Bette Davis Alert

One of the many amusing stories from Roger Ebert's Cannes diary is this story told by a distributor about the shooting of the film "The Whales of August."

"One day," he said, "[director] Lindsay Anderson told Miss Gish she had just done a wonderful closeup. 'She should,' Bette Davis snapped. 'She invented them.'"

May will be a Bette Davis festival on TCM, with some 60 films being shown on the cable channel every Wednesday and Thursday throughout the month. The capper is "Stardust: The Bette Davis Story," a documentary by Peter Jones debuting May 3 at 8 p.m. Robert Osborne talks about his decade long friendship with Davis, her secret affair with composer Johnny Mercer and other details in a brief note at the beginning of the TCM program guide. Just based on the titles, I'm looking forward to "Parachute Jumper" and "Satan Met A Lady." Someone needs to stock up on a lot of VHS tapes.