Bette Davis at Home: See Inside the Golden Age Trailblazer’s Abodes From Coast to Coast

Bette Davis’s magnetism onscreen was irrefutable, and off-camera, she was a force to be reckoned with; the two-time Academy Award winner sued Warner Bros., her contracted studio, in 1936, claiming that she had been saddled with inferior roles. Though she lost the case, the Dark Victory star continued pushing against Hollywood’s expectations of its leading ladies, embracing complicated, unsympathetic, and decidedly unglamorous women onscreen and becoming a trailblazer as her career progressed. “I do not regret one professional enemy I have made,” Davis said in her first memoir, The Lonely Life. “I suppose I’m larger than life. That’s my problem. Created in a fury, I’m at home in a tempest.”Given the (at least) 75 residences she called home throughout her lifetime, it certainly tracks that the big-screen legend was comfortable with a bit of chaos. “Playing house is a childhood game I’ve never put away,” the Marked Woman star, whose youth was spent “always moving,” once said. “My home has always meant so much to me.” Davis stepped away from her career for three years during her fourth (and final) marriage, devoting herself entirely to being a wife and a mother—and loving every minute of it, per her autobiography. “I wanted to be married. I wanted a home,” she writes. “Small wonder that when I could, I acquired houses as other women acquire jewels.”Below, we take a look at a small fraction of the places the Golden Age luminary chose to nest.Davis had a lifelong love of dogs and would go on to lead an animal welfare organization . Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesEarly life in MassachusettsToddler Bette Davis and her sister Bobby stand next to a dog in this undated image. The family patriarch left the girls to be with his mistress when Davis was just seven. “My father’s cavalier disappearance from our home when I was a small child certainly has significance. Consider my quartette of marriages,” she writes in her memoir The Lonely Life. “My sister Bobby’s world went up in smoke. Mine shifted on its axis. It’s as simple as that.”Davis at home in 1932. The young star lived a nomadic lifestyle with her family. Photo: Everett CollectionThe rolling New EnglandersThroughout 1932, when this snap was taken, Davis—together with her first husband Harmond Nelson, mother Ruthie, and sister Bobby—lived in at least four different houses. Davis stands before the stately fireplace in one of her homes that year. When the actor and Nelson married in August, the family lived in a dwelling near the ocean at Zuma Beach in Malibu.By year’s end, the gang had all moved to “a white, ivy-covered English house” with an ADU in the back where Davis’s mother and sister stayed. The “dream cottage,” as The Little Foxes actor describes it in The Lonely Life, was located at 1217 Horn Avenue in West Hollywood.Davis and a canine companion in the yard of her Brentwood Heights home. Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesBette’s best friendsDogs occupied a special place in Davis’s life. The All About Eve star served as the president of Tailwaggers, an organization that cared for abandoned and lost pups. “I’ve always loved dogs—my own, all dogs,” she once said. “And it broke my heart to think of them homeless, unwanted, held as prisoners, under inhumane conditions, when some of them are more human than we are.” This 1933 picture shows Davis with her white Sealyham terrier Sir Cedric Wogs and Tibby, her Scottish terrier, as they play in the backyard of their Brentwood Heights home.Davis lounging in her living room in 1937. Photo: Courtesy Everett Collection1700 Coldwater Canyon DriveDavis moved to 1700 Coldwater Canyon Drive in 1937. Biographer Ed Sikov, in his book Dark Victory: The Life of Betty Davis, describes the abode as a “hacienda-style house complete with a swimming pool, tennis court, and an acre of land.” This image shows the Of Bondage star almost disappearing into the living room sofa.Davis was reputed to be a skilled croquet player. Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesHollywood’s croquet champIn the 1930s and ’40s, croquet-mania swept through Hollywood. Top-billed stars like Shirley Temple and Orson Welles, along with studio executives, were all reportedly caught up in the craze. A publication at the time stated that Davis was “reputed to be the film colony’s champion croquet player.” She’s pictured here setting up a croquet court on the sprawling lawn of her Coldwater Canyon property.Davis with a CBS Radio script Photo: CBS via Getty ImagesBooks over everythingAccording to Sikov, the star preferred to curl up with a good book at home most nights, rather than hobnob with Hollywood’s glamorous crowds. Davis cherished her time spent reading so much that her first husband cited it as one of the reasons they split. She read to an “unnecessary degree,” Nelson is quoted as having said during the proceedings. “She even insisted on reading books or manuscripts when he had guests. It was all very upsetting.” Davis is pictured here at home, reading the manuscript for a CBS radio program in 1941.Davis kicking back at her California pad. Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesOn a ranch out westBy 1942, when this image was snapped, Davis was the proud owner of 1705 Rancho Avenue in Glendale, California. A 1943 The New Yorker profile on Davis mentioned that the property was “probably the only two-bedroom, two-acre estate in the film colony.” The modest Tudor home came with a pool, stables, and direct access to equestrian trails.Davis and Merrill, who was her fourth husband. Photo: Courtesy Everett CollectionBeach houseShortly after they married in 1950, Davis and her fourth husband Gary Merrill (with whom she costarred in All About Eve) lived for a brief period at a rental home she found for them in Malibu. The couple had decided that Merrill’s own Malibu house was too small for their family; Davis had given birth to her daughter with then-husband William Grant Sherry in 1947. She and Merrill welcomed two more children via adoption in 1951. While Merrill was in Germany filming Decision Before Dawn, Davis settled the rest of the family into the oceanfront property. “We found a house near the one Gary had at Malibu,” Davis writes in her memoir. “Moved him out of his house—his antiques, and I did not pitch them in the ocean—moved all of my belongings in.” This 1951 image shows them sitting on the beach, leaning against their shared dwelling.Davis with her mother at home in Maine. Photo: Courtesy Everett CollectionCape ElizabethFor most of the 1950s, Davis resided in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. The family’s first encounter with their white, three–story clapboard house was the result of a wrong turn down a long, tree-lined lane. “We called our house Witch-way because we didn’t know which way we were going and a witch lived there—guess who,” Davis says in her memoir, jokingly referring to herself. The Atlantic Ocean–facing manse sat on on eight-acre sprawl, which also featured a pond where the family would skate during winters. Per this undated photo’s original caption, the actor and her mother are pictured at Davis’s Maine property here.Davis posing on the front porch of her LA home in 1967. Photo: Martin Mills/Getty ImagesFlower girl“I always like men who sent me flowers,” Davis is quoted as saying in The Girl Who Walked Home Alone, Charlotte Chandler’s biography of the star. “But I have to admit most of the flowers I’ve enjoyed in my life, I’ve bought for myself. A great many of them I grew. I’m a country mouse, you see.” Davis isn’t actually in the countryside in this 1967 snap, but is standing on the porch of the last Los Angeles house she occupied before moving to Westport, Connecticut. The outdoor space is crawling with what appear to be bright red bougainvillea.