Bette Davis always seems like a larger than life figure when her legendary career is recounted these days, but in the beginning of her career she was just like many aspiring starlets. The first studio who expressed an interest in her talent was Universal Pictures. Her first experience with them, however, would not be a positive one.
When Bette Davis arrives with her mother in Hollywood, she was surprised that no studio representative was there to greet her. She later discovered that a representative had been sent, but that he had told studio chief Carl Laemmle that he hadn’t seen anyone who looked like a star at the train station. Ouch. Bette Davis would get picked up by Universal Pictures, but would do little of importance there. She wouldn’t gain traction in Hollywood until she moved to Twentieth Century Fox.
