Remarkable family photo album personally assembled by Oscar-winning actress Bette Davis and presented to her daughter Barbara Davis Hyman as a birthday gift in 1966. The red leather-bound album, gilt-stamped “B. D.” in the lower right corner, measures 12.25 x 14.5 and consists of 15 dual-sided sheets displaying a total of 96 photos; the majority of the sheets are annotated in red felt tip and blue ballpoint by Davis, who offers detailed, neatly penned captions near many of the photos. The opening page, which Davis uses for the dedication, reads, in full: “Your Life, B.D—And the places you lived from May 1st, 1947 until January 4th, 1964. With love from Mother on your nineteenth birthday, May 1, 1966.”
The album features an impressive visual record of all of Davis’s nine houses—The Castle in Laguna Beach, Smoke Tree Ranch in Palm Springs, Butternut in Franconia, the Pacific Coast Highway house in Malibu, Camino Palmero in Hollywood, the Beekman Place apartment in New York City, Witch Way in Cape Elizabeth, the East 78th Street townhouse in New York, and Honeysuckle Hill in Bel-Air. Among the more extensively covered residences is that of the Butternut estate on Sugar Hill in Franconia, New Hampshire, which shows the gorgeous White House, the Red House, and the Barn. An introduction to the Butternut section: “Your mother’s favorite home. She owned and built all the buildings. You spent many holidays here from the time you were two years old until you were eleven when it was sold.” Of particular note is one image of the interior of the Barn, which shows Davis’s two Best Actress Oscars displayed on the mantle.
Includes a typed and signed letter of provenance from the album’s former owner, B. D. Hyman, which reads, in part: “An album of family photographs with an historical narrative in the hand of my mother, Bette Davis…It is well known, because Mother so often boasted of it, that I was delivered by Caesarean Section on May 1st, rather than April 28th. as requested by the doctor, because Mother wanted a ‘May Day Girl.’ This enabled Mother to institute an annual ritual of a May Pole Dance, and my fifth such dance is photographically covered on page 19 with Mother herself participating.” In overall fine condition, with creasing and tears to the edges of the single detached page. An intimate, one-of-a-kind keepsake dating to a period of presumed geniality between Davis and her daughter. In 1985, Hyman published the autobiography My Mother's Keeper, which offered an unflattering look at Davis as a self-centered and alcoholic mother. Supporters rushed to Davis' side, and the book—despite becoming a best-seller and spawning a sequel of sorts, Narrow Is the Way—was overwhelmingly denounced as false and inaccurate. Davis later disinherited Hyman and left her entire estate to her adopted son Michael and to her assistant Kathryn Sermak.
