The story goes that a lightning bolt hit the oak tree in front of the Lowell, Massachusetts, house at the exact moment Bette Davis was born. Well, that’s what she claimed. She was a two-time Oscar winner who turned her own life into a performance. But in the legend of cinema’s toughest star, that storm was not just a birth announcement; it was a warning.
Long before the internet brought up her daughter’s stories about Satanic rituals, and years before her last role as a witch named Miranda, people described Davis with words usually saved for the women accused in Salem. British critic E. Arnot Robertson wrote in 1935, “She gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet. I think that Bette Davis would probably be burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago.”
Most actresses would have backed away, but Bette Davis leaned into it.
The Salem Connection and “Witch” Label
Bette Davis was actually born near Salem. She traced her family back to the trials and claimed she came from Mary Bradbury, a woman found guilty of “Certaine Detestable arts” like shape-shifting and putting spells on ships. Critics said it was just Hollywood nonsense, but Davis stuck to the story. “It would explain everything,” she later said.
Related: Why Bette Davis Hated Faye Dunaway More Than Her Legendary Rival Joan Crawford
Now, after the TV show ‘Feud‘ and some new digging through old archives, the story of Davis’s interest in the occult has resurfaced. It shows a woman who used the witch image to scare her rivals and take over the screen.
Greta Garbo’s “Witchcraft” and Bette Davis’ Obsession
A lot of the Bette Davis legend comes down to her eyes, which could freeze a frame, and her voice, which cut like a razor. But the most surprising part of her supernatural image is who she admired most.
In case you missed it: The Real Story Behind Bette Davis and Joan Crawford’s Decades-Long Feud
People often called Davis a witch, but she looked at Greta Garbo and saw real magic. Davis once said Garbo’s control over the camera was more than just skill. “Her instinct, her mastery over the machine, was pure witchcraft,” Davis said. “I cannot analyze this woman’s acting. I only know that no one else so effectively worked in front of a camera.”
Davis saw in Garbo the same kind of power she wanted for herself. A kind of femininity that was not weak or shy but strange, strong, and outside of what men expected from an actress. When she called Garbo’s talent “witchcraft,” Davis was setting her own standard for greatness. It was not about hitting your mark or crying on command. It was about putting a spell on the audience.
The Demonic Curse and Satanic Rituals
But the idea turned into something much darker for the people close to her. In the 1980s, Davis’s only biological child, B.D. Hyman started saying that her mother’s interest in the dark arts was not just an act; it was how she lived.
In some old YouTube videos and the 1985 book ‘My Mother’s Keeper‘, Hyman described a woman who drank too much and believed she could hurt her enemies with magic. Hyman said Davis would sit on her bed with a big metal trash can and tell her secretary to bring her clothes that belonged to people who had upset her. “She would take this piece of clothing, and she would mumble incoherently, and she would then set it on fire and hold it over this metal waste basket, and laugh as it burned,” Hyman said.
Hyman also said Davis put a “demonic curse” on her own family after Hyman married a man Davis did not like. She blamed the curse for her son’s bipolar disorder and her own cancer. The creepiest part was when Hyman described a night in 1982 when Davis “transformed into a Satanic figure” with “long claws” scratching at a terrace door.
Davis was furious about these claims before she died in 1989. She said the publication of her daughter’s memoir was “as catastrophic as the stroke was to me.” The two never made up.
Bette Davis’ Final Role That Brought It Full Circle
Strangely, Davis’s last movie role brought the whole story full circle. In 1989, a troubled film called ‘Wicked Stepmother‘ was being made. Davis was supposed to play Miranda, a chain-smoking witch who terrorizes a normal family.
It was perfect casting, but Davis left the movie almost right away. She said the script was bad and she did not get along with the director. They rewrote the role so the witchcraft went to another character.
It was a messy but fitting end for a star who spent her whole career blurring the line between real human drive and something supernatural. Whether she was actually putting curses on people or just playing the witch for the cameras, it did not matter. For sixty years, Bette Davis had Hollywood under a spell that no one has been able to break.
You might also want to read: Bette Davis Hated Her Final Movie So Much She Walked Away and Never Returned
