Davis once said of her romantic entanglements, “Love is a big joke on all of us. I chose very foolishly.”
She tied the knot with her first husband – who was also her boarding school sweetheart, Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr. – in 1932. Their marriage began around the time of her breakout role in The Man Who Played God.
However, once the actress shot to fame, Nelson “felt emasculated by her fame and success,” according to Julia A. Stern, who wrote Bette Davis Black and White.
Amid Davis and Nelson’s 1938 divorce, he accused her of having an affair with Hughes. She later admitted that it was true.
“You know, I was the only one who ever brought Howard Hughes to a sexual climax, or so he said at that time. It’s true,” she said in a past interview. “What is to say, it’s true that he said it. Or let’s say I believed it when he told me that. I was wildly naïve at the time. It may have been his regular seduction gambit. Anyway, it worked with me, and it was cheaper than buying gifts. But Howard Huge he was not. I liked s-x in a way that was considered unbecoming for a woman in my time. The way I felt was only considered appropriate for a man.”