STACK #122 Dec 2015

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R obert Aldrich had directed Joan Crawford in the 1956 movie Autumn Leaves, and for several years after, she had continually pestered him to find a project that she could star in with Bette Davis. Being only too aware of the well documented animosity between the two actresses, Aldrich had convinced himself this was never going to happen.That is until 1961, when a member of his staff sent him a suspense novel written by Henry Farrell titled What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Acquiring the film rights, Aldrich sent a copy of the book to Joan Crawford with a note stating that if she was still interested in making a movie with Bette Davis – and more importantly, could persuade Davis to star in it with her – this just might be the perfect project for them. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?  is a gothic melodrama of hate, revenge and murder, involving two aged sisters who had both once been famous movie stars. One of them, Baby Jane Hudson, was a singing and dancing child star in the 1920s whilst her sister Blanche, who as a child had been envious of Jane, had found great success as an adult movie star in the 1930s. Jane blames her failure to make it as an adult actress entirely on Blanche, whose own career ended when she became disabled following an automobile accident. Details are vague, but Blanche’s paralysed legs are the result of Jane being drunk while supposedly driving the car when the accident happened. Now confined together in their dilapidated and decaying Hollywood mansion, Jane is forced to care for her wheelchair-bound sister, and the animosity they’d always had for each other has, after many years, developed into a seething hatred. Their corrosive relationship is exacerbated by the renewed popularity of Blanche’s early feature films now appearing on television, which begins to affect Jane’s sanity as she becomes ever more sadistic and psychotic. Much like the two characters in Farrell’s book, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis’s film careers had

he budgeted the film accordingly. Both Crawford and Davis worked for far less than their normal fees and took percentages of the net profit instead. With a proposed fast shooting schedule of just 30 days, in locations around Los Angeles and a rental studio, Aldrich arrived at a total budget figure of $850,000. But every major studio rejected Baby Jane, stating they were not interested in such a high risk venture starring “those two old broads”. The project appeared to be dead in the water until new independent company Seven Arts – releasing their films throughWarner Bros. – agreed on a tight budget with Aldrich. With no studio facilities available atWarner’s, the cast and crew were located at the Producer’s Studio across the road from Paramount Pictures.The studio was a primitive, ramshackle lot used mainly for

Two scenes from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

television westerns – was a big comedown from what the two stars had been used to. Now for the first time, after 30 years of continually sniping at each other, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were unleashed in the same arena. However, to everyone’s surprise, there was no

also gone into steep decline. Consequently, Crawford was more than keen to star in the movie. But before Davis committed herself to the production, she needed to

ask Robert Aldrich a couple of questions. “Do I get to play the Baby Jane role?” she asked the director. “Of course,” he replied. “Have you slept with Joan Crawford?” was her next question. “No,” lied a somewhat surprised Aldrich. Davis continued: “Bob, I’m not at all interested in your private life or Crawford’s either.That’s a matter of taste. But I definitely don’t want any pillow talk being the cause of you reducing my amount of close-ups”. Davis was taking no chances in being filmed as a supporting character to Crawford, for although Joan was now middle-aged, her sexual appetite for actors and directors had most certainly not abated. Aldrich knew that a gothic tale starring two middle-aged actresses who had once been Hollywood stars, filmed in monochrome, would be difficult to sell to the movie studios, so

feuding on the set. Both of them demonstrated total professionalism, arriving promptly every day and obeying their director’s instructions to the letter. According to Aldrich, their behaviour during filming was impeccable. But off the set they were still dogmatic adversaries who simply couldn’t restrain themselves from having little digs at each other whenever they were interviewed by the media.  When Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was released on Halloween night in 1962, it was an immediate box office hit, recouping its original budget in less than two weeks. It would eventually go on to gross over $9 million (in today’s money that would be equivalent to almost $70 million) – not bad for “two old broads” making a comeback. Both actresses received acclaim from critics for their performances, but when the Academy

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