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Betty Davis Passport Discussion


Luv2play

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1 hour ago, wsc said:

If I'd ever looked like that, I'd tape one of the pics to my driver's license.

That reminds me of the story that when Bette Davis died in Paris they discovered she had substituted a Warner Studio photo in her passport.

Byw I didn't read that somewhere. I was told it by the consular official from the US embassy in Paris who went to id the body. 

Edited by Luv2play
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  • 4 weeks later...
On 2/21/2023 at 8:45 AM, Luv2play said:

That reminds me of the story that when Bette Davis died in Paris they discovered she had substituted a Warner Studio photo in her passport.

Byw I didn't read that somewhere. I was told it by the consular official from the US embassy in Paris who went to id the body. 

The passport was auctioned off. She died in Neuilly in 1989, so this would be the one.

https://entertainment.ha.com/itm/movie-tv-memorabilia/autographs-and-signed-items/a-bette-davis-signed-last-passport-1986/a/7176-89052.s

BD photo.jpeg

Edited by Asterisk
Accuracy
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2 hours ago, Asterisk said:
On 2/21/2023 at 8:45 AM, Luv2play said:

I was told it by the consular official from the US embassy in Paris who went to id the body. 

The passport was auctioned off. She died in Neuilly in 1989, so this would be the one.

So is it being suggested that somebody at Warner forged a second passport after she died?! Or that consular officials like to embellish?  😉

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2 hours ago, Walt said:

So is it being suggested that somebody at Warner forged a second passport after she died?! Or that consular officials like to embellish?  😉

Well, looking at the picture that was the official one in the passport Bette looks every bit as old as her then age of 78. The story I was told was that she simply pasted a more flattering and youthful portrait over top of the official one.

She probably was used to being whisked through customs without anyone actually looking inside her passport, she was so famous. It only caught up with her when she died abroad and the passport became a vital document to be examined for ID purposes.

Edited by Luv2play
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20 minutes ago, Luv2play said:

Well, looking at the picture that was the official one in the passport Bette looks every bit as old as her then age of 78. The story I was told was that she simply pasted a more flattering and youthful portrait over top of the official one.

What we see in that photo is the actual passport photo.  In the 80s, pictures were glued into the passport and then an embossing device was used to crimp the photo onto the page -- like the old stamps that a notary public used that actually punch holes into a page.  The blue and red embossment running vertically up the picture says "PHOTO ATTACHED / DEPARTMENT OF STATE / NEW YORK" -- and it's on both the page and the picture.  So that's the original, and it's from the old Rockefeller Center passport office.

Now, whether Ms. Davis occasionally slid a younger glamour shot into the passport to impress border police, well, only a lady would know, and I would never tell.  🙂

Edited by Scott Virginian
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I think that's another explanation of why she did it. The embassy official who told me the story said her attempt to fool anybody by pasting another picture on top was clumsy and immediately obvious. 

They would have peeled off her photo which is why the auctioned one shows the real passport photo. I thought it was a great story and probably would have increased interest in the auction had it been known to the auction house. 

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Another thought, @Luv2play:

Davis passed away in France, but she's buried in Los Angeles.  Which means her body had to be brought back to the U.S., and her family would have needed help from the U.S. Embassy to do that. They would have had to contact the Embassy and bring in a French death certificate and her passport in order to get something called a "Consular Report of Death Abroad".  And some official in the Embassy would have done the paperwork to cancel her passport, record the death, and issue the report.

Now imagine that you're the Embassy official, this passport comes to your desk, and you have to be the one to stamp "Cancelled - American Embassy Paris, France", "Deceased" and handwrite in the date and place of death.  And you're sitting there looking at the passport of a national legend.  That's gotta be a surreal experience.

 

Having said that, I promise not to divert the thread further from the original topic, The Centurion, who is smoldering as fuck.

Edited by Scott Virginian
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The way I understood the story was that the Embassy was contacted almost immediately after her death was discovered and before her family was notified. The Embassy sent this representative who met with the hotel manager where she had been staying. He got the passport from the manager(in those days you left your passport at the front desk when you checked in). He discovered the irregularity with the photo. 

So this passport didn't come across his desk and I imagine he or someone else at the embassy notified her family. I seem to recall Ms. Davis was travelling with an assistant or caregiver so they may have notified the family back in the States.

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