What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Directed by Robert Aldrich

Film Review

It was the showdown of the century.  Two of Hollywood's leading screen actresses, who had been at war with one another since the 1930s, finally agreed to appear in the same film together, and the blood-thirsty appetites of audiences were amply rewarded by a spectacle of unparalleled savagery.  Forget King Kong versus Godzilla and Alien v. Predator.  The most gruesome and nerve-racking clash of the cinematic titans came when Joan met Bette on the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? and proceeded to tear lumps out of each other, channelling thirty years of pent-up antagonism into a histrionic set-to of truly terrifying proportions.  Definitely not for the faint-hearted. 

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford had been the deadliest of rivals since the mid-1930s, when Crawford allegedly stole (and married) the love of Davis's life, the actor Franchot Tone.  Davis envied Crawford's sexual magnetism and success as a glamour puss, whilst Crawford's loathing for Davis is thought to have originated from an unrequited lesbian crush that turned horribly sour.  Publicly, both actresses denied they had any ill-feeling towards one another, but the reality was very different.  Jealous of each other's professional success, Davis and Crawford hated each other with a vengeance and would continually spit venom at each other right up until the end of their lives.  "Joan Crawford? I wouldn't sit on her toilet!" Davis once snarled.  Speaking of her nemesis, Miss Crawford remarked: "I had no idea of the extent of her hate, and that she planned to destroy me.."

Given how much the two actresses loathed each other, it seems highly improbable that they would ever agree to venture into the same studio, let alone appear in the same film together.   Ironically, it was Crawford who suggested Davis should play opposite her in Robert Aldrich's adaptation of Henry Farrell's novel What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?  By the early 1960s, both actresses were well past their best and were desperate to revive their flagging film careers.  The prospect of enacting a grotesquely parodied version of their off-screen feud was a lure that neither Crawford nor Davis could resist, although no Hollywood studio was prepared to come up with the readies to make this sick fantasy a reality.  In the end, Aldrich made the film on a shoestring budget, a joint venture between his own company and Seven Arts Productions (known for its low-budget horror films, including several collaborations with Hammer Films).  Crawford and Davis accepted a modest fee in return for a share of the film's profits - a very lucrative arrangement as it turned out.

By this time, Robert Aldrich had earned a reputation as one of the true mavericks of American cinema, a director who did not shirk from showing us the grimmer and more sordid side of human experience.  He began his career by working as an assistant to such distinguished filmmakers as Jean Renoir (The Southerner), William Wellman (Story of G.I. Joe) and Charlie Chaplin (Limelight).  Although he is best known for mainstream trumphs such as The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and The Dirty Dozen (1967), Aldrich also made several more challenging films which led various influential critics to dub him an important auteur, one of the standard bearers of the counterculture movement that would radically transform American cinema in the late 1960s, early 1970s.  What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is not the most well-regarded of Aldrich's films - it is overlong, unevenly paced and is let down by poorly developed supporting characters that fail to justify their place in the narrative.  Yet it is one of his most idiosyncratic and daring works - a full-bodied Gothic horror-cum-suspense thriller that manages to be funny and frightening in equal measure.

This is a film that feels like a head-on collision between Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).  Aldrich does an effective job at emulating Hitchcock's decidedly black humour and use of suspense, employing old-fashioned film noir motifs (slanted camera angles, high-contrast lighting, exaggerated close-ups) to ratchet up to the tension and convey the stifling sense of confinement in which the two sisters live, trapped in a world of their own making, in a relationship of mutual dependency and mutual loathing.

The film was a gift for both Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.  Crawford does what she does best, playing the helpless martyr and meekly accepting the blows that come her way, mostly for comic effect.  Davis is at her most outrageous (a frightening prospect indeed) and positively revels in the role of the sister from Hell.  Note the sheer delight in her face as she serves a dead rat on a platter to her half-starved co-star.  Note the ecstatic frenzy that overtakes her when she finally goes in for the kill, kicking Crawford's head as she lies helpless on the floor (inflicting real injuries as she does so).  There's more than a hint of wish-fulfilment on display here as Crawford and Davis re-enact their famous off-screen feud as a psychotic battle of wills.

As she dredges up something of her erstwhile glamour, Crawford turns in the more subtle and engaging performance.  How can we not sympathise with her when she is on the receiving end of so much inhumane cruelty?  Davis does just about everything an actress can do to alienate her audience but there is one powerful scene in which we are compelled to identify with her.  In one of her character's insane flights of fancy (which have to be seen to be believed), she glimpses herself in a mirror and suddenly sees what she has become - no longer the angelic child star, but a hideously made-up clown-like caricature of an elderly woman.  This revelation is presumably what sends poor Baby Jane over the edge and makes her into a monster that is infinitely more nightmare-inducing than the one dreamed up by Mary Shelley.  Next to her, Boris Karloff wouldn't get a look in.

Although generally ill-received by the critics, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was a box office hit and took nine million dollars worldwide.  Not only did it provide Joan Crawford and Bette Davis with the comeback they had hoped for, it also made them immensely wealthy.  The film was nominated for four Oscars, winning the award for Best Costume Design.  Crawford was so incensed by Bette Davis's Best Actress Oscar nomination that she approached each of the other nominees, offering to accept the award on their behalf.  In the event, it was Anne Bancroft who won the Oscar, and Crawford took great delight in receiving the award when she was unable to attend the ceremony. 

The film was such a success that it spawned a short-lived sub-genre of horror films involving psychotic harridans, including Aldrich's Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), which had been conceived as a Davis-Crawford rematch (Crawford ended up being replaced by Olivia de Havilland when she fell ill, apparently after being bullied by Davis).  Not surprisingly, the experience of working together on Baby Jane did nothing to ease the mutual detestation between Crawford and Davis.  Their enmity lasted even after Crawford's death in 1977 and soured Davis's final years.  What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? may be a work of fiction but it offers more than a glimpse into the true nature of the complex relationship between the two queens of Hollywood melodrama - a relationship that was not simply one of irrational hatred, but also one that may have harboured a profound, albeit grudging, respect.

Film Synopsis

In 1917, Baby Jane Hudson is a child star of the music hall, but her success is envied by her sister Blanche.  By 1935, the tables have been turned: Blanche has found fame and fortune as a film star whilst her sister wallows in alcoholism as her own acting career flounders.  One fateful evening, Blanche is badly injured in a spiteful act of revenge and ends up being wheelchair bound for the rest of her life.  Seventeen years later, Blanche is a prisoner in her own Hollywood mansion, constantly tormented by her sister Jane, whose animosity towards her has only increased with the passage of time.  As her financial resources dwindle, Blanche realises that she must sell her house, but Jane is horrified when she discovers what her sister is planning.  Convinced she can make a comeback, Jane hires a two-bit composer Edwin Flagg to start writing songs for her, whilst resorting to increasingly drastic measures to prevent Blanche from selling their house...