Bette Davis only played this TV role because she was out of options: “Nobody cares”
Bette Davis is an icon of the Hollywood golden era who brought us unconventional characters, difficult and complex women, quick wit on and off the screen, was one of the original scream queens, and one of the many to bring up Hollywood’s bias against older women, no matter their degree of talent.
One of the defining actors of her generation, Davis earned countless awards and brought her larger-than-life persona to living room TV sets across the world in films like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Dead Ringer, and All About Eve. But even a hugely successful actor can be sidelined.
In the 1950s, even after having her heyday debut in the 1940s, earning two Academy Awards and seven nominations, the actor found her career faltering. Like many women entering the “twilight zone” of ageing in the 1950s, and seeing their career options plummet, Davis found herself at a low point and was being scouted for fewer and fewer roles.
So the actor, who never shied away from hard work and was known for her strong-willed personality, thought it would be a funny idea to place an advert in the Hollywood Reporter at the time (although it didn’t actually land her a job, per say), as a sarcastic way to point out how performers her age, especially women, were often ignored by casting directors.
That’s how Bette Davis came to be shooting a cameo on an episode of the hit western series Gunsmoke in 1966. In series 12, in an episode called ‘The Jailer’ which originally aired on October 1st, 1966, she plays Etta Stone, a bitter old woman in a black dress who kidnaps and imprisons two of the main characters, Marshall Matt Dilon, played by James Arness, and Miss Kitty, played by Amanda Blake, while planning to kill Matt to avenge her husband’s hanging.
While it seemed to highlight the same issue of the industry’s bias, which leads to the casting of older female actors either by the wayside or into deranged roles, as Bette executed for the show, the role became a classic for the legendary Babette, wherein she leaned into her character’s dark side, beinging her A game, even getting into a brawl with Blake, and the episode quickly became a fan favourite.
Gunsmoke was her first foray into the world of television, and one she took on begrudgingly, according to actor Bruce Dern, who recalled Davis being highly cautious about appearing on television. Dern greatly admired the series’ director Walter Hill, and Davis, whose son he plays in the episode, and when he found out she’d be in the show, he cried, but was met with nonchalance from Davis, who simply replied: “Who’s gonna pay for my cigarettes?”
It seems like she needed the money, because she followed with, “I took an ad out in the trades, said seven-time Oscar nominee looking for work, nobody cares”. But allegedly, for the rest of the cast, the presence of such a high-profile actor on the set was intimidating, despite the show already being a hit for 12 seasons by the time of ‘The Jailer’. Even though Davis clearly had her reservations, she ended up being highly professional and treating the rest of the cast as equals, according to Slash Film.
Following her appearance in Gunsmoke, Betty had a couple more horror film appearances but mainly remained in TV, finding that Hollywood wasn’t ready to take her back. Such a decision at the time would have been seen as a fall from grace, but now actors readily mix TV productions with film.
Bette Davis remained a legendary figure up until she died in 1989, and she was posthumously placed second on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema, right behind Katherine Hepburn. If only more female stars could get their flowers while they yearn for it, proving themselves more than capable, rather than a retrospective gesture.
