The co-star Bette Davis called “one of the most loathsome human beings” she’d ever met
Few stars of ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood, or actors in general, had as many axes to grind as Bette Davis, the generational talent and silver screen legend who wasn’t shy in making an enemy or three.
The most famously antagonistic professional relationship of her career was her never-ending feud with Joan Crawford, and as much as those two despised every fibre of each other’s being, Davis encountered plenty more actors, and the occasional filmmaker, who she loathed every bit as much.
Faye Dunaway was right up at the top of her shit list alongside Crawford, with the two-time Academy Award winner never missing an opportunity to throw a barb in her direction, with Miriam Hopkins rounding out the Holy Trinity of thespians that Davis totally, utterly, and all-consumingly abhorred.
However, if there was a fourth face to be added to her Mount Rushmore of arseholes, it would probably be Oliver Reed. The two worked together in the 1976 supernatural horror movie, Burnt Offerings, after which she described the notorious hell-raiser as “possibly one of the most loathsome human beings I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.”
Strangely, he didn’t have a bad word to say about her. Reed said they “got along alright,” but she’d beg to differ. To be fair, the famously short-tempered star wasn’t having a great time anyway, describing the production as “total chaos” that made her “feel like I’ve spent the last six weeks in jail,” but his antics didn’t do anything to make her enjoy it even the slightest bit more.
The hard-drinking heavyweight of stage and screen was known for living life as hard and fast as possible, and on Burnt Offerings, that included an admission that he’d occasionally careen down a hotel corridor using Davis’ dinner trolley as his preferred mode of transport, with the actor revealing that she was understandably “insulted” by his recklessness costing her some expensive wine.
To try to mend the fences between them, he presented her with red roses to try and smooth things over. Even if she had accepted his peace offering at face value, he’d have undone it anyway, since he also insisted that a band of stranded British soldiers shack up in their shared hotel for the night, which obviously necessitated the group to have a few bevvies.
Davis also wasn’t thrilled that his love of the sauce impacted her preparations, repeatedly accusing him of showing up to work pissed. Since this was Oliver Reed she was talking about, you can only assume that she was right, and he was turning up still drunk from the night before, because that’s what he did.
In the end, Burnt Offerings bombed at the box office, so Davis didn’t even have a much-needed hit to show for her suffering at the end of the day, although you can’t say that Reed didn’t manage to leave an impression, albeit a massively negative one.
