When Michael Caine accidentally went on a date with Bette Davis: “I am going home alone in a taxi”
In the early 1970s, Michael Caine was one of the biggest British movie stars in the game. He gained momentum in the ’60s thanks to iconic movies like Zulu, The Ipcress File, The Italian Job, and Alfie, before beginning the ’70s with the definitive English gangster movie Get Carter. Throughout this unstoppable rise, though, Caine’s private life became almost as fascinating as his film career.
The man was a dedicated lothario who worked his way through many famous girlfriends and various trysts – but this philandering reputation may have worked against him when he accidentally went on a date with one of the golden age of Hollywood’s ultimate mavens, Bette Davis.
In 1966, LIFE magazine profiled Caine, which perhaps gives the best insight into the life of a young, handsome Cockney lad who suddenly made waves in Hollywood. Photographer Bill Ray claimed that while he was shooting pictures of Caine in Los Angeles, women were drawn to him like a moth to flame. He marvelled that the actor “seemed to be a magnet, without ever lifting a finger.”
Indeed, Ray theorised that Caine had mastered the art of making things look easy – whether acting or attracting the opposite sex – and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, it meant things did come easy to him. Ray mused, “That sort of magic would have been much easier to take if Caine had been half as good-looking as, say, another young Cockney like Terence Stamp. He wasn’t. But charming, fun, and easy to be around and work with, he definitely was.”
Caine’s dating history in that period is extensive and varied. After divorcing his first wife Patricia Haines in 1958, he spent the ’60s with fashion designer Edina Ronay; singer Nancy Sinatra; actresses Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Jill St. John, and Élisabeth Ercy; and Mick Jagger’s future wife Bianca, then known as Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías. He would leave his womanising ways behind in 1973, though, when he married Shakira Baksh, the woman he credits with saving his life. They are still happily married to this day.
In the small window between his last conquest and meeting Shakira, though, Caine unexpectedly found himself on a date with a Hollywood icon 35 years his senior. In 2016, he told Little White Lies, “Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy were friends of mine from New York theatre. One night, I was in New York on my own, publicising a movie, and they said, ‘Come out to dinner with us.'” Caine agreed, and was intrigued when his famous pals said, “We’ve got you a date.”
Caine was shocked when his date for the evening turned out to be 75-year-old Davis, whose own love life was almost as storied as his. By 1950, the iconic star had been married four times, divorcing three and being widowed by one. However, it is generally believed that the love of her life was the director, William Wyler, with whom she worked three times. They got together at one point when she was between marriages, but when he proposed to her in a letter after they had a screaming argument, she refused to open it. To her horror, she subsequently heard on the radio that he had married actress Margaret “Talli” Tallichet.
So, how did the unexpected date between a 40-year-old ladies’ man and a 75-year-old widower turn out on that fateful night in New York City? Caine remembered, “We had a great evening together.” However, Davis didn’t want the younger man to think they’d had too good an evening – if you catch our drift.
Caine told the New Zealand Herald, “At the end of the evening, Bette says to me, ‘I am going home alone in a taxi.'” He chuckled, “Just in case I was going to make a pass at her.”
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