Best of the web: Bette Davis in The Decorator

Decades before Designing Women and AbFab, The Decorator is just as funny and biting

Site: The Decorator

Did you know that Bette Davis made an unaired TV series pilot in 1965 produced by Aaron Spelling and cowritten by Mart Crowley (Boys in the Band)? It was called The Decorator and starred Davis as a talented drinkin’ and smokin’ interior designer who insists on living briefly with her clients. Her exasperated assistant is played (of course) by Mary Wickes. I know… amazing!

Davis is a hoot. When she flies into the living room in a white muumuu, headscarf and sunglasses, arms stretched out and announces dryly: “Do you think my type is coming back?” well, it’s just so extraordinarily über-gay-squared. Practically a quarter of a century before Designing Women and AbFab, The Decorator is just as funny and biting. Why this never aired or became a series is beyond me.

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