American superstar Ms. Bette Davis. I could have worked for her but I blew my chance.

When I was growing up in New Jersey (USA), I lived with my parents in a two-storey, four-bedroom, 1.5-bath colonial house with a dining room, kitchen, living room and study. It was not a very big house, neither was it small, but it was big enough for three people because it was just my father, my mother and me living there (my sister was already married and had left to establish her own home).

We lived in a quiet and very nice neighbourhood, on probably half an acre of land. That was two lots which is pretty big, especially for a kid. In the front, we had a huge lawn with rich, luxurious green grass and hundreds of flowers. Marigolds, roses – you name it, we had all types of flowers because my mother was very much into all of that. In our backyard, we had a luscious garden with a lot of grass and flowers (like sunflowers), as well as vegetables like cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, lettuce and so on.

My childhood home in Howell, New Jersey on West 3rd Street. I was in charge of keeping everything inside and outside clean, trimmed and polished. That also meant gardening and cultivating the flowers and vegetables in my mother’s garden. So I was trained to do this since young and later on, it turned out to be quite helpful.

Of course, taking care of the yard and the garden, and doing the weeding and watering was my job. After school every day, I would spend at least two, sometimes three, hours watering the grass, the flowers and the vegetable garden. How much time I spent depended on whether or not it had rained. Once a week, I was also required to weed and once a month, I would have to cut the grass (which was a very big production) and put fertiliser on it.

The inside of the house was also left to me to do. This included doing the laundry, changing the sheets, laundering my parents’ clothing, washing, ironing, vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the glass and the windows, washing the dishes, cleaning out the refrigerator, keeping everything sanitised and smelling good – all of those were my duties and my mother trained me to do all of that.

So basically, what I did growing up, besides my schoolwork and playing with friends, was a lot of housework. Laundry, cleaning and even polishing my mother’s two sets of pure silverware and her China dishes. Polishing, cleaning, vacuuming, washing dishes, washing laundry, yard work – I did all of that and I became quite good at it because I had to do it and my mother had a very sharp, eagle eye. She could walk into a room and instantly see any dirt and dust, and anything out of place.

My adoptive mom and I. She trained me from a very young age to clean, polish, garden and cook and I would do it well because I did not want to be punished.

Not only did the house and yard have to be perfect, clean, trimmed and neat, but things also had to be placed in the right order. If I cleaned her bedroom for example, I would also have to clean her bureau where she had all her perfume, jewellery and her doilies. She had a lot of her things on the bureau, in front of her mirror when she got dressed and I would have to remove all that, dust off the bureau and spray it with Pledge for wood. Then I would have to wash the doilies that she had hand-made – there were a lot of doilies – and I would have to starch, dry, clean and put them back. All of her perfume bottles, which she had many of, and her jewellery also had to be put back on the bureau in exactly the same way she had put it.

And remember, I did not have phone cameras back then to take a picture and capture how the bureau looked before I started cleaning. I had to memorise what it looked like and put it back exactly as it was, or my mother would not be happy.

So it was like that throughout the house. Everything had to be put back perfectly and I had to memorise it. There were many, many times when I was punished for not putting things back correctly, not washing things correctly, not vacuuming correctly, missing corners, etc. So you know, living like that for years as a kid, you grew up with very sharp eyes, and you knew how to take care of the house and the yard.

On top of that, I was trained by my mom to cook. I did not advance very far in that because I left home at 15 but by then, she had started teaching me how to cook various Mongolian-Kalmyk dishes and some American dishes. I was not a very good cook but I picked things up quickly because I just did not want to be punished. One thing I was good at is memorising things. I could memorise things very quickly because I did not want to upset her. If you upset her, she would be very unhappy for days and I would be grounded and all that stuff.

Standing in front of Mark Keppel High School when I returned to Los Angeles in 2014. I was enrolled here for a short time after arriving in Los Angeles. After I got my GED, I dropped out of high school for good.

