While Crawford is rather subdued throughout the film, Davis chews up the scenery as one of the most bizarre, depraved villainesses you'll ever encounter.
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By 1962 the careers of two of filmdom's leading female stars, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, were in decline. They had been the biggest leads in Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s, but as with most actresses, after a certain age the good roles came less frequently. "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" changed all that. It was the first and only time the two ladies, screen competitors for years, appeared together in a film (unless you count 1944's "Hollywood Canteen," in which they played themselves), and it proved an instant box-office success.
Of course, it might not have happened at all if it were not for Hitchcock's "Psycho" a couple of years earlier. "Psycho" opened the door to a flock of gothic horror movies in the following years, and the similarities between it and "Baby Jane" are evident not only in their characters and events, but in their low-budget productions, their black-and-white camera work, and their musical scores. Playfully, a neighbor in "Baby Jane" is named Bates.
So, what could have been better than to cast two aging rival movie stars as two aging rival sisters, the Hudsons, Jane (Davis) and Blanche (Crawford). While Crawford is rather subdued throughout the film, Davis chews up the scenery as one of the most bizarre, depraved villainesses you'll ever encounter. The movie is a splendid romp from beginning to end, thanks to the energy of the two stars and to its director, Robert Aldrich ("Kiss Me Deadly," "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte," "The Flight of the Phoenix," "The Dirty Dozen," "The Longest Yard").
Incidentally, stories are legend about how much the two actresses hated one another going into the movie, and tales abound about how they hated each other on the set, apparently doing spiteful things to one another during the shooting. How much of these stories we can believe and how much was created by their press agents to bolster ticket sales is hard to say. The trivia teems with gossip and innuendo and makes almost as good reading as the movie makes watching.
In any case, "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" begins in 1917, at a time when Baby Jane Hudson was a leading child star on the vaudeville stage. She was so popular that dolls of her curly-headed self were best-sellers. Meanwhile, her sister Blanche waited in the wings, cringing at the thought of her sister's accomplishment, the Baby Jane dolls being sold in the theater foyer, and Jane's unkind, spoiled-brat attitude.
Fast forward a few years to 1935: Both sisters were now in Hollywood movies, Blanche a huge star, Jane a has-been tagalong. The tables had turned, and while Blanche bought an old house that once belonged to Rudolph Valentino for the both of them to live in, Jane began drinking herself into oblivion. Until the night an automobile accident crippled Blanche in the driveway of the house, and it was thought Jane was responsible. From that point on, neither sister acted in movies again, living a reclusive life to themselves, Blanche forever confined to a wheelchair and Jane forever dressing up in her little-girl, "Baby Jane" clothes and curls. And so the years passed.
Understand, director Aldrich always intended the movie be taken in the Hitchcock vein, his continually infusing it with a tone of black humor. It's not surprising, then, that twenty-seven years later in 1962, the screen should announce the date as "Yesterday." Nor should we should find it surprising to find Ms. Davis in ludicrously childish makeup, a grotesque caricature of her younger self; or that Davis's real-life daughter, B.D. Merrill, should be playing the teenage girl next door. The film is meant in fun, no matter how violent things run.
Anyway, now is where the real revelry begins. Jane has gone completely around the bend, keeping her sister a virtual prisoner in the house, and it's where birds and rats and hammers come into play. The old dear has clearly lost what little mind she had left by this time, and there is one particularly sad, frightening scene where she thinks about her youth, begins singing her old vaudeville songs, and then catches sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her scream is as real as anything in the movie.
With Blanche locked in her room, Jane's mind continues to erode, to the point of her deciding to revive her old stage act and hiring an accompanist, a down-and-out young musician, Edwin Flagg (huge Victor Buono in his first screen role), to work with her. Flagg is only interested in the old broad's money and is willing to ignore her idiosyncrasies. But true to "Psycho" form, Flagg is single and living with his mother. Well, at least they didn't hire Tony Perkins for the role, but the filmmakers at one time did consider Peter Lawford.
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[release]18784[/release]