Bette Davis at 104: Still smokin' | Scanners

"I'm sure some people say it's old-fashioned, probably," she says. "Especially the name thing today. I never call people by their first names 'til I know them. And that's the whole thing today. So ... Well, I'll tell you what I am in the present society: I'm a square. I've always been a square. That's right. Square. That's the best description. Right. That's the way I am. Right."

In the grand style of a movie queen holding court, Miss Davis delivers pronouncements. She speaks in periods and exclamation points, punching out brief, emphatic statements. When she talks, she is always listening to herself talking, constantly monitoring and editing herself, like an actress directing her own performance.

Then, when she's content with what she's said, she lapses into an abrupt silence, accompanied by that familiar pose of total composure, assurance and indifference: chin in the air, smoldering cigarette in hand. You fear she could stay like that forever, unless you bring up something else that interests her. It's your cue; deliver your next line.

In her book, Miss Davis has some less than complimentary things to say about such people as Bob Hope (jealous of her Distinguished Civilian Service Medal), Faye Dunaway (unprofessional), Joan Collins (vain), Ronald Reagan (dull, and an ineffective Screen Actors Guild president) -- and, of course, her daughter B.D. Hyman, who wrote a rather nasty book about her called My Mother's Keeper -- rather like Mommie Dearest, the one written by the daughter of Miss Davis's longtime screen "rival," Joan Crawford. (In a letter to B.D. at the end of her book, Miss Davis says her daughter's volume is full of "figments of your imagination.")

Has she perhaps heard any response from these people?

"No, no I have not," she says, dismissing the subject. "And I'd just as soon not discuss that. Let's leave that just the way it is and not go into it any more. No, I have not. I have not."

Miss Davis speaks some phrases percussively, like a human snare drum. Behind them, you can hear the echoes of "What-ta-dump!" from "Beyond the Forest." Other words she bends slowly over her palate, stretching them to the breaking point so that they whine and groan, twisting them into the smoky bray of Baby Jane Hudson.

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