Anyway, when I left home when I was 15, I hitchhiked to Los Angeles and after I settled there, I had to go to high school for a while until I took a GED. A GED is a general education test and if you have any problems at home and all that, if you pass the GED, you are allowed to leave high school. In America, we have eight years of free education in elementary school and four years of free high school. That is 12 years of education you get free from the state and after that, if you want to go to college or university, it is up to you. However, 12 years was standard for most kids growing up at that time.

I was in my second year of high school in New Jersey when I dropped out because I went to Los Angeles. So in Los Angeles, I sat for my GED and surprisingly, I passed. Once I passed and got my high school-equivalent certificate, I fully dropped out from high school so that I could work because I was living alone in Los Angeles. The only kind of jobs I could get were part-time jobs which were unreliable and not very high-paying. Because I was under 18 at the time (therefore underaged), I could only get jobs that were part-time because legally, under-18 kids were not allowed to work a full-time job since you were required to be in school. That was the law in California at that time, I do not know about the situation now.

Ms. Bette Davis had a long and extensive movie career, captivating American audiences for decades and working up until a year before her passing.

Anyway, so I had to work two or three part-time jobs in order to sustain myself, because I was living at a Dharma centre and studying with my teacher there. At the Dharma centre, I took care of the garden because although it was not my duty, it was my wish to do so because my teacher lived there. I also took care of the downstairs area of the house and my teacher’s room upstairs. That meant doing the cleaning, laundry, vacuuming, polishing and all that stuff. I was really good at it because I had been well-trained by my mom. So I was doing that in the centre and working two to three part-time jobs to support myself.

The corner of Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue. If you are driving on Sunset and you go past Western (heading to the right), then you are on the Eastside which is where my friend and I were driving around.

It is important to give you this background because of what happens next. One day, I was driving around in Los Angeles with a friend of mine, I cannot recall who it was. It was one of those friends who were short-term friends, people you were friends with for a few months and then they kind of disappeared or just fell out of contact. Anyway, I remember very clearly that I was driving around with a friend on Sunset Boulevard. Sunset’s divided by Western Avenue. Sunset goes East to West, Western goes North and South. At Western Avenue, when you go past Western Boulevard on Sunset, it becomes Eastside. When you go past Western Avenue towards the Pacific Ocean or Malibu, it is the Westside.

So we passed Western and we were in the Eastside driving around the area, I remember clearly, and my friend said to me that she has a friend working as the assistant of the huge movie star Bette Davis. I said to my friend, “Oh, really?” and then she said, “Yeah” and that she is quite good friends with this person. She said that this person has been working with Bette Davis for a while and is her personal assistant, and my friend had heard that Bette Davis was looking for an extra person, someone young to be like a Boy Friday, to run around and do things, and help the assistant with work in her house.

Ms. Bette Davis was not considered a classic beauty but her expressive eyes were the talk of the town, even lending its name to a song by Kim Carnes called “Bette Davis Eyes”.

I said to my friend, “Do you think I can do that?” and she said to me, “Why not? You kind of fit the bill. They want someone young, someone who can run around and is versatile.” And I said, “It’s to work for Bette Davis in her house, right?”

My friend told me, “It’s not just in her house. You would have to run around and just be available for anything. You have to be Boy Friday, which is to be available for anything.” So I said to my friend, “Okay, can you call your friend to say that I am interested?”

A part of me was thinking, “Bette Davis. I mean, does this person really know someone who knows her?” There was a part of me that was kind of like, “I don’t think it’s really real.” 50% of me believed it and 50% did not. Nevertheless, I told my friend, “Just get me the number.” So my friend called her friend, the one who was the assistant to Bette Davis, and she got the phone number to Bette Davis’s house. She gave me the number and I was like, “Really?”

So I got the number to Bette Davis’s house and I thought to myself, “Well, what can I lose?” I was kind of nervous because I was like 16, 17 years old. I knew I was really good at housework and that is what they required. I knew I could run around and clean; if they needed to do gardening, I could do that too. So I thought to myself, “Wow, the good training I had from my mom is really going to come in handy. This would be a full-time job and being exposed to Bette Davis, who knows what opportunities I’ll come across, and I’ll get better pay.” Plus they were going to pay directly in cash. It was not that I had to sign up for any official employment papers; I could just get cash, which meant I could work full-time, albeit illegally.

