Screen legend Bette Davis’s most heartbreaking betrayal came from her ‘adopted’ daughter and personal assistant in the last years of her life. Kathryn Sermak chose not to inform the star of her own daughter’s intended mean-spirited memoir accusing her of being an abusive alcoholic and child-beater.
The iconic star believed that her daughter, Bede Hyman signed the publishing deal after her mother had a stroke in 1983 and thought she would be dead when the book was in print.
Sermak and Bette’s lawyer, Harold Schiff took the advice of doctors and kept the about-to-be published book from Davis while she was in the midst of a film shoot.
The film wrapped and Harold broke the news over the phone to the aging star.
‘She started to cry, just a little at first, as if she did not want to give in to it. I had only seen her cry one other time when her sister died…
‘This was different. She placed her hands over her face. Her small controlled sobs gave way to a wailing so deep that she frightened me. These tears came from a deeper place, where the sword had been thrust into her heart’, Kathryn Sermak writes in her upcoming poignant and chatty memoir, Miss D & Me, Life with The Invincible Bette Davis, published by Hachette Books on September 12, 2017.
This is the last photo ever taken of Bette Davis. Kathryn Sermak became best friends with the film star over their seven years together Photographed in Spain in October 1989, no one expected that the star would pass days later.
Bette Davis often discussed her role in scripts with the author, her personal assistant. Here the two are chatting about producer Aaron’s Spelling’s script for the film Hotel while in Palm Springs in 1983
While on that madcap French road trip, word got out that the movie star was in town. Not wanting to disappoint fans, she posed with her hand on hip next to a Harley-Davison motorcycle as though she had just ridden on it. It won her a round of applause and whistles
Davis celebrated her 87th birthday at a grand party hosted by her close Hollywood pals, Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor. Bette loved good conversation with her dearest friends and was a sport to the end
‘When she hung up the phone, she could not look at me. When she did I was the focus of all of her rage.
‘How could you have not told me? You! You’re the one I have trusted with my life! This is such a betrayal. I can’t bear to look at you. You have robbed me of my joy in making this film’, Bette told her assistant.
‘How could you do this to me? You’re just like her…a betrayer…After everything we’ve been through. Why’?
Sermak stood there crying and felt like dying.
The news had destroyed Bette who gasped for air and stared at the floor in disbelief.
Two years later, while the two were on a road trip in France, Bette asked Sermak, now her dearest friend, why Sermak and her lawyer had treated her ‘like a godd***** baby who couldn’t take it’.
They feared she would have another stroke or heart attack – but she defied everyone’s expectations.
‘I could have stopped that book, you know I could have’.
‘When a publisher gets a call from Bette Davis he pays attention’.
Sermak argued that Harold had tried.
‘Harold is not Bette Davis’, the star replied.
Kathryn encouraged Miss D. to write her memoir, This ’N That while they traveled the world and Sermak wrote the entire book in longhand. Here they are lounging in Biarritz, France after reviewing the galleys
The author’s journal page describes her first meeting and impression of the film star, noting she was a ‘dynamic, bright, sharp, gracious human being. She later felt most comfortable calling Bette Miss D.
And ‘it didn’t kill me’.
Bede Hyman, aka B.D., was born Barbara Davis Sherry, daughter of Davis and artist William Grant Sherry. She was later adopted by Bette’s fourth husband, Gary Merrill.
Bette asked Kathryn to write about their relationship, and the new book titled Miss D & Me, Life with The Invincible Bette Davis comes out September 12
Bede wrote two hateful books about her mother, the first, My Mother’s Keeper was published in 1985.
Merrill defended his ex-wife and stated that B.D. was motivated by ‘cruelty and greed’.
Cruel it was and B.D. wanted to surprise her mother with it on Mother’s Day and told Harold that it was ‘a book her mother would grow to love’, a twisted thought.
It had been a quarrelsome relationship between mother and daughter for years.
Bede met her husband, Jeremy Hyman when she was only 16 and he was twice her age.
He had a long haul trucking business and they settled down on a 37-acre farm with pigs, chickens and horses in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania.
The relationship was a battlefield between mother and daughter who viewed Bede as a slave for her husband while he sat back in a chair. Most of their bills were sent to Harold and Bette always willingly paid, with no thanks ever from Jeremy.
When the star went looking for a personal assistant in 1979, it was day for night from her angry daughter to then ‘Catherine’ Sermak, a Southern California girl from San Bernardino who interviewed for the job of Girl Friday at Davis’ luxurious condominium, the Colonial House in West Hollywood.
Sermak wasn’t sure what a Girl Friday was but was game for a job that meant a summer in Europe before starting graduate school.
She had no film knowledge and no clue who Bette Davis was.
