STACK Magazine December Issue 122

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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
024
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
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
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
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
Two scenes fromWhat Ever
Happened to Baby Jane?
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