I thought, “Great, the things they require are what I can do and on top of that, it’d be a full-time job. And on top of that, it’s going to be with Bette Davis and who knows what kind of people are going to come in and out of the house.” I thought to myself, “What an opportunity!”

So I got my courage together and a few days later, when I was at home and it was in the afternoon, I made the call. I thought I had better call in the afternoon because in the morning, she might not be disposed. At night, being older, she might sleep early. So I called in the afternoon and I could not believe it. Bette Davis herself answered the phone. You know, if you watch any of her movies, you will know her voice, it is very distinctive.

She answered, “Hello?” and I went, “Oh” and thought to myself, “It’s her.”

I asked, “Is this Ms. Davis?” and she replied, “Yes?” and then I said,

“Hi. I heard you needed some help and I wanted to help you.”

The minute I said that, I said to myself, “Oh god, that was the wrong thing to say.”

Ms. Davis then said, “I don’t need any help” and she hung up the phone. I went, “Oh my god, what did I do?”

I just could not believe I had spoken to this American superstar. I should have said, “Ms. Davis, your assistant was looking for a young man to help with shopping, cleaning, some housework and some Boy Friday duties. I’m very interested. I’m this age and can I please come in for an interview? I’m a hard worker and I’ve been really well trained by my mother and I need a job.” I should have said that but I do not know why I said what I had over the phone.

Even when I spoke those words, I thought, “Boy, was that the wrong thing to say” because by reputation, everybody knows that Ms. Davis is a very direct person who does not put up with nonsense and she is not very patient with all kinds of calls. I mean, being the superstar she is, imagine how many crank calls she gets in a day, a week or a month.

For days and weeks after that, I kicked myself because I had totally ruined my opportunity. I asked my friend, “Should I call again?” and she told me, “By the way, you’re stupid. You should have explained more. I mean, she would have listened.”

I said to her, “But I was nervous. I was scared. I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never interviewed like that before, just over the phone. I didn’t know what to do.” I also asked my friend, “Should I call back?” and she said, “I don’t think so because the second time you call back, it’s going to sound like a crank call and people like her get weird crank calls all the time. And you know, she’s not a normal person. She’s a big somebody.”

To this day, I cannot believe that I lost my chance of working with Ms. Bette Davis. Can you imagine? All she said was, “No, thanks” and hung the phone. “I don’t need any help. No, thanks” and hung up the phone. I thought to myself, “Oh my god, what did I do?”

In any case, when I was growing up, every Sunday, around 3 to 5pm, they put all these old movies on Channel Nine. You know, Joan Crawford movies, Liz Taylor movies, Bette Davis movies. Every Sunday, my mother would watch those oldie movies with Bette Davis and all that, which was way before my time. All those movies are black and white and I thought they were boring. God, I hated those movies. They just talked, it was dramatic, there were no special effects, no phasers, no robots, no creatures from outer space. There were no creatures from the Black Lagoon and being a young boy, I was not interested in all of those black and white talkies.

Some of Ms. Bette Davis’ movies would play on Sundays and my mom would watch it. As a child, I was not a fan of her movies because they were before my time. It is only recently that I have come to appreciate the cinematic mastery and acting prowess of this American screen legend.

But my mother would watch all those old movies when I was growing up so I knew who Bette Davis was. I was not her fan at that time and I was not interested in her movies. I was just too young to appreciate high art because Bette Davis’s performances are really high art. She was the First Lady of the movies, the First Lady of Hollywood. You have to have very refined taste in acting and movies to appreciate her talent which, as a young kid, I did not have. I was interested in Lost in Space and Star Trek, forget about Bette Davis.

So I was not really her fan and I did not watch her movies. I was not even remotely interested back then. It is just about 10 years ago, when I was in my 40s, that I started watching a little bit of the oldies that my mother used to watch. And it was not until last year, even the year before that, that I started becoming really interested in Bette Davis movies and I realised the amount of screen presence, charisma and intensity that this woman had, and how she commanded the American screen. Americans are a very demanding audience, and this person was just so incredibly talented. It is only in the last few years that I have become a Bette Davis fan because I appreciate talent of all genres and walks of life.

