Miss D and Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis

by Kathryn Sermak, Danelle Morton (With)

Overview

For ten years Kathryn Sermak was at Bette Davis's side—first as an employee, and then as her closest friend—and in Miss D and Me she tells the story of the great star's harrowing but inspiring final years, a story fans have been waiting decades to hear.

Miss D and Me is a story of two powerful women, one at the end of her life and the other at the beginning. As Bette Davis aged she was looking for an assistant, but she found something more than that in Kathryn: a loyal and loving buddy, a co-conspirator in her jokes and schemes, and a competent assistant whom she trained never to miss a detail. But Miss D had strict rules for Kathryn about everything from how to eat a salad to how to wear her hair...even the spelling of Kathryn's name was changed (adding the "y") per Miss D's request. Throughout their time together, the two grew incredibly close, and Kathryn had a front-row seat to the larger-than-life Davis's career renaissance in her later years, as well as to the humiliating public betrayal that nearly killed Miss D.

The frame of this story is a four-day road trip Kathryn and Davis took from Biarritz to Paris, during which they disentangled their ferocious dependency. Miss D and Me is a window into the world of the unique and formidable Bette Davis, told by the person who perhaps knew her best of all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316507844
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	09/12/2017
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,077,257
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kathryn Sermak is the co-founder of the Bette Davis Foundation and co-executor of the Bette Davis Estate. In addition to Bette Davis, Kathryn has been personal assistant to HH Princess Shams Pahlavi; French actress, Isabelle Adjani; the statesman and journalist, Pierre Salinger; astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin, Motown Founder, Berry Gordy Jr.; famed American designer, Patrick Kelly; and the co-creator of Where's Waldo, Michael Gornall. Kathryn was also among the first to receive the Personal Assistant Career Award in 2003. Visit her at missdandme.com.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

1 I Have a Hunch About You 16

2 On the Set in London 34

3 The Pygmalion Year 60

4 Family Reunion 90

5 All for Love 119

6 Gigi's Return 136

7 The Battle Begins 150

8 Back in California 164

9 Pierre's Visit 173

10 The Breakdown in San Ysidro 187

11 On the Beach in Malibu 200

12 A Farewell from Bede 212

13 Road Trip: Day One-Biarritz to Bordeaux 221

14 Road Trip: Day Two-Bordeaux to Poitiers 236

15 Road Trip: Day Three-Poitiers to Orleans 244

16 Road Trip: Day Four-Orleans to Paris 253

Afterword: Denouement in San Sebastian 258

Acknowledgments 275

Editorial Reviews

…[a] deeply personal, strangely enthralling account…

The New York Times Book Review - Noah Isenberg

06/05/2017
Bette Davis was demanding and a perfectionist, Sermak writes in her lively memoir about being the two-time Oscar-winning actress’s personal assistant. As Sermak writes, Davis valued loyalty and discretion in employees and work was her salvation. These may not be earth-shattering revelations, but Sermak’s story concentrates less on the famous star and more on her own maturation while employed by Davis from 1979 to 1985. Hired as a “girl Friday,” Sermak soaked up the life lessons Davis imparted, such as how to give a firm handshake and how to stand out from the crowd. The prickly-turned-warm relationship between these two women unfolds on movie sets, the hospitals where Davis recovers from a stroke, and during a scenic road trip through France. There are also tense episodes surrounding Davis’s relationship with her family, especially her daughter, B.D., who secretly writes a tell-all memoir about mama. This nice-not-nasty book is not going to satisfy fans of TV’s Feud looking for gossip—there is only one real dig at Joan Crawford, Davis’s famous bête noire—but it will appeal to those who want an insider’s view of Davis, even if the focus is mainly on the insider. Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary Agency (Kathryn Sermak); Linda Loewenthal, Loewenthal Company (Danelle Morton). (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"America loved Bette Davis for the great star she was. I had the privilege of being her friend. She lived by good old-fashioned Yankee standards; she expected much and gave much; she was forthright, honest, and had a great sense of humor. Kathryn Sermak's book is a beautifully insightful look at the real Bette Davis."—George Hamilton

"We should all hope that we have a Kathryn Sermak in our lives whose love and devotion overcame any odds she might have encountered in her remarkable journey with Miss D. This book is homage to both ladies and a wonderful read."—Stefanie Powers

"None of us knew or loved Bette Davis during her later years more than Kathryn Sermak. This is a wonderful book about one of the greatest women I ever knew—and one of the greatest actresses who gave us all so very, very much. You'll enjoy this read and realize what a truly great woman Bette Davis was—and an inspiration to women of all ages."—Robert Wagner

"What a great insight into the last chapters of an Extraordinary woman's life. Kathryn Sermak tells it like it was: with candor and style—certainly the Bette Davis I was fortunate enough to know!"—Greg Gorman,celebrity photographer

