Published in 2017 (first published 1962)
277 pages
Ruth Elizabeth “Bette” Davis was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress of film, television and theatre. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres; from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were romantic dramas. In 1999, Davis was placed second, behind Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest female stars of all time.
In 1979, at the age of twenty-three, Kathryn Sermak was hired by Bette Davis as the legend’s girl Friday. Since Miss Davis’s death, Kathryn has continued to preserve the memory of her friend and mentor. In 1997 she co-founded the Bette Davis Foundation with Miss Davis’s son, Michael Merrill and is a member of the Board of Trustees. The Foundation offers bursaries to gifted young actors, and in 1998 presented the first Bette Davis Lifetime Achievement Award to Meryl Streep. Along with Mr. Merrill, Kathryn is also co-executor of the Bette Davis Estate.
Kathryn has been personal assistant to HH Princess Shams Pahlavi, (sister to the Shah of Iran); French actress, Isabelle Adjani; the statesman and journalist, Pierre Salinger; astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Motown Founder, Berry Gordy Jr.; famed American designer, Patrick Kelly and the co-creator of “Where’s Waldo,” Michael Gornall.
Kathryn was also among the first to receive the Personal Assistant Career Award in 2003. She has worked as an associate producer in TV production and development, in addition to having collaborated with Miss Davis on her New York Times bestseller This N That (1987) and the reissue of Miss Davis’s autobiography The Lonely Life (1990).
Kathryn Sermak earned her BA and BS degree from the University of Southern California, after completing her senior year at the University of Madrid, and attended the prestigious Institute Catolique De Paris.
What is this book about?
Originally published in 1962, The Lonely Life is legendary silver screen actress Bette Davis’s lively and riveting account of her life, loves, and marriages–now in ebook for the first time, and updated with an afterword she wrote just before her death.
As Davis says in the opening lines of her classic memoir: “I have always been driven by some distant music–a battle hymn, no doubt–for I have been at war from the beginning. I rode into the field with sword gleaming and standard flying. I was going to conquer the world.” A bold, unapologetic book by a unique and formidable woman, The Lonely Life details the first fifty-plus years of Davis’s life–her Yankee childhood, her rise to stardom in Hollywood, the birth of her beloved children, and the uncompromising choices she made along the way to succeed. The book was updated with new material in the 1980s, bringing the story up to the end of Davis’s life–all the heartbreak, all the drama, and all the love she experienced at every stage of her extraordinary life.
The Lonely Life proves conclusively that the legendary image of Bette Davis is not a fable but a marvelous reality.
