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Bette Davis was one of the most iconic movie stars during Hollywood's golden age. And even as she was dying, the actress's top priority was staying movie-star glamorous. People magazine reports that in a new memoir, Davis's longtime assistant is revealing what her final days were like.
In an excerpt from her upcoming book, Miss D and Me: Life With the Invincible Bette Davis, Kathryn Sermak talks about what it was like to grow close to Davis as her health declined. Sermak spent 10 years with Davis, both as an assistant and a close friend. In 1989, while Davis and Sermak were on vacation in Europe, Davis found out her breast cancer had come back and she only had a few days to live.
Sermak writes that Davis asked her to call her son, Michael, and her friend Harold. She did not ask Sermak to call her daughter, B.D. Hyman, and that might have been because the two had a rough relationship. But no matter what, she didn't want anyone to see her in person as she was dying. "She did not want them to come because she did not want 'this bedraggled body and the look of death' to be their last memory of her," Sermak wrote. "'They don't see me every day like you do, Kath,' she said."
Davis died on October 6, 1989, and Sermak was by her side. And Davis had made Sermak promise to make sure her looks remained, even after she died. "Whichever of us dies first, the other will see to it that we look beautiful at the last," Sermak said Davis told her.
These days, Sermak is the co-executor of the Bette Davis Estate and co-founder of the Bette Davis Foundation. And she's carrying on Davis' request to "set the record straight" on their story. You can watch a preview of her book below:
