Gary Merrill on July 28, 1950. That same day, he married Bette Davis, his co-star from "All About Eve", and adopted her daughter Barbara from a previous marriage. He and Davis adopted two more children, Margo and Michael, but they had a bitter divorce in 1960. Often politically active, he campaigned in 1958 to elect the Democrat, Edmund Sixtus Muskie, as governor of Maine. Merrill also took part in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 to promote Black voter registration. In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War policy, he unsuccessfully sought nomination to the Maine legislature as an
Bette Davis known from early childhood as "Bette", was born on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Harlow Morrell Davis (1885 - 1938), a law student from Augusta, Maine, and subsequently a patent attorney, and Ruth Augusta (née Favór; 1885 - 1961), from Tyngsboro, Massachusetts. Bette's younger sister was Barbara Harriet. In 1915, Davis' parents separated, and Bette attended a spartan boarding school called Crestalban in Lanesborough in the Berkshires. In 1921, Ruth Davis moved to New York City with her daughters, where she worked as a portrait photographer. Betty later changed the spelling of her name to "Bette"