What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Directed by Robert Aldrich
Written by Lukas Heller
Starring Bette Davis, Joan Crawford
Release Date October 31st, 1962
Published May 1st, 2024
I did not know what I was getting myself into when I agreed to make What Ever Happened to Baby Jane the classic for our I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. By reputation, the film is a camp classic filled with over the top histrionics on the part of stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, actors who famously hated one another. I especially had an odd cultural perception of Joan Crawford based on her life after being a movie star. Crawford's career is a blind spot for me, I've never felt compelled to look into her film work. This is due to the reputation assigned to her based on Mommy Dearest, the book and movie adaptation that pain Crawford as a maniacal egotist, a bully and a monster.
Bette Davis on the other hand, I've seen a lot of Bette Davis. I'm a big fan. Davis' can do more with a withering glance, a simple shift in her eyes, than most actors can do with an entire film's worth of screen time. To borrow the parlance of the gay community, she serves C### proudly and unashamedly. I have a huge crush on her, and I may need a therapist to understand why find Bette Davis so attractive. I don't think I have a humiliation kink, but part of me wants to have young Bette Davis to look me up and down and reject me with the kind effortless grace with which she devastated her many, many unworthy co-stars.
My personal fetishes aside, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane(?) shifted my perceptions of both Crawford and Davis, revealing Crawford's incredible subtlety while underlining Davis's uncanny ability to get under your skin. She can terrify and destroy you with words and or deeds. She's a monster but one whose monstrousness is wielded bluntly and with intensity. Underlying the monster, however, is a desperately broken heart that has become a broken psyche and the fact that Bette Davis is capable of capturing a broadly performed, camp, monster while finding and slowly revealing her vulnerability is yet another trait that sets Davis apart from other actors.
Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal
