What Does It Say on Bette Davis’ Grave?

grave of Bette Davis collage
Everett Collection; Gabrielle Moss

Bette Davis died on Oct. 6, 1989, at the age of 81, after a long battle with cancer. When she passed, she was buried alongside her mother, Ruth Favor Davis, who has passed in 1961, and her sister, Barbara “Bobby” Davis Berry, who died a decade before Bette. The family members share a crypt at Los Angeles’ Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Memorial Park, where they rest under a large statue of a woman holding flowers.

Bette David grave Hollywood Forever cemetary wikipedia

Kafziel /Wikipedia

grave of Bette Davis

Gabrielle Moss

While Ruth and Bobby have simple inscriptions, the section bearing Bette’s name bears an additional epitaph: “She did it the hard way.”

The statement refers to Davis’ fighting spirit and work ethic, which allowed her to turn out timeless performances in films like The Little Foxes, Jezebel and All About Eve while clashing with studio heads, suffering repeated industry rejections, and enduring bias and criticism for being an independent woman in an era long before such things were common.

The tombstone is iconic in its own right; countless articles about Davis have been entitled “She did it the hard way,” and the epitaph was even evoked in the final scene of the 2017 biopic series Feud: Bette and Joan.

But where did the actual phrase come from?

Bette Davis eyes, Kim Carnes, LL ABOUT EVE, Bette Davis, 1950, TM & Copyright ©20th Centrury Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection

20th Centrury Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection

In the 1974 book Mother Goddam — a biography of Davis by Whitney Stine, peppered with commentary by Davis herself — the statement was said to originate from Joseph Mankiewicz, who directed Davis in 1950’s All About Eve. According to the book, in 1951, Mankiewicz said, “On your tombstone should be written She did it the hard way.” It was a sentiment echoed in Davis’ 1962 memoir, The Lonely Life, where she wrote, “I have been at war from the beginning.”

Fans honor not just Davis’ cinematic accomplishments, but her indomitable will, at her grave, by leaving lipstick kisses on her tombstone in tribute.

 

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