Anybody Else Put Off By Her Voice?

Her voice was one of her best assets as an actress, but yes, it became somewhat harsher and less expressive in her later years, due in part to her smoking.

"Forget it, Jake. It's the internet."

Only sometimes. Most of the time, I adore it!

Please excuse typos/funny wording; I use speech-recognition that doesn't always recognize!

No, I loved her voice. She was first-rate all the way around. I adore her now as much as I do Katharine Hepburn, whom I have admired since the age of 15.

I can be put off by her use of voice - because it was so limited. Davis tended to have a range of different voices for different emotional situations, but rarely did any of these vary very greatly performance-to-performance. Davis tended not to be an actress that ventured very far with accents, different speech patterns or vocal ticks. She was a much broader physical actress, often completely altering her appearance and visually 'disappearing'. But more often than not the voice coming forth always Bette Davis. It's the kind of charge often directed at the true greats - the old 'always played themselves' adage (although I hate that attitude). There's a range of different approaches to acting, none of them particularly better or worse than the others.

What can irk me in Davis' use of voice is the repetition of the same patterns and clips, the same tones and pronunciations, that is common in her work. She has a few phoned in uses of gesture as well (the wringing of hands that is inevitable in a scene of tension, with Davis, or the bulging of her eyes). But in general, she tended to add a lot more variety to her use of space, movement and gesture (to say nothing of make-up and costume) than she did her use of voice, inflection, etc. I think this is one of the reasons Davis didn't excel at comedy the way other actresses did (I shan't give examples, because comparison isn't necessary).

The Bride Came C.O.D is a perfect example of this comedic misfiring - and it's more down to the voice than her physical performance. Another example where her voice is a problem for me, is the dreadfully one-note work she did in The Little Foxes - an example of Davis attempting to craft a truly distinct voice for the character, which is to be commended. But for my taste, it is further proof that Davis was hit and miss when it comes to subtlety, to doing less to achieve more. It worked for her many times - scenes from Jezebel or The Old Maid confirm that. Mr. Skeffington manages to be a favourite performance, but ultimately I think her voice is insufferable there - that shrill screech pervades the entire film, and I really question its appropriateness. It's harsh, where I think something more delicate and perfumed with a more occasional and cutesy use of higher tones would have made Fanny an easier character to sympathize with.

Davis could certainly give a light performance as well as a dark one, but in terms of her delivery I think she often failed to quite achieve the nuances and inflections necessary to play good comedy as well as good drama, and this is chiefly down to her voice I'd say. In some ways though, I would put this down to a simple mismanagement of her career by the studio. They failed to find her a suitable comedy vehicle and I think in the right one, Davis could have been the penultimate straight man - who, very often, gives the audience more laughs than the clown.

The attempts to cast Davis in comedy are about as misguided as the attempts to put Katharine Hepburn in a noir - both could have worked quite well if only the characters offered up where better suited to the actresses talents. When trying out new styles, don't try out new archetypes as well.

In her best films though, Davis' voice is often the selling point. For instance near the end of Dark Victory, as she realizes she's going blind and shall die soon, there is something so moving about the tonal shift in her voice, as well as the slight quiver she gives it. In Now, Voyager she shades things in quite nicely: you have the soft, embittered but subservient voice of the spinster Charlotte shooting off into the fire-works of her outburst before storming off. The effect of this explosion is immense.

Throughout the film, it's interesting too the way she finds a third, different again, voice for the sort of 'bachelor' Charlotte, the Charlotte finally seeing the world speaks rather differently to the Charlotte cooped up in her room carving boxes. Yet in the presence of her mother in a later scene, we see a return to subservient Charlotte, 'good-girl, do-as-mother-says' Charlotte, until - another explosion - this time, with greater consequence. Breaking free of the vocal patterns she establishes at the start all ties into the metaphor of her breaking free of her repressive mother - and it's beautifully played.

Another example of the Davis fire is the mad scene in Juarez - the force of that tirade - 'what else might a Hapsburg...' - is just stunning.

I do agree with you to a certain extent, her clipped speech and pronunciations at certain times especially later in her career did come distracting and close to annoying but another movie I did notice a great range come through in her voice was Burnt Offerings, from the first second she was in the car in the family driving towards the house and you heard her voice even though she wasn't in the camera frame was wow, the dialogue wasn't memorable but you knew Bette was there, the scene in the kitchen with Karen Black where Bette shows all the emotions of sadness, confusion and anger, it is conveyed in her voice and made the movie a lot better than what was in the script.

Thanks, I think you articulated better than I what I was trying to say.

I agree with just_in_time about Davis's higher-than-usual voice in MR. SKEFFINGTON - she felt it would emphasise Fanny's femininity, but almost two and a half hours of it is quite wearying.

And despite the damage done by years of smoking (or, possibly, yelling at husbands, directors, and Jack Warner), her voice was quite effective in BABY JANE ("You mean, all this time, we could have been friends...?") and the exchange with the butler at the end of DEAD RINGER.

"Forget it, Jake. It's the internet."

In Baby Jane, I also really love the way she warbles the song. There's something about how she breaks up the words as well as her pitch... "I've writ-ten a let-ter to da-ddy". She uses her voice to pretty good effect in that film, too, actually. Some very child-like patterns to the speech, and some of the saddness and torture in the tone and timbre of her voice. Not one of my favourite films, by a long shot, but a good performance. Crawford, too, was fabulous in that one.