I have grown to admire Bette Davis very, very much and some of my favourite movies of hers includes Strangers, with her and Ms Gena Rowlands. That was really a touching movie about how a daughter had fallen out of favour with her mother and how they reconnected. It was filmed when Ms. Bette Davis was already older but you have to remember, she worked for over 60 years. She was in the cinema for 60 years and she worked until one year before she passed away when she was like 81, 82.

A still from the cult classic “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”, one of my favourite movies of all time.

Yes, she worked until the end and she was not one of these actresses where after 50, she had no more jobs. She worked all the way to the end and some of my favourite movies of hers includes Strangers and also Escape to Witch Mountain. I liked that because Christopher Lee was in it with her. I also like Voyager and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, that is like my top favourite, it is so fabulous. There is another movie of hers called The Star that I like and also The Virgin Queen.

Dark Victory was excellent and very touching, and another one of my favourites is All About Eve. So it was Dark Victory, All About Eve, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? – those are really some of my top favourites and she was spectacular, whether she was acting when she was younger or when she was older. She worked all the way until the end, only stopping just a year before she passed away in 1989 and unfortunately, I became a fan too late.

Oh, I remember why I had talked to her in such a strange way to ask for employment. It is because I did not expect her to answer her phone. I mean, it is not every day you get a superstar’s telephone number and when you call up, they answer the phone, right? I thought her assistant or somebody else would answer, and so I would just be more relaxed. When she answered however, and I recognised her voice immediately, I was caught off guard and that is why I really stumbled. So that was the reason I stumbled and lost my chance.

Anyway, that was my little interaction with the First Lady of American Screen and one of the top actresses of the last century, and I blew it by introducing myself wrongly.

Tsem Rinpoche

Ms. Bette Davis was not the first time I missed the chance to work in Hollywood: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/?p=198877

When I attempted to interview for a job with Ms. Bette Davis, it was the 1980s and at that time, I was living in Hollywood: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/?p=4603

In Los Angeles, I had the great fortune to live in the Dharma centre of my guru, Venerable Geshe Tsultrim Gyeltsen who was immeasurably kind to me: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/?p=188163

While living with Geshe-la in Thubten Dhargye Ling, I did part-time jobs outside while serving the centre: https://www.tsemrinpoche.com/?p=23449

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? [The Original]

Starring Ms. Bette Davis and Ms. Joan Crawford, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is a 1962 American psychological thriller-horror film produced and directed by Robert Aldrich. The movie is about an ageing former child actress who holds her paraplegic ex-movie star sister captive in an old Hollywood mansion.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? [Kecharian version!]

Our talented Kecharians rehearsed this parody and performed it for me as a birthday gift, knowing that it is one of my favourite movies. I love it when people are creative and spontaneous like this, and really appreciated their efforts. Although Ms. Bette Davis’ talent remains unrivalled, nevertheless this is a must-watch video and EXTREMELY funny!

Two Hollywood legends and icons of American cinema, Ms. Bette Davis (left) and Ms. Joan Crawford (right). They starred together in one of my all-time favourite movies, “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”. The women were well-known to be rivals, and engaged in a highly publicised feud that lasted for decades.

Ms Gena Rowlands and Ms. Bette Davis when she was older. They were in the movie “Strangers” together. Ms. Bette Davis worked all of her life, starring in movies up until a year before her passing.

Ms Gena Rowlands on Ms. Bette Davis

Ms. Bette Davis was famously outspoken and direct, and everybody knew this, even fellow Hollywood legends like Mr Humphrey Bogart.

Lauren Bacall was widely considered a Hollywood beauty, sex symbol and cinematic legend in her own right. She too greatly admired Ms. Bette Davis’ talent and found it inspirational.

Quotes by Ms. Bette Davis

People did not always agree with her opinions, nor appreciate them but Ms. Bette Davis was certainly direct, witty, highly intelligent and very powerful.

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