The Star (1952)
I should have known this movie would be about me. Bette Davis is an ageing star. But it becomes clear only at the end, that she is not a real actress, or an artist. She is a ‘falling star…like the ones who play it 24 hours a day, and like all climbers who reach a precarious pinnacle, they can’t look down, so they fall, still clutching what they have, with fear their only companion.” Well I don’t know if I’m a real writer, still to this day, all I know is I must do it to keep my friggin’ sanity. But I do know that I was once a star. I founded Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and it was only years later that I figured out that I went to all that trouble just to stave off loneliness. Yes — it’s so sad. I didn’t want to run a theatre. I only wanted to put on plays because well — I mean it’s true that I love writing plays and directing them. But writing plays was the only way I was ever able to have people around me — people who I thought at the time were my friends. Of course, most of them weren’t real friends. They merely actors — but only good ones — I had to have really good actors around me, ones that were so entertaining that they really made me believe that I was delightful and they loved me. When I left the theatre company and moved to Hamilton (just outside of Toronto) all my supposed theatre ‘friends’ began to lose interest in me. So I wrote novel after novel about it. Even though I’m no longer a ‘star’ — and I really was one, in Toronto, for a time at the height of my ‘career’— well, I still feel a nostalgia for that time. I feel nostalgia for the sycophants. Can you believe it? For people who sucked up to me so well that I actually believed they were my friends! Bette Davis has one of those sycophantic moments at the beginning of the film when a waitress stops her and asks “Are you Margaret Eliot?” And she bats those big eyes of hers and says ‘Why yes, I am,” and the waitress is all over her, idolising her. Yes things like that used to happen to me — in fact they still occasionally do. And I used to hate those moments but love them at the same time. I do miss it. Being recognised. Although it happened to me recently, in a bad way. I mean all this fame that I once had means that is impossible for me to get laid in the Toronto gay community, unless it’s in the dark (how tragic is that?). Now all the bars are closed due to Coronavirus, so I was having phone sex with this guy and he asked me to come over. I told him my name was Scott. He let me get all the way to his apartment and without letting me take off my coat, and then he said — “Are you Sky?” I said yes. He asked — “Sky Gilbert?” I said yes again. “No, I’m sorry.” That was that. And he ushered me out. I think he knew who I was before I got there. I had emailed him my picture. I think he just wanted to humiliate me. Oh and I must tell you, I just slept with another gay Canadian theatre/movie celebrity — a really big one— at a bathhouse. It was so funny. Suddenly I was in the position of being an adoring fan, as he is actually very much more famous than I ever was. When we were done with — well, what we had to do — I waited until we were done because I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had sex with people who have interrupted the act with “I’m sorry I can’t go on, I can’t believe I’m having sex with Sky Gilbert” and I really do find that very rude. So I had the good manners to wait until after — what we did — was over, and then I asked. “Aren’t you (fill in the blank)?” He danced around it for awhile, and I recognised that dance because I had polkaed that number so many times before. Finally he admitted who he was, and then as he went out the door, he said “Gee, maybe we should have a PACT meeting!” (PACT is the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres.) I guess I shouldn’t have revealed I was a fan. I think part of it was just the opportunity to be on the other side of that situation, to be the admirer, instead of the star. So you get the idea, I can’t stop dropping famous names (or almost dropping them — I promised him I would never drop his) and I can never stop being a star even though I am now definitely a falling (or fallen) one. But what makes me a star, in my own eyes forever, is, if you haven’t guessed it, my entitlement. And that’s what Bette Davis personifies so beautifully in this film. My real name is Schuyler Lee Gilbert Jr. — my father’s family were pretentious Yankees who came over on the Mayflower, and I was supposed to be the heir to a dynasty — not of money, but — a dynasty of noble lineage — my great uncle (who had my name) was a war hero, and I’m a direct descendent of Robert E. Lee, blah blah blah. But it wasn’t my father’s fault. It was my mother (more about her later— she’s been dead for six years but she never goes away) who gave me that entitlement. She loved me way too much and convinced me I was destined for great things, and I’m still working it out in therapy. That is — I am just trying to deal with the fact that I am actually an ordinary person. (Or am I?). So Better Davis’s problem in this movie is my problem. You know, on the subject of Bette Davis perfectly embodying entitlement, I must mention that I noticed how much she acts with her whole body. When she walks, it’s either a proud walk, or a discouraged walk, or a petulant walk, or whatever, and when she sits down, or picks up a glass, it’s the same thing. And in this movie she swirls, and prances, and flings herself about, as if she owns everything and deserves everything, and is just too big for ordinary life. I identify. People resent me because I’m entitled, and they are right to do so. At one point Bette Davis goes into a store and steals a bottle of perfume (her favourite brand, ‘Desire Me’) and she brings it home to Sterling Hayden — the ordinary boating guy (I don’t know what to call him — he fixes boats for a living. A boater? But that’s a hat —). Hayden holds the key to her heart because he loves the ‘real’ her, and she shows him the bottle of perfume and says. “I stole this, I don’t know why I — you see I have absolutely never stolen anything in my life.” And she tries to apply the perfume and then realises —“there’s no scent.” It turns out to be a display bottle. It’s the most lovely moment of the film, but the screenwriter had to ruin it by having her go and say “it’s only coloured water.” And Sterling Hayden, nodding sagely just has to reply: “It’s the story of your life, isn’t it?” You can’t blame Sterling Hayden, he is so incredibly gorgeous (why doesn’t he take off his shirt in this movie? — sigh, well he almost does!) and Hayden loves Bette Davis, despite her flaws, and even marries her and adopts her daughter, who is played by Nathalie Wood, by the way. And we all know — with Natalie Wood — there was bound to be trouble.
