“She wasn’t a ham,” he replied, “she was a hysteric.” The Smartest Man I Know will appreciate the fact that Bette Davis seems to have agreed with him. “Being hysterical,” she told Charlotte Chandler, “is like having an orgasm. It’s good for you.” If this is true, Davis should have spent the better part of her life in a delicious state of pleasurable exhaustion, instead of the way she actually spent it—in fretful agitation.

The title of Charlotte Chandler’s oral biography, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone, gives the tonal key to the book: self-pity. Betrayed by her distant father, betrayed by the men she stupidly chose, betrayed because she loved William Wyler far more than he loved her, it’s the story of a woman who nourished a grudge for 81 years because she could never find anybody who loved her like her mother.

The fact that she wasn’t particularly lovable is beside the point. A true narcissist filters everything through her own self-veneration.

She was also her own worst enemy. Lindsay Anderson, who directed her in The Whales of August (1987), told me that her need for enemies, her undifferentiated fury about nothing at all, took her beyond the irrational and into outright insanity.

But, you say, that was at the tail end of her life, when things had gone sour and her beloved daughter had trashed her in a book. Well, dial it back 20-odd years. Robert Aldrich told Ms. Chandler that there were no blowups on Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), but if there had been, Davis would have won, because “she was made that way, to thrive on conflict.”

Throughout the book, Davis basks in the unchallengeable belief that the problem with her private life was her choice of men. Admittedly, the dilemma is acute for actors on the mountaintop. Another actor in the house means a battle for dominance that would take Robert Ardrey to analyze, and then there’s the problem of rising and falling careers. So a lot of stars, now as well as then, assert their dominance by marrying someone who, in a rational world, would be a personal assistant—a submissive whose plumage will never compete. One of Davis’ husbands was a hotel desk clerk; another was an “artist,” although nothing ever seemed to get painted.

Makes Kevin Federline seem like a heavyweight.

Of the parts that got away, Davis was notably upset about losing Anna and the King of Siam to Irene Dunne, largely because of her admiration, both personal and professional, for Rex Harrison. (This presumes that Darryl Zanuck would have actually considered casting an innately irascible actress opposite an equally irascible actor.) Interesting that Davis should admire Harrison: He was chamber music, light-fingered and dexterous, while she always seemed to come on with the thundering chords of Max Steiner behind her, even if someone else scored the film. It speaks to a pet theory of mine, that artists often admire other artists who represent qualities they don’t possess themselves.

Aside from her father, the only man Davis seems to have worshipped was William Wyler, who certainly dragooned her best work out of her—The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941), although I must confess a weakness for Edmund Goulding’s Dark Victory (1939)—by being even more obstinate and willful than she was. (“He was everything I ever dreamed of in a man, so love and passion soon followed.”) For his part, Wyler told Ms. Chandler, “She was very passionate and emotional, with more energy than anyone I’d ever known. Too much for me.”

You can hear the exhaustion. How could Wyler have gone home to the decathlon after running a marathon at the studio?

Among women, Davis expresses admiration for Martha Graham: “It was she who showed me the importance of the entire body in acting. She was an authentic genius, one of the great people of the twentieth century. I worshipped her. Still do. I learned how to use every part of my body in subtle ways to enhance the words I was saying, or even to belie them. It was the ultimate in body language before that term was used.”

Davis seems to have been a purely emotional creature, with no powers of intellectual analysis whatever. Occasionally, she embarrasses herself: “Because of Mildred [in Of Human Bondage], there were some who considered me the female Marlon Brando of my generation.”

No. Among other things, Brando did better accents. Davis being Davis, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone is always quotable; Charlotte Chandler being Charlotte Chandler, it’s always readable, although Ms. Chandler doesn’t mention why it took a quarter of a century for the book to appear—the interviews were begun in 1980—nor does she point out that Davis collaborated on a very similar book (Mother Goddam) with another writer. Ms. Chandler, though, gets stuff that Whitney Stine never dreamed of.

Take this, for example, about the archetypal 30’s lounge lizard Warren William: “The giggle around the studio was that he had an erection ninety percent of the time and had to wear special underwear in order to conceal it. I think he started the rumor.”

You don’t get tidbits like that on Inside the Actors Studio.

Scott Eyman’s Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer was published last year by Simon & Schuster. He reviews books regularly for The Observer.

You don't walk out on the stage of the world-famous Palace unprepared. When Judy revived the art of the two-a-day vaudeville revue on the same stage in the 1960's, she made history. Songs were written about it. Walter Winchell came every night and sauntered on stage, unannounced, and danced with her.

Following in those fabulous footsteps, a lot was at stake for Liza. Everyone except the trashy tabloids are as tired of reading about her ups and downs as she is tired of living through them. She had to prove herself, once again, maybe for the most important time in her life-not only for her peers in the business and her legions of terrified fans, but most of all, for herself.

Plus the show was not about her mother. It was about-and for-her father, the most revolutionary and brilliant director of Hollywood musicals who ever lived. She shed her demons, licked her personal and medical problems, lost 40 pounds, worked with a trainer, employed a coach to regain power and strength in her voice, stretched the limbs damaged and gnarled by painful knee and hip operations, then surrounded herself with the most talented friends and comrades in the business: Bob Mackie for beads, Marvin Hamlisch and Billy Stritch for knockout orchestrations, her longtime conductor Bill (Pappy) LaVorgna to conduct, ex-husband and friend Jack Haley Jr. to coordinate the film clips of her father's illustrious career, Fred Ebb to piece it all together and provide special musical material (with his writing partner John Kander) to bring her life and talent up to date for a memorable millennium finale.

