Bette Davis adopted a five-day-old baby girl they named Margot Mosher Merrill (born January 6, 1951), after the character Margo Channing. Davis and Merrill lived with their three children - in 1952, they adopted a baby boy, Michael (born January 5, 1952) - on an estate on the coast of Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Davis, after semi-retirement in the mid-1950s, again starred in several movies during her time in Maine, including "The Virgin Queen" (1955), in which she played Queen Elizabeth I. The family traveled to England, where Davis and Merrill starred in a murder-mystery film, "Another Man's Poison" (1951). When it received
Bette Davis well-known, particularly "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night". She was again nominated for an Academy Award, and critics such as Gene Ringgold described her Margo as her "all-time best performance". Pauline Kael wrote that much of Mankiewicz' vision of "the theater" was "nonsense", but commended Davis, writing "[the film is] saved by one performance that is the real thing: Bette Davis is at her most instinctive and assured. Her actress - vain, scared, a woman who goes too far in her reactions and emotions - makes the whole thing come alive." Davis won a Best Actress