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 lukewarm reviews and failed at the box office, Hollywood columnists wrote that Davis' comeback had petered out, and an Academy Award nomination for "The Star" (1952) did not halt her decline. In 1952, Davis appeared in a Broadway revue, "Two's Company" directed by Jules Dassin. She was uncomfortable working outside of her area of expertise; she had never been a musical performer, and her limited theater experience had been more than 20 years earlier. She was also severely ill, and was operated on for osteomyelitis of the jaw. Margot was diagnosed as severely brain-damaged due to an injury sustained during