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Davis’ portrayal of Jane does not end with the makeup. Like Norman and Mrs Bates, the malicious child and the sinister old drunk occupy a single body, each speaking in her own voice in turns (although, of course, Jane is under no illusions as to her identity). Davis is at once horrifying and humorous, serving her sister her own dead canary on a silver platter and then growing nasty “because you didn’t eat your din-din”. She sings the most mawkish, sentimental, inappropriate songs for her age ("I’m writing a letter to Daddy/His address is Heaven above…") in a cracked and croaky voice, complete with tippy-toe dance steps and a curtsey bobbed at the end.
In the final analysis, Crawford winds up as mere furniture. At times we forget she is even there, so camp and histrionic is Davis’ portrayal. Baby Jane rolls up the film, sticks it under her arm and walks off with it, and if one even remembers one is tempted to ask: “What ever happened to that other old lady dying upstairs?”
An on-set war
The stories of on-set rivalry are part of Hollywood history. Joan Crawford’s late husband Alfred Steele had been the CEO of Pepsi-Cola and Joan was on the board of directors. Knowing it would upset her co-star, Bette Davis had a Coke machine installed on set. During the filming of the famous scene in which she finds Blanche trying to telephone for help, having painstakingly edged herself out of her wheelchair and down the stairs, Davis reportedly kicked Crawford in the head, causing a wound that required several stitches.
In retaliation, Crawford filled her pockets with lead weights so that while filming the next shot, Davis strained her back dragging her out of the room and towards the stairs.
Davis was disdainful of Crawford’s diva-like behaviour on set. Crawford exploited her movie-star status from every angle — from demanding that her dressing room be redecorated to insisting that her character retain some of the “Joan Crawford glamour”.
A "cannibal feast"
The film, with its decaying mansion, hopeless dreams of lost youth, faded glitter and stardom past resuscitation, is reminiscent of Billy Wilder’s ‘Sunset Boulevard’ of twelve years earlier. But ‘Baby Jane’ is no cheap pastiche — for all that it shares many themes and character types with ‘Blvd’, it is a darker, funnier and very different film. If ‘Sunset Boulevard’ is a classic, ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ is a cult film.
‘Sunset Boulevard’ is a film noir, of higher status than Aldrich’s movie. ‘Baby Jane’ has more in common with the horror genre — it is high camp, its central character an over-the-top gargoyle who dreams of regaining her lost stardom but is forceful, violent, suspicious and calculating. In Stanley Peskin’s words, it is a “cannibal feast” — a perfectly apt epithet.
Two years later Aldrich followed ‘Baby Jane’ with ‘Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte’, a story with many similarities to ‘Baby Jane’, this time starring Davis as the victim of a scheming, jealous relative played by the still-beautiful Olivia de Havilland. Crawford had been slated to take the role, but she pulled out on dubious medical grounds. Although it is less celebrated than its precursor, ‘Sweet Charlotte’ is an excellent film, and Davis’ performance is better, subtler and utterly convincing.
Boosting intrigue
It is possible, of course, that the stories of the rivalry were pure fairy-dust, urban legends told to bolster the intrigue surrounding the film. Bette Davis herself claimed that "feud is a Hollywood word, a wildly overused Hollywood word. Did Bette Davis and Joan Crawford ever feud during the filming of ‘Whatever Happened to Baby Jane’? No! Like, dislike — these were not words I applied to Miss Crawford. Until we were cast as the co-stars of ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ I knew her only slightly. Our paths had seldom crossed, even though for three years we had adjoining dressing rooms at Warners. In truth I did not know her any better after the film was completed. Twenty years after we had worked together, and half a dozen years after her death, we are still a team in the public's mind.”
It is possible, certainly. But then what fun would that be? We viewers love to have our cannibal appetites sated by the dramas we hear and read about. The film itself isn’t enough, there must also be romance, rivalry – at the very least practical jokes going on behind the scenes. Davis’ denials are adequately explained by her daughter in ‘My Mother’s Keeper’: “It was beneath them to compete with each other. Both felt so superior that they couldn't acknowledge their hatred, let alone express it.”
Perhaps. But the film world is that much more fascinating for having contained a woman who once said: “Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.”
And I shall defend to the death my right to believe that she did.
» The Johannesburg Classic Film Society meets on the third Sunday of every month. For more information contact Stanley or Hennie on (011) 486 1000.
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