What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Continuing my look at prominent films of 1962, Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane is a contemporary horror story that had the coup of teaming legendary movie stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. As anyone who knows a bit of Hollywood history would know, those two were also legendary divas, and the Oscar results would be shaped by their intense rivalry.

But first, the film, which today seems awfully dated and tame. We begin with a prologue, when Baby Jane Hudson is a Shirley Temple-like vaudeville star. She's spoiled by her father, while her older sister Blanche is a stuttering and neglected child. Years later, Blanche will be a big movie star, while Jane is thought of as untalented, but she makes movies because her sister has put in her contract that the studio must hire her. Then it all ends, when Blanche is crippled in an auto accident that everyone thinks is Jane's fault.

Flash forward to the present day, when Blanche (Crawford) is a kind woman relegated to a wheelchair. She enjoys watching her old films on television, and doesn't seem to have a mean bone in her body. That's the opposite of Jane (Davis), who still dresses like a little girl, with golden curls and a face coated with pancake makeup, and cares for Blanche, though not with pleasure. As the story begins, Jane begins plotting her comeback, which means eliminating Blanche.

Though the film is too long and the direction is clunky, there is a palpable, vicarious fear as Blanche is a prisoner in her own home. A housemaid (Maidie Norman) is sympathetic to Blanche, but Jane is able to hold her off. When Jane removes the phone from Blanche's room, she's completely cut off from the outside world.

The film was a sensation at the time, notably for a scene in which Jane serves a dead rat to Blanche for lunch. That seems kind of tame today. But in the film's last third, when Jane has tied Blanche up and is stealing her money, there's a sense of urgency that comes across well. Aldrich has shot the film as if it were a horror film, using an old Hollywood mansion and several low camera angles.

Also in the cast is Victor Buono, as a louche pianist whom Jane hires to help her with her music act. Buono was known to me mostly as King Tut on the old Batman show.

Buono was nominated for an Oscar, as was Davis, but not Crawford. The two hated each other, and Crawford was incensed. Davis, who really gives a terrific, unflattering performance (one of her old films is used as an example of how terrible an actress she is) would have been the first actress to win three Oscars. But when Anne Bancroft won for The Miracle Worker, Crawford glowingly excepted on her behalf. Coincidentally, both had children that would write devastating memoirs of their poor motherhood skills--Davis' daughter, B.D. Merrill, has a small part in the film. It was to be Davis' last Oscar nomination.