In the French Basque Country, Better and Katheryn had lunch under a Coca-Cola umbrella with Bette quipping: ‘If Joan could see me now. No, Joan, no Pepsi for me’ — referring to Joan Crawford having married company Chairman Alfred Steele. Steele died unexpectedly leaving Crawford broke and deeply in debt
Kathryn and Bette traveled from Biarritz to Paris in 1985 where they shared their affection for each other. Kathryn had moved to Paris to explore living with a man she hoped to marry. The relationship didn’t work out and she returned to be with Bette throughout her final days
She had no expectations, was willing to work hard and quickly learned the strict set of rules imposed by the 5’2 queen who lived to a high standard and always had a Philip Morris cigarette in her hand.
Catherine soon moved into the second bedroom in Bette’s luxurious condo, the Colonial House in West Hollywood that was filled with antiques and treasured gifts from many close friends.
Their first trip was to New York and Bette’s home away from home, the Lombardy Hotel – but not before Bette issued her long list of instructions – to be completed at precise times.
And there was that issue about Catherine’s handshake and her posture.
‘You can tell a worthwhile person by the firmness of their handshake and, as you will be representing me, I would like yours to be a bit firmer. Stand up, Catherine’.
Caught cutting her salad, Bette told her that was ‘simply bad manners’.
‘Don’t you ever cut your salad again, ever, if you going to be with me’ – and no chatting with the waiters and the maids or the film crew. That was totally against protocol.
They were soon off to London to film for six weeks of filming.
They took several day trips and a favorite was to stay at the Berystede, a beautiful Victorian hotel in South Ascot, Berkshire, England.
There were frequent fire drills at the hotel built in 1940 during their different stays but one evening they were awakened by a fire alarm sounding at midnight.
They hurried to the balcony to see guests gathering on the lawn below and contemplated going over the rooftop when the star grabbed Catherine’s arm.
‘Catherine, you must go back in’, she told her frantically. ‘Quick! Grab my cigarettes!’
Sermak retrieved a carton from the duffel bag and ‘marveled that she would direct me back into the burning building not to get her passport, or her treasured family photographs, but her cigarettes’, she writes.
After a half hour standing on the balcony, they learned it was only a drill.
Back in residence on the west coast, Catherine was complimented on her much improved handshake and promoted to ‘personal assistant’ from Girl Friday – but Bette had more important matters she wanted to address.
Any holiday was a good excuse for Kathryn and Bette to dress up in outfits and zany hats — even George Washington’s birthday or Easter, pictured here in 1987
‘I wanted to talk to you about your name,’ Davis told her.
‘I want to change the spelling of your name. If you spell it K-A-T-H-R-Y-N, it’s more distinctive. The way your parents chose to spell it is so much like everyone else in the world.
‘I want to advise you that one of the big battles in life is to stand out from the crowd. It’s a very personal matter and I don’t want to impose this on you if this change is not welcome’.
Sermak mulled it over and felt that Davis ‘was conducting a homegrown version of a finishing school’.
She was teaching her how well-bred women walked, talked and ‘moved through the world with a certain kind of upper-crust grace’.
No more low class diction and saying ‘okay’, that would cost her 25 cents every time she said it – to be dropped in a mason jar on the counter.
Now to fine-tune her appearance with a haircut by the cowboy hat wearing Beverly Hills hairdresser, Jose Eber.
She had to learn new posture that began with the tilt of her pelvis and walking while imagining there was a third leg between the two making her take wide steps.
‘Do I have to completely reinvent myself to please her?’ Kathryn asked herself after practicing the waddle across the living room for Bette who sensed her displeasure and told her to take a swim but be back for ‘Cocktails at 4pm’.
Kathryn wanted to do something special for Miss D. on her 76th birthday, a milestone after her health issues. Whenever the subject of that birthday came up, Bette sang the opening bars of the hit song, Seventy-Six Trombones from the Broadway musical, The Music Man. Kathryn came up with the idea of hiring the USC Marching Band to play the song outside Bette’s window. It thrilled Bette who blew them kisses from her balcony
Bette suggested Sermak call her Bette but Kathryn could not bring herself to address the star so informally so she called her Miss D.
Sermak learned how to dress properly, how to host a dinner party and how to converse smartly when Davis entertained her celebrity friends Sir John Gielgud, Richard Attenborough, Roddy McDowall, Vincent Price, Robert Wagner and Robert Osborne.
There were silly diversions from all the strict rules that Sermak learned to love.
They dressed up for holidays like George Washington’s birthday, made hats out of sliced vegetables and wore them to a friend’s Easter luncheon in New York.
The lessons continued with an instructor from Arthur Murray Dance Studios coming to teach Kathryn how to dance for a bygone era.
When Kathryn was invited by an old friend to a ball at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Bette insisted that a gorgeous gown be made for her out of rich velvet with a black satin ruffled collar.
