Bette Davis her in the role of Margo Channing in "All About Eve". The First Day of Issue celebration took place September 18, 2008, at Boston University, which houses an extensive Davis archive. Featured speakers included her son Michael Merrill and Lauren Bacall. In 1997, the executors of her estate, Merrill and Kathryn Sermak, her former assistant, established The Bette Davis Foundation, which awards college scholarships to promising actors and actresses. Bette Davis became the first person to earn five consecutive Academy Award nominations for acting, all in the Best Actress category (1938-1942). Her record has only been matched by one other
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