The most famous people in the world sat nervously on opening night, wondering what would happen next. And there she was, splendid and frisky and nervous and powerful and vulnerable all at the same time, and she disappointed nobody. In Minnelli on Minnelli , I am thrilled to report, the show-business veteran is at the top of her game. I counted 12 standing ovations.

And she did it all with only five terrific Broadway dancers, four wall panels, both beautiful and functional, on which projections of family photos and M-G-M logos are cleverly projected, and an array of mood-altering lights that changed from fire engine red to deep, dark purple to sunny lemon meringue, depending on the song.

And talk about songs. From "Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe" ( Cabin in the Sky ) to "Shine on Your Shoes" ( The Bandwagon ), she left no stone in the history of her dad or Hollywood's golden era unturned. Empowered by courage and determination, she stopped the show with a voice strong and radiantly alive on "What Did I Have?" (singing it better than Barbra Streisand did in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever ), and reduced us all to hysterics on a game rendition of "Triplets" with two of her boy dancers, all of them sewn into the same sweater with six sleeves.

Maybe her dancing lacks the libidinous Punchinello quality Bob Fosse taught her, maybe her steps are more cautious and refined. Hell, what do you expect? She's 53 years old. Instead of high kicks, she has so much more. The passion and self-assurance that have been missing for a long time have been joyously restored.

Her voice is slightly darker than it used to be, adding a mature richness to a ballad like "Baubles, Bangles and Beads" (from Kismet ) that is deeply moving. And she's got her wicked, larky sense of humor back, too. On special Fred Ebb lyrics for "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore" (aren't we all?) from Gigi , there's even a line that stops the show again ("I don't even flinch now when I see/ A seven-foot drag queen who looks like me").

Although the name Judy Garland is never mentioned once, for very deliberate reasons (it's a show about Dad, not Mother), the explosive, heart-pounding finale is "The Trolley Song." For the first time in her career, Liza not only tackles one of her mother's signature treasures, but sings it triumphantly with clips of Judy in Meet Me in St. Louis . A gorgeous way to send us all into a new millennium, if you ask me.

I have never sat in a theater before where the entire audience was breathing right along with the performer. And then she took our breath away, collectively, all of us in it together. I honestly surrender objectivity. I have known Liza since she was 16 years old, I have watched her epic saga unfold and lived through every chapter. But I have not lost my perception. When I say she rises from the flames to soar again, I'm not kidding. I love her courage, her talent, her solid respect for the traditions of the business with which she was raised.

Her parents were two of the most brilliant people on the planet. Her godfather was Ira Gershwin. Her godmother was Kay Thompson. It's in the genes, man. And she's all we've got left of an endangered species.

At the Palace, Liza is not leasing space. Liza owns the stage. Call it a comeback. I call it a fucking resurrection.

Get to Know Anna and the King

At the movies, the year-end siege is upon us. Anna and the King with Jodie Foster is the kind of movie they used to make when I was a kid. In fact, they made it twice-first as Anna and the King of Siam with Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison in 1946, then as The King and I , the musical version by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1956 with Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner.

The story never seems to age, but since Jodie Foster does everything else but sing, I can only wonder what she'd sound like with Marni Nixon's voice.

Hers is a tougher, more modern slant on prim Victorian schoolteacher-widow Anna Leonowens. Dispatched to Siam in 1862 to tutor King Mongkut and his 58 children and introduce them to Western culture, Mrs. Anna stayed long enough in this bizarre world to change the course of history of Thailand. As any tourist knows, her schoolroom still stands amid the golden temples and wats in Bangkok, and her son grew up to build the Oriental Hotel.

According to this film, Anna fell in love with the king, but he already had 26 wives. There are limits to what a respectable Victorian prude is willing to stamp in her passport visa.

Ms. Foster is perfect casting for a woman of strong ideas and opinions, standing up for her independence, opposing slavery and cruelty, and promoting freedom and fairness. And her co-star, Chow Yun-Fat, is a surprisingly decent, humane king. Strutting less than Yul Brynner and barking less than Rex Harrison, he turns out to be a wiser foe and more compassionate ruler, as well as a loving father and rugged chick magnet. It doesn't take long for Ms. Foster to soften his stubborn will, calm his terrible temper and turn him gooey inside.

Filmed among the exotic palaces and verdant gardens of a still-mysterious land, it re-creates the rituals, pageants and elephant caravans of Anna's time, but it's still the basic story of a courageous foreigner who tames and humanizes a barbaric king. Although the famous Rodgers & Hammerstein song cues are all here, it's more than just a nonmusical King and I . Director Andy Tennant expands the actual diaries kept by Anna to include political unrest, war with Burmese rebels, the king's court conflicts with his villainous military adviser, the murder of his brother, the death of his favorite child by cholera and some excitingly staged war footage. A nice chunk of time still goes to the subplot about Tuptim, one of the king's unhappy concubines whose love for another man leads to her own tragic death. Nice, too, to see the lovely and gifted Ling Bai back on screen in the role.

Beautifully photographed by Caleb Des-chanel, Anna and the King is a new spin on a popular and ageless story that is lush, lavish and completely captivating. An instant classic.