"Miss D & Me is a fascinating look at the life of this indomitable star and her young assistant, Kathryn, during the last ten years of Miss Davis's life. It is their inspirational journey, which begins with Miss D as mentor-instructing Kathryn in every detail of work as well as the social graces-and ultimately leads to a devoted friendship. I highly recommend it."—Ann-Margret

"Kathryn Sermak has given us a well-written and vivid account of her long association with one of the most remarkable women of the past century: Bette Davis. I read it and was enthralled."—Olivia de Havilland

"Delightful . . . Miss D & Me details the sweet and deepening bond between the much-feared actress and a timid, young Kathryn Sermak—a pairing set against a steady drumbeat of menace."—New York Daily News

"Endearing . . . Inspired by a fateful road trip the two women embarked upon through France in 1985, the book - based on Sermak's extensive archive of datebooks, photographs and audio cassettes - offers an intimate glimpse into the last 10 years of the screen icon's life, until her passing in 1989 with Sermak by her side."—The Hollywood Reporter

"Deeply personal, strangely enthralling."—New York Times Book Review

"When Kathryn Sermak was hired as Bette Davis's personal assistant in 1979, she was a 22-year-old ingenue who had no idea who the great movie star was. For the next ten years she would help the woman she regarded as her mentor and, subsequently, friend, through her twilight years that brought illness and a devastating betrayal by her daughter, B.D. Hyman, in a brutal memoir about her mother. Davis's heartbreak is also keenly felt by Sermak in her deeply personal Miss D And Me. The woman behind often horrific movie characters emerges as a loyal, kind and vulnerable person, emotionally maimed by a child'she adored."—Daily Mail (named a Best Book of the Year)

From the Publisher

2017-05-21
A chronicle of the last years of a cinema legend as told by her personal assistant. Would anyone familiar with Bette Davis' reputation as headstrong and independent be surprised to learn that she yanked out the bushes of a Long Island beachfront property she rented for a weekend because she didn't like the way they looked? Sermak, co-executor of Davis' estate, was a 22-year-old Southern California native in 1979 when she jettisoned a plan to pursue a career in clinical psychology and took a job as the 71-year-old actress's personal assistant. This book covers the years in which Sermak was Davis' live-in assistant, accompanying her to film sets, cooking her meals, and staying by Davis' side during and after the star's 1983 mastectomy and stroke. (The author movingly renders these scenes.) Davis was as much a mentor to Sermak as an employer. She told her to change the spelling of her first name because "one of the big battles in life is to stand out from the crowd," gave her lessons on posture, and even hired a butler to teach her the protocol for a formal dinner. One might have expected this book to be a hagiography, but, refreshingly, the author shows not only Davis' kindness, but also her cruelty, as when she rudely declined a dinner invitation from Sermak's mother. The author gets bogged down in extraneous detail, with rambling accounts of conversations and long descriptions of the meals she and Davis enjoyed. However, the book is a poignant portrait of an aging screen icon reduced to taking her medicine with swigs of Ensure Plus and struggling to live her life with the grandeur to which she had become accustomed. Sermak writes of Davis' tutelage, "she was training me for a world that was fading from view." The author ably documents Davis' growing realization that, long before her death in 1989, her time was already passing.

Kirkus Reviews

This is a very personal account of screen legend Bette Davis’s final challenging years as told by her personal assistant, who later became her “buddy” and, finally, co-executor of her estate. While the stories told are interesting, and some are remarkable, the work lacks the punch and maturity to call it an overall winner. Kathryn Sermak’s first-time narration is remarkable for its lack of precision. Attributions to “Miss D” sounds like “Misty” nearly throughout, and that causes confusion. The very quality of immaturity that may have attracted Davis to employ Sermak is still very much present in both the writing and narration. Rambling, adoring, and touching in instances of Davis’s great kindness and cruelty—the audiobook, considered as a whole, is uneven, as we surmise that life with the elderly Davis must have been as well. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

This is a very personal account of screen legend Bette Davis’s final challenging years as told by her personal assistant, who later became her “buddy” and, finally, co-executor of her estate. While the stories told are interesting, and some are remarkable, the work lacks the punch and maturity to call it an overall winner. Kathryn Sermak’s first-time narration is remarkable for its lack of precision. Attributions to “Miss D” sounds like “Misty” nearly throughout, and that causes confusion. The very quality of immaturity that may have attracted Davis to employ Sermak is still very much present in both the writing and narration. Rambling, adoring, and touching in instances of Davis’s great kindness and cruelty—the audiobook, considered as a whole, is uneven, as we surmise that life with the elderly Davis must have been as well. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2017 - AudioFile