Whatever Happened to Baby Jane has gained a huge cult status, despite having a large budget, two Oscar-winning actresses, and was a massive success when it was released... all of which are traits that would be really hard to include in any kind of cult film, but this one achieved it with ease. I think the reason it's gained a lot of cult status is that this was intended to be a suspense/drama and turned out to be incredibly (and quite unintentionally) funny. Unintentional humor is usually a large part of what makes a cult film. Another aspect that makes this movie great is the off-screen antics of the film's two main actresses. Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were both in constant competition for the coveted title of Queen Bitch of Hollywood, a feud that had been growing between them for years before "Baby Jane" was even conceived. Both actresses were practically fossils when they made this movie and were considered very low profile and almost non-hirable. One director even stated, "I wouldn't give a wooden nickel for those two old broads." But director Robert Aldrich saw it differently and had struck upon a great idea... take two actresses who literally hated each other's guts and put them both in a movie where their characters also hate each other's guts. Absolutely brilliant!! That hatred for each other fueled some of the best acting ever put on film.
The story goes a little like this... In 1917 Baby Jane Hudson was the child star to end all child stars, singing and dancing her way across America's heart. But then she went and committed the worst crime that a child star can do... she grew up. Fast forward to 1935, Jane's sister Blanche has now become an extremely successful actress and Jane's career has been in the toilet for quite some time. One night, the two of them are returning home from a party, we see one sister get out of the car to unlock the gate and the other sister hits the gas and flat-out runs her down. Fast forward again to "yesterday"... Blanche is old and in a wheelchair and Jane is her resentful caregiver. Basically, two old biddies living in an old Hollywood house, both have been out of the spotlight for years, one was a star for a few years as a child, and the other sister was a much more successful actress as an adult for a much longer time.
For years, the hatred and resentment between them have been greatly building, until Jane is quite fed up with what she considers to be the sacrifice of her career for the sake of caring for her sister. The insinuation is that Jane ran Blanche down (just to be a bitch, I guess), resulting in her being a cripple in a wheelchair, so out of guilt she takes "care" of her sister. Jane begins to treat her sister Blanche increasingly badly and we soon learn that she also appears to be losing her grasp on reality.
When they begin showing some of Blanche's old movies on television (before we had VCRs) Jane is terribly jealous and her abuse towards Blanche becomes bizarrely inhumane. She takes the phone out of Blanche's room, is keeping flowers and fan mail meant for Blanche for herself, and she even cooks Blanche's parakeet and serves it to her for dinner. Having no other way to cope with the situation, Jane is also now a raging alcoholic.
The loonier Jane gets, the more desperate Blanche becomes, after all, it's gotta be pretty scary to be dependent on someone who hates and resents you, cooks your pet parakeet, serves dead rats for dinner, is forging your signature and stealing from your bank account, and is, by all means, becoming a complete lunatic who in her mind lives only in her childhood past when she actually had a shred of respect and attention.
All while slowly starving her sister to death (Blanche didn't find the cooked parakeet and dead rat very appetizing), Jane is also trying to revive her childhood act as "Baby Jane Hudson". Acting and dressing like she did when she was a child star, which of course looks totally creepy on someone who is now in her late 60s.
In a desperate attempt at reviving her childhood career, Jane places an ad in the newspaper for a partner to help recreate her act exactly as she used to do it when she was a kid. She meets Edwin, who also thinks she's a nut, but a nut with money. He's obviously just after the cash, therefore he indulges her looniness for the sake of making some money off of her.
Blanche's helper, maid, and friend Elvira comes to find out why Blanche can't be reached on the phone (Jane ripped it out of the wall) and why Jane won't let her go upstairs to Blanche's room anymore. She finally has enough of Jane's bullshit and pushes past her and runs up to Blanche's bedroom, and upon opening the door, she finds Blanche hogtied to the bed with her mouth taped shut. She tries to help, but unfortunately, Jane clobbers Elvira over the head with a hammer from behind and kills her before she can help Blanche. That night, Jane dumps Elvira's body.
A day or two later cops come questioning Jane about Elvira's disappearance, so Jane panics, grabs her barely conscious sister, and heads for the beach. While lying on the beach, Jane plays in the sand like a child while Blanche lies there dying in the sun.
A wonderful twist ending occurs (which I normally wouldn't tell people, but what the hell, it's my blog). As a dying confession, Blanche reveals that it was actually her that was driving the car that fateful night, and not her sister Jane. Blanche had a hatred for Jane ever since they were little when Jane was getting all the attention. Apparently, Jane had been a real bitch to Blanche at a party that they had just returned home from and it was Blanche that was driving the car, and not Jane who was actually the one unlocking the gate. In a rage, Blanche tried to run Jane down with the car, crashing into the gate, snapping her spine, and crippling herself in the process. She managed to crawl out of the car and up to the gates and when the cops arrived they naturally assumed that Jane had done it. Jane was apparently too drunk to know what had happened and ran off. When Blanche tells Jane all of this, we get one of the best lines of the entire movie... "You mean, all this time we could've been friends?".
By now people are noticing a dying Blanche while Jane twirls around, having finally reaches the brink of pure insanity, so pretty soon the cops arrive. The movie ends here and we're left with the assumption that Blanche gets the help she needs within minutes of losing her life and that Jane is finally carted off to the funny farm where she seriously belongs.
As I stated before, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis deeply hated each other so there was definitely some awful tension going back and forth off-camera (which greatly enhanced their performances on camera). A few examples: Joan Crawford was the CEO of Pepsi-Cola at the time, therefore Bette Davis had Coca-Cola (Pepsi's biggest rival) machines installed everywhere. There's a scene where Jane is kicking the crap out of Blanche, and they had to use a dummy because Joan Crawford didn't trust Bette Davis to not actually kick her. In a scene where Jane is dragging Blanche out of bed and into the hall, you can tell that Bette Davis is really having a hard time carrying and dragging her, this is due to the fact that Joan Crawford hid several heavy weights under her dress so that she would be much heavier when they had to do the scene, then kept purposely ruining the scene so that Bette Davis would have to repeatedly carry a MUCH heavier than normal Joan Crawford over and over. I could go on and on, the trivia for this movie is just as fascinating as the movie itself. Director Robert Aldrich was surprised (and no doubt very relieved) when Bette Davis opted to do her own make-up for the film which is really very frightening. He stated once that he would literally be too scared of Bette Davis to purposely make her look that bad. This truly is a great movie and despite all the elements that would normally keep a film from being considered cult, it has now really become a true cult classic. An entire miniseries was even made called "Feud" starring Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford and Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis that chronicles the tumultuous filming of the movie and the endless friction between its two bitchy stars.
1 comment:
Best movie!
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