Classic Movie Review: 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?' Starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford

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 paint 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 help me unpack why find Bette Davis so attractive. I don't think I have a humiliation kink, but part of me wants to have the All About Eve era Bette Davis look me up and down and reject me with the kind effortless acid wit 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 deeds. She's a monster but one whose monstrousness hides a wealth of pathos. Underlying Davis's monster 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.

The story goes that as a very young child, Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) was a big deal in Vaudeville. She played sold out shows alongside her daddy and performed a saccharine, deeply embarrassing style of mawkish balladry. She actually performs a song with the words 'I Wrote A Letter to Daddy in Heaven.' That's a real song she sings in the movie. Even performed by an actual child this song is a horror show. But, wait until you see the elderly Baby Jane earnestly perform this song in front of an oblivious young man, played by Victor Bu0no, and you will recoil in cringe while still feeling the chill of a genuine, iconic horror movie moment.

As Jane grew up and could no longer get by on the novelty of her youth, her career declined, rapidly. So, it was as Jane was receding that Blanche (Joan Crawford) began to blossom. The family moved to Hollywood to join the movie business and Blanche was an overnight sensation. She made money, big box office, and movies that people flocked to, even years after they came out. Then, in a horrific twist of fate, Blanche was paralyzed in a car wreck. Having promised their mother that she would always take care of Baby Jane, Blanche enlists her sister to be her caretaker while she locked herself away in an upstairs room of their long time Hollywood home.

That's the status quo as we join the story. The inciting incident, the catalyst of the story we are going to watch unfold begins with Blanche in bad financial straits. She explains to her part-time maid and friend, Elvira (Maidie Norman) that she will need to sell the house and downsize to a smaller place to get by. This means that Jane will also need to move but she won't be able to move with Blanche. Jane's mental decline is rapidly in progress and Blanche has made the decision to send Jane to a hospital. Jane finds out about Blanche's plans and that begins a plot to keep Blanche locked away while Jane uses what is left of Blanche's wealth to restart her career as Baby Jane and keep the house.

My expectations going into What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (?) was for a titanic back and forth battle of ego and wills between two forces of nature, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. I assumed, because of my perception of Crawford as the tyrannical monstrosity of Mommy Dearest, that she would go toe to toe with Davis with the actors battling for screen time and going completely over the top and off the rails to get to the top of the movie. That's not what What Ever Happened to Baby Jane(?) is. In reality, Crawford plays Blanche with a demure elegance, a shyness and softness that I was not prepared for. While Davis is crawling the walls, Crawford is serving humble, apologetic, heartache.

I kept waiting for a showdown. I kept waiting for Blanche to find a way of turning the tables that would allow Crawford to hold her own in this cat fight scenario. Yeah, I was not ready for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane(?) to be more dramatic, terrifying and accomplished than most modern horror movies. And I was certainly not expecting to feel so strongly for a character played by Joan Crawford. She's so kind and so pathetic that when Bette Davis as Baby Jane did something cruel towards her, I recoiled and gasped in hope that Crawford had survived the metaphorical blow.

Director Robert Aldrich keeps stacking the deck against poor Blanche, but he does so in a fashion that leaves just enough for us to hope she will survive. As the action becomes more intense and the plot gains uncontrollable speed, headed for a stunner of a closing montage, I was enthralled in my care and worry for Blanche. I forgot she was Joan Crawford, aka Mommy Dearest, instead she was this poor, desperate, elderly woman being constantly victimized by her sister, and I wanted the abuse to stop. Instead of the camp comedy that I expected, I got a full-fledged thriller that morphs into an epic psychodrama.

This doesn't negate the perception of Crawford as a real-life monster, but it did show me that she was an incredible actor of formidable and unpredictable range. The same can oddly be said of Bette Davis who was also accused of abusive behavior by her own child, as Crawford famously was. But, no one made a movie of Bette Davis's proclivity for cruelty and thus her reputation is that of a legend and icon and not a maniacal pariah obsessed with eliminating wire hangers. Mommy Dearest, by the way, is a modern masterpiece that everyone should watch and reevaluate.

So yeah, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane(?) was not at all what I expected it to be. It's not fun. It was not made to be camp. The film is deadly serious about the deadly secrets between sisters. This is a psycho-drama thriller about one woman trying to escape the clutches of the other while the other is slowly slipping into complete madness. And Davis's slip into madness is chilling and impossible not to watch. When, near the end of the movie, Jane begins dancing and humming a tune on the beach you can't help but recall the eyes of Norman Bates at the end of psycho or, more on the nose, the sneering, wild-eyed gaze of Norma Desmond as she descends the staircase at the end of Sunset Boulevard. It's that good.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane(?) is the classic on a new episode of the I Hate Movie Review Podcast. Each week, myself and my co-host Jeff, and our producer, Bob Zerull, review the week's top new movies and one singular classic. It's a way to look at the present and the past of Hollywood and compare them to show how movies and culture have changed over the years. It's fun show and I would love it if you would give the show a listen. We are in our 10 year and still hoping we can expand the show to a bigger, broader audience. Find the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast wherever you listen to Podcasts.

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