent,” Merrill said some years later. “I thought about who might be chosen to play the part, but did nothing about it. I was lying on the beach at Malibu when the phone rang, and I almost missed hearing it. The call was from Joe Mankiewicz, asking if I would test with Anne Baxter for Eve .”
Along with Zanuck’s aversion to hirsute actors, he wasn’t easily convinced that Gary Merrill could play the Broadway director who loves Margo Channing but who also stands up to her. Zanuck grumbled that Gary Merrill “had only played around airplanes,” and he was right, for Merrill’s Hollywood career hadn’t led him beyond portrayals of lieutenants, commanders, and the like in such military aviation films as Winged Victory (1944), Slattery’s Hurricane (1949), and Twelve O’Clock High (1949).
“On Sundays,” Merrill wrote in his memoirs, “a large film studio is nearly deserted. The empty sets for westerns, New York streets, or Arabic marketplaces are rather eerie. One Sunday in 1950 I had been called to the studio for a makeup test with Miss Bette Davis.”
Bette Davis: “This was the first time I met Gary. They did photographic tests of us together. I was to look older than he as Margo. I did.”
Gary Merrill: “On that Sunday I went to the test stage, and there, being turned this way and that, as though she had just been picked up from a counter at a jewelry store, was the Queen, Bette Davis.”
Bette Davis: “I had seen the film Twelve O’Clock High and an actor in it named Gary Merrill. I had never seen him before and I was greatly impressed by his performance and looks.”
Gary Merrill: “The makeup people should have been pampering her but instead they were twirling her around, examining facial lines. They were trying to see if our age difference would be too noticeable. The professional attitude Bette adopted throughout the ordeal was impressive.”
Bette Davis: “Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.”
Gary Merrill: “Bette had a few character lines around those incredible eyes, but here was a magnetic woman with a compelling aura of femininity who might also be willing to confront dragons. I was irresistibly drawn to her.”
Bette Davis: “People get the idea that actresses my age are dying to play younger women. The fact is, we die every time we play one.”
Gary to Bette: “Certainly wonderful of you to come to the studio on a Sunday.”
Bette to Gary: “For this part, I would come to the studio seven days and nights a week.”
Gary Merrill: “Never in the history of motion pictures has an actress been so perfectly cast.”
And so, sizing each other up, they both liked what they saw. But before the romance of Bette and Gary could take wing, each one had to shed a marital encumbrance.
* * *
Bette’s third marriage—to William Grant Sherry, variously characterized as “a muscle-bound sailor” who was “an artist of sorts” with a “bohemian attitude and blunt manner”—had been rather ludicrous from the start. According to one of Bette’s biographers, she “decided to marry him only a month after she picked him up at a party” in 1945. Already this sounds like the scenario of a boisterous Bette Davis picture, but it gets better—meaning much worse—during the next five years.
It’s easy to see why Bette fell for Sherry the Hunk. Hedda Hopper’s mouthwatering description would almost qualify for the pages of Honcho : “In a suit you couldn’t possibly guess what a handsome
“I never tried to get the part in All About Eve , never called an agent,” Merrill said some years later. “I thought about who might be chosen to play the part, but did nothing about it. I was lying on the beach at Malibu when the phone rang, and I almost missed hearing it. The call was from Joe Mankiewicz, asking if I would test with Anne Baxter for Eve .”
Along with Zanuck’s aversion to hirsute actors, he wasn’t easily convinced that Gary Merrill could play the Broadway director who loves Margo Channing but who also stands up to her. Zanuck grumbled that Gary Merrill “had only played around airplanes,” and he was right, for Merrill’s Hollywood career hadn’t led him beyond portrayals of lieutenants, commanders, and the like in such military aviation films as Winged Victory (1944), Slattery’s Hurricane (1949), and Twelve O’Clock High (1949).
“On Sundays,” Merrill wrote in his memoirs, “a large film studio is nearly deserted. The empty sets for westerns, New York streets, or Arabic marketplaces are rather eerie. One Sunday in 1950 I had been called to the studio for a makeup test with Miss Bette Davis.”
Bette Davis: “This was the first time I met Gary. They did photographic tests of us together. I was to look older than he as Margo. I did.”
Gary Merrill: “On that Sunday I went to the test stage, and there, being turned this way and that, as though she had just been picked up from a counter at a jewelry store, was the Queen, Bette Davis.”
Bette Davis: “I had seen the film Twelve O’Clock High and an actor in it named Gary Merrill. I had never seen him before and I was greatly impressed by his performance and looks.”
Gary Merrill: “The makeup people should have been pampering her but instead they were twirling her around, examining facial lines. They were trying to see if our age difference would be too noticeable. The professional attitude Bette adopted throughout the ordeal was impressive.”
Bette Davis: “Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.”
Gary Merrill: “Bette had a few character lines around those incredible eyes, but here was a magnetic woman with a compelling aura of femininity who might also be willing to confront dragons. I was irresistibly drawn to her.”
Bette Davis: “People get the idea that actresses my age are dying to play younger women. The fact is, we die every time we play one.”
Gary to Bette: “Certainly wonderful of you to come to the studio on a Sunday.”
Bette to Gary: “For this part, I would come to the studio seven days and nights a week.”
Gary Merrill: “Never in the history of motion pictures has an actress been so perfectly cast.”
And so, sizing each other up, they both liked what they saw. But before the romance of Bette and Gary could take wing, each one had to shed a marital encumbrance.
* * *
Bette’s third marriage—to William Grant Sherry, variously characterized as “a muscle-bound sailor” who was “an artist of sorts” with a “bohemian attitude and blunt manner”—had been rather ludicrous from the start. According to one of Bette’s biographers, she “decided to marry him only a month after she picked him up at a party” in 1945. Already this sounds like the scenario of a boisterous Bette Davis picture, but it gets better—meaning much worse—during the next five years.
It’s easy to see why Bette fell for Sherry the Hunk. Hedda Hopper’s mouthwatering description would almost qualify for the pages of Honcho : “In a suit you couldn’t possibly guess what a handsome
Similar Books
