How in the world could you leave out Bette Davis?
That’s the burning question for the denizens of editors at the state’s largest newspaper.
The Portland Press Herald in honor of Women’s History Month ran a stand-alone feature on “five women who made Cape Elizabeth history.”
Not one of the five names would mean a thing to any of the readers.
Not one.
But the one name that would have, nowhere to be found in the story?
Actress Bette Davis.
Davis lived for years in the Cape with her husband, actor Gary Merrill, and their children.
And it’s not like the Press Herald was unaware of that since it just ran an entirely separate story about the Davis property having been recently sold.
Not only that, but the story was what’s called a “sponsored post,” which means it was paid advertising.
Hard to miss – unless you’re a Press Herald editor.
The coastal jewel, which the late star of Hollywood’s Golden Age called “Witch Way,” was where she and Merrill raised their kids throughout the 1950s.
“It was bound to happen, my being here,” Davis once said of her estate, which sold last fall for $13.4 million after two months on the market.
“I’ve always believed most native New Englanders come home in one way or another,” Davis, a Massachusetts native, told the New York Times in 1955, according to an Architectural Digest report.
“Up here we keep active with the interesting shore crowd, not the sophisticated suburbanites, and the kids’ schools are good and convenient,” Davis added. “It’s possible to have a happy family life in Hollywood, but this is what I really want.”
Davis made history as the original woman to break Maine’s glass ceiling, becoming the state’s first-ever female lifeguard – as a teenager in Ogunquit.
As if all that weren’t enough, the Press Herald editors could easily have looked into their own clipping library and found a story from 1980 when Davis filmed “Whales of August” on Cliff Island off the Portland coast.
It was the second-to-last film Bette Davis ever made.
Davis and her co-star, Lillian Gish, even got into a legendary, highly-publicized argument during the filming.
Davis, 72 at the time, demanded top billing on the picture, of which 93-year-old Gish said, “Oh dear, I just can’t deal with that sort of thing.”
But none of this easy-to-find Maine narrative of actress Bette Davis of Cape Elizabeth, Maine apparently was news when the Portland Press Herald decided this week to feature “five women who made Cape Elizabeth history.”
Any editors on duty?
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Portland Press Herald Mistakenly Mocks Women’s History Month, Ignoring Actress Who Broke Maine’s Original Glass Ceiling
By Ted Cohen
