Title: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Rating: 4 Stars
This is one of those films where the making of it outshines the film itself.
It’s the story of two elderly sisters, Jane (Bette Davis) and Blanche (Joan Crawford) Hudson. Growing up in the 1910s, “Baby Jane” Hudson was an acclaimed vaudeville child phenom. As a child, knowing that she was the main breadwinner of the family, Jane became spoiled and petulant and Blanche was shunted to the side.
Later, in the 1930s, Jane’s star had long since faded. Instead, Blanche became a major motion picture star. Even though she took care of Jane, Jane became resentful and alcoholic. This flared up one night and apparently Blanche was run over in a car by Jane, leaving her paralyzed.
Now in the year 1962, the two live interdependent solitary lives. Jane cooks and takes care of her paralyzed sister as they subsist on Blanche’s earnings from her films. Jane has become an even heavier drinker and is starting to exhibit signs of mental breakdown. Will Blanche be able to escape from the clutches of Jane? Will Jane be able to re-launch her career by singing her old childhood standards as an elderly woman?
This is a classic Gothic horror drama film. Similar to films like Rear Window or the later Misery, the protagonist is somewhat powerless. You feel her helplessness as she tries to figure out a way to send a distress signal to the outside world. Each time that she looks like she’s about to succeed, Jane is there to thwart her, sometimes murderously.
It’s fair to say that Bette Davis goes all in. Knowing no makeup artist would dare to make her look hideous, she did her own makeup. Hideous she does look. Davis described the character as the kind of woman that never removes makeup. She just keeps adding on additional layers. Her voice is shrill and raucous. Bette Davis’ eyes have never looked so malevolent.
Joan Crawford wasn’t quite as willing to give up on her movie star glamour. Supposedly a starving, rapidly fading invalid, she fought most attempts to de-glamorize herself.
The film that this is most reminiscent of is Sunset Boulevard. Made in 1950, it starred Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded silent film star lost in irrelevance but still believing that she can make a comeback. Like Jane Hudson, Desmond has descended into a Gothic madness.
Regarding the title of the blog, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? actually did kick off a new genre of films known as, I kid you not, Psycho-Biddy (which also went by, and again I assure you that I kid you not, Hagsploitation). Since Psycho-Biddy is close in name to one of my favorite forms of music, psychobilly, I found this quite amusing. Such films were horror/thriller films that centered around older mentally unstable women.
This brings me to an interesting point about Hollywood’s treatment of women. Once women reach a certain age, parts simply disappear for them. I think that things might be better now, but certainly in the 1960s, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for women past the ingenue phase of their life. After all, in 1962, Bette Davis is only 54 years old. This is not quite old hag territory. Davis (and that matter Crawford) was a strong, smart, at one time powerful member of the film industry. The fact that they were both enticed to take roles as washed up actors when they were still in their 50s says something about how the film industry treats women.
Having said that, it is amusing to me that the psycho-biddy genre bled just a bit into both of the women’s personal lives. Joan Crawford, most famously, was the target of a poison pen biography by her daughter named Mommie Dearest. Not to be outdone, Bette Davis’ daughter wrote a similarly harsh biography of her mother called My Mother’s Keeper.
It’s a justifiably famous over the top darkly comic Gothic thriller featuring an actress chewing every piece of scenery that she can reach.
dorkenstein 