MBTI Type: ESTJ

Bette drives a hard bargain and is happiest when she has total creative control over a project. She negotiates being a producer into her contract and then sets about controlling the money. She has a strained relationship with her daughter as well, due to her attempts to ‘control’ her and manage her career and lifestyle. She knows how to make money and focuses primarily on that, negotiating for a better contract and more pay, making logical suggestions to how they get the film made and where to make cuts. Unlike Joan, she did not leap right into life; she remained a virgin until she got married because ‘that’s how things were done back then,’ showing that she lived within the society in which she grew up and allowed its understanding of values to affect her. She is meticulous in how she builds her characters; given the chance to act alongside her rival, Joan Crawford, she comes up with the most hideous appearance she can, to upstage her glamorous co-star with her “ugliness,” and she has a condescending attitude about Joan’s vanity getting in the way of her work ethic and acting abilities. Bette’s problem is her inability to think ahead and deduce things – she has flashes of insight into her costar (knowing she’s manipulative) but she doesn’t think Joan might actually attempt to upstage her on Oscar night, or that her daughter will marry in secret, to ruin her wedding plans. Her Fi is also immature; she doesn’t need to pick at and upset Joan, but she does out of pure hatred for her. She aggressively competes with Joan for attention, and decides to upstage her through negative attention / an outrageous sense of “style” on their movie together.

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Bette has a reputation for being hard to get along with, because she’s assertive, aggressive, confrontational, free with her blunt opinions, and never backs down from a fight – in fact, she worsens it by participating in a long-term feud with Joan. She does not like to appear vulnerable or weak, and her relationship with her daughter suffers due to her tendency to want to dominate and dictate to her family members. Her 9 wing makes her quietly authoritative and hesitant in engaging with the outer world – she confesses to Joan that she played by all the rules in her virginity (waiting until she got married) and she was somewhat in awe of Joan’s sexual conquests.