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 film "As Summers Die" (1986), and in Lindsay Anderson's film "The Whales of August" (1987), in which she played the blind sister of Lillian Gish. Though in poor health at the time, Davis memorized her own and everyone else's lines, as she always had. The film earned good reviews, with one critic writing: "Bette crawls across the screen like a testy old hornet on a windowpane, snarling, staggering, twitching - a symphony of misfired synapses." Davis became an honouree of the Kennedy Center Honors for her contribution to films in 1987. Her last performance was the title role in Larry