Enjoyed the Oscars last night, in particular perhaps Jimmy Kimmel; the
lively back-and-forth between Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph; and Eva
Marie Saint, comfortably at ease, comfortably herself, and still
beautiful at ninety-three. But the Academy Awards event doesn’t hold the
thrill for some of us that it did fifty or sixty years ago, when one saw
movie stars walking around in real time and saying something unscripted
just on this one night.

The only movie star I ever spent any time with was Bette Davis, who
turned up one summer at a beach cottage in Prouts Neck, Maine, just next
door to the one occupied by my father and stepmother. These cottages
were comfortable but not opulent, and adjoined a nice Atlantic beach.
Bette was with her husband Gary Merrill, who also played her husband in
“All About Eve.” We two couples, along with assorted family and friends,
had a casual, boozy dinner together there one night, and I found the
famous couple lively, open, and smart—great company.

But movie stars are not like the rest of us, much as we sometimes want
them to be. As proof, I offer a conversation I overheard the morning
after that dinner, when I sat on the beach alone except for the company
of Davis’s daughter B.D. and my own daughter Callie, who were digging
in the sand together. B.D. was six or seven, and Callie about five.
Their backgrounds were perhaps further apart, with B.D. projecting a
certain Malibu cool at a time when Callie’s sole movie experience to
date had been a nature documentary called “Beaver Valley.” Here is their
overheard conversation, still etched in memory: