Miss D & Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis

If you suspect that your kids are just using you, are ungrateful little shits and can afford an assistant, get one and pull a Bette Davis so you can clap back from the grave. Miss D & Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis is a memoir by her faithful assistant during the icon’s final years. If you are a classic Hollywood fan, this memoir is for you.
Even though the tone is old fashioned, devote a few seconds before delving into the book to look at the photographs. The author, Kathryn Sermak, was not an out of date anachronism wishing for a gentler time. She was definitely a woman of the 1970s and 1980s with her side boob swimsuit and her off shoulder ensembles. Do not get it twisted. She was discreet about her idol’s affairs, but she was not walking around covered head to toe like a monk. Sermak was definitely giving us Aaron Spelling’s Dynasty, but you would not know it if you just read the book.
Miss D & Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis is about Sermak looking for something more than this provincial life—the province being California. She yearns for Europe, preferably France, and has a few successful moments escaping the confines of her origins, but once hired by Davis, she gets a finishing school and a friend for life. Life with her employer was very challenging, and Sermak never sugarcoats her experience, which lends her credibility when she cannot stop gushing about the great woman.
I love stories about intergenerational relationships, and Miss D & Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis proves that sometimes you can choose your family. Sermak takes all those years that she wanted to defend her friend from unfair publicity, specifically from Davis’ daughter, Bede, and comes out swinging, but in such a restrained fashion that she cannot be accused of being lurid. When she speculates, she is careful to distinguish it from fact.
Miss D & Me: Life with the Invincible Bette Davis is also a quick and entertaining read. She manages to simultaneously convey Davis’ strength and vulnerability while depicting herself as a woman striking the balance between devotion and independence.