Bette lent her a mink coat, jewelry and had her ferried to Penn Station in a limo for the train to Washington.
Kathryn was so overdressed at the ball, she was horrified. Men were wearing jeans, women in simple dresses.
‘I looked like something out of a 1955 Vogue magazine’.
Bette felt bad for putting her through that preparation.
Kathryn and Bette are pictured in Paris in 1987 wearing outfits designed by Patrick Kelly. Bette is pictured in the outfit that Kelly designed and Kathryn chose to have her buried in, a black evening dress and matching black fur hat
The late American fashion designer Patrick Kelly was a favorite of the movie actress and designed flamboyant and glamourous fashions in Paris in the 1980s. He was a radical born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and handed out racist dolls to white society ladies to shock them. But the ladies loved him
‘The sadness around it was not with me, but with her, wrapped up in the realization that she was training me for a world that was fading from view’, Kathryn writes.
‘She was the elderly woman coaching the younger woman into a fashion faux pas’.
When Bette rented a house on Long Island in the summer of 1982, she was hoping for a happy family reunion with B.D, Jeremy and their son, Ashley.
Bette ripped up bushes on the property, brought in window boxes and filled them with flowers, painted the house. No detail was spared.
‘When she said she wanted everything to be perfect for her family, it really was only Miss D who needed things to be perfect. Only if she was perfect would she feel worthy of their love’, writes Sermak.
The family reunion was a war of snarky words and negative fireworks. B.D.’s family exit didn’t come to soon.
B.D. came back to visit her mother in New York in October 1984 and brought her mother a gift – a large Bible.
She had become a born-again Christian and regaled Bette on the powerful forces of the Devil in the world that she claimed had led her astray.
‘The divorces, the drinking, the smoking all of that is against God’s laws’.
‘Repent these sins, denounce the lures of Satan, or I fear your soul will be doomed to hell’. Bette thanked her for her love and concern and changed the subject – and returned to her home in Pennsylvania.
Sermak had witnessed Bette’s vulnerabilities, her sacrifices and was there to support and help her through these final years – unlike her own daughter.
At one point, Sermak took leave of Bette and moved to Paris to live with a Frenchman she had fallen in love with and thought she would marry.
Bette was supportive of her but also also advised Sermak not to be used by a man. She clearly believed that this man, Pierre, was not the right man for her adopted daughter.
The two women took a motor trip from Biarritz in southwestern France to Paris in August of 1985 and made a pact that whoever died first, the other would see to it that the newly departed would look beautiful until the end.
Bette wanted to be buried in the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Cemetery at 4am when there would be no photographers around.
Summer of 1982, Bette rented a house on Long Island to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend with her family. She wanted the setting to be perfect so along with ripping out ugly shrubs, she installed planter boxes and filled them with flowers. Their beauty didn’t ameliorate the tension between Bette and her daughter and son-in-law
The unhappy family reunion on Long Island, summer of 1982. Pictured from left to right are Jeremy Hyman, B.D. Hyman, Bette, her son Michael Merrill (father, actor Gary Merrill), grandson Ashley Hyman, and Chou Chou Merrill seated with their two children
Back in Paris from another road trip from Poitiers to Orleans in France, Bette told Sermak, ‘I can make it without you now’.
Bette did not want to take her away from her French beau if that’s what she wanted, but Sermak realized that love affair was a dead end and she returned to being by Bette’s side, committed to the very end.
Sermak confessed that she did not feel the same powerful unconditional love from Pierre that Bette had shown her.
Kathryn was by Bette’s side when she had her stroke, her breast cancer and when her cancer that had been in remission for five years, returned in January 1989.
Kathryn made a solo trip to Our Lady of Lourdes in Lourdes, France to ask for a miracle – that Bette’s life be spared. As she was leaving, the sky opened up with sunlight, but it was not to be.
Lying in the hospital in Neuilly sur Seine, France, Bette told her, ‘Kath, come here, give me your hand’.
‘You’ve given me so much joy and you must always remember that’ Now you must be strong and you will be. You’re my stepdaughter and I’m so very proud of you’.
A clam bake was on the menu for the Fourth of July summer of ’82 family reunion. Being a true Yankee, Bette knew how to dig for them, cook and clean them
Bette asked Kathryn to promise that she would write about he time spent with her.
The great actress died at 11:35 pm on October 6, 1989.
Kathryn asked to be alone in the room with her. And then she heard her voice.
‘Kath, I’m with you every foot of the way. You’re strong. I’ve taught you well and we’ll get through this….’
Back in Los Angeles, Bette’s revered Banjo Clock had stopped at the precise time of her death in France – minus the eight-hour time difference.
Kathryn felt peace and a feeling of being protected by Bette when back in California and still feels her presence around her.