Cinema: Sinisister Act

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

The door opens slowly. Joan Crawford, her eyes bulging as only Joan can bulge them, huddles in her wheelchair helplessly and stares in horror at—good grief, what is it? Its body looks like an outsize Christmas stocking stuffed with oranges, flashlights and toy trucks. Its hair suggests bleached Brillo. Its eyes might be bloodshot golfballs. Its mouth, enlarged by lipstick, looks like a greasy old bow tie that somehow rode up over its chin.

Holy smoke, it’s Bette Davis. “I’ve brawchoo yaw dinnah,” she drawls as only Bette can drawl, then smiles like an unsanitary crocodile as she sets a tray on the table. Joan smiles weakly back at her, wheels across to the table, takes the lid off the main dish and—”EEEEEEEEEK!”

In the center of the dish lies a big fat juicy roast rat.

Turns, anyone? At this point, indeed, many customers will be tempted to take a powder. But those who can stomach Bette’s cooking—on another occasion she serves a salad of unplucked parakeet—will be amply rewarded by the horror of her company. In what may well be the year’s scariest, funniest and most sophisticated chiller, she gives a performance that cannot be called great acting but is certainly grand guignol. And Joan effectively plays the bitch to Bette’s witch.

Adapted from a novel by Britain’s Henry Farrell, Baby Jane tells the story of two little monsters and how they grew. The more precocious monster, Baby Jane, is a vaudeville kiddie who at the age of six is almost as famous as Mary Pickford. Spoiled rotten, she treats her parents like dirt and her little sister like a worm. But fame fades and the worm turns. When Jane (Bette) grows up, she becomes a drunk. When sister (Joan) grows up, she becomes a Hollywood star. One night in a fury Joan tries to run Bette down, but the car strikes a stone gate instead, and Joan loses the use of her legs for life. Too drunk to remember what happened, Bette thinks that she herself had been driving the car, and Joan lets her think so. Crushed by guilt, Bette feels bound in conscience to spend the rest of her life tending a cranky and exacting cripple.

After 25 years of servitude, Bette twigs her sister’s game. The shock, the realization that she has wasted her life, knocks a screw loose. With the cunning of unreason she connives a hideous revenge. Day by day she tantalizes her sister with sumptuous meals, but after the rat and the parakeet the cripple is afraid to eat. Day by day the victim grows weaker. When she calls for help, Bette rips out the phone. When she crawls downstairs, Bette ties her up and tapes her mouth shut. When she warns the maid, Bette cracks the woman’s skull.

Gorgeous gothic stuff, in short, and Director Robert Aldrich knows just when to shock for shock’s sake, just when to play his gargoyles for giggles. Under his skillful management, two aging screen queens—both of them are going on 55—give a vigorous and talented answer to a question often asked: What Ever Happened to Joan Crawford and Bette Davis?