Mae West practically single-handedly saved
Paramount from bankruptcy, while Bette Davis was the first actress to bring a
little glamour to the hardboiled Warner Brothers studio. Yet, despite their
mutual admiration, it took decades for the two movie stars to finally meet.
Optometrist and volunteer bartender Wes Wheadon was a fly on the wall when they
did and he has the standard audio cassette recording to prove it. With the help
of lip-synching actors, he recreates the lively early 1970s dinner party in the
hybrid documentary When Bette Met Mae (trailer here), which screens during
the 2015 NewFest.
Davis had four husbands and West never had a
shortage of men, but both became gay icons, in part through drag show
impersonations. It was a phenomenon they discussed on that night in 1973, so WBMM is not so out of place at NewFest.
Sadly, the movie business had largely forgotten them at this point, but Davis
still worked regularly in television, resenting nearly every minute of it.
Having invested wisely in real estate, West did not need to work at all. Still,
neither was the type to sit about idle.
Despite its obvious artificiality and the
disorienting distance between the on-screen figures and their voices, it is
rather lovely to hear the real life Davis and West again, in any context. The
former was especially her tart-tongued self, venting her spleen against agents,
producers, and former SAG president Ronald Reagan. In retrospect, most
historians give Reagan credit for standing up to the moguls, but clearly
anything less than a May Day storming of the studio barricades would not
impress Ms. Davis.
Wheadon, who had already been pulled into
Bette Davis’s orbit through mutual friends at the dinner party, serves as an
easy-going and informative host. He augments the gossipy conversation with some
intriguing background and context on the often overlooked later years of the
two stars’ lives. It is particularly amusing to hear New York publicist Gary
Springer (whom those of us who cover film and theater know and respect quite
well) speak of an evening at Town Hall his father produced. Conceived as a sort
of 92Y-style Q&A, it became a command appearance for the royal Davis to
receive her adoring fans (who were apparently 99% gay men). Nevertheless, since
the breezy forty five minute dish session constitutes the core of the film, Wheadon
can barely stretch it past sixty minutes.
Karen Teliha and Victoria Mills are both the respective
spitting images of Davis and West, but Teliha also shows a command of the former’s
instantly recognizable mannerisms. She seems comfortable in Davis’s skin,
whereas Mills does not. However, the night was largely Ms. Davis’s show, so we
can just watch and listen to